In regards to the meaning of this song:
Before a live performance on the EP Five Stories Falling, Geoff states “It’s about the last time I went to visit my grandmother in Columbus, and I saw that she was dying and it was the last time I was going to see her. It is about realizing how young you are, but how quickly you can go.”
That’s the thing about Geoff and his sublime poetry, you think it’s about one thing, but really it’s about something entirely different. But the lyrics are still universal and omnipresent, ubiquitous, even. So relatable. That’s one thing I love about this band. I also love their live performances, raw energy and Geoff’s beautiful, imperfectly perfect vocals. His voice soothes my aching soul.
One more night spent on your mirror
Black maria, in your eyes
This stuff so strange and lonely
England fades away
In your eyes
two o'clock in the morning
Ninety-four degrees
through the stillness through the heat
The cars go by on Fifth and
Breathing slow
Get up off the floor and angel
Put your clothes on
It's time for us to go
let's take a ride
Black maria, in your eyes
This stuff so strange and lonely
England fades away
In your eyes
two o'clock in the morning
Ninety-four degrees
through the stillness through the heat
The cars go by on Fifth and
Breathing slow
Get up off the floor and angel
Put your clothes on
It's time for us to go
let's take a ride
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The Night We Met
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This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
Cajun Girl
Little Feat
Little Feat
Overall about difficult moments of disappointment and vulnerability. Having hope and longing, while remaining optimistic for the future. Encourages the belief that with each new morning there is a chance for things to improve.
The chorus offers a glimmer of optimism and a chance at a resolution and redemption in the future.
Captures the rollercoaster of emotions of feeling lost while loving someone who is not there for you, feeling let down and abandoned while waiting for a lover. Lost with no direction, "Now I'm up in the air with the rain in my hair, Nowhere to go, I can go anywhere"
The bridge shows signs of longing and a plea for companionship. The Lyrics express a desire for authentic connection and the importance of Loving someone just as they are. "Just in passing, I'm not asking. That you be anyone but you”
Punchline
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran sings about missing his former partner and learning important life lessons in the process on “Punchline.” This track tells a story of battling to get rid of emotions for a former lover, whom he now realized might not have loved him the same way. He’s now caught between accepting that fact and learning life lessons from it and going back to beg her for another chance.
Plastic Bag
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
“Plastic Bag” is a song about searching for an escape from personal problems and hoping to find it in the lively atmosphere of a Saturday night party. Ed Sheeran tells the story of his friend and the myriad of troubles he is going through. Unable to find any solutions, this friend seeks a last resort in a party and the vanity that comes with it.
“I overthink and have trouble sleepin’ / All purpose gone and don’t have a reason / And there’s no doctor to stop this bleedin’ / So I left home and jumped in the deep end,” Ed Sheeran sings in verse one. He continues by adding that this person is feeling the weight of having disappointed his father and doesn’t have any friends to rely on in this difficult moment. In the second verse, Ed sings about the role of grief in his friend’s plight and his dwindling faith in prayer. “Saturday night is givin’ me a reason to rely on the strobe lights / The lifeline of a promise in a shot glass, and I’ll take that / If you’re givin’ out love from a plastic bag,” Ed sings on the chorus, as his friend turns to new vices in hopes of feeling better.
This, like so many songs by The Sisters of Mercy, is another very sensual one. It deals with the whole idea of love being over in the morning -- "2 o'clock in the morning" -- something also expressed in 'Some Kind Of Stranger'. This also is a precursor to 'Some Kind Of Stranger' with the use of the endearment "angel", in reference, of course, to the girl with whom the singer has eloped with. The concept of dying sexual emotions is furthered by how the singer commands the girl to "Get up off the floor", meaning that she was being sexual submissive to him, and to put her clothes on, since the so called "love" is over. Then again, like so many of their songs, this song contains deeper meaning than just the rather obvious sexual ones. "One more night spent on your mirror" refers to how the singers "lover" is shallow, concerned more about her appearance than personality. "Black Maria" is a British term referring to the police van that transports criminals to jail; here, the way the singer uses it could be interpreted in multiple ways, but I think it's meaning is that the girl is like a Black Maria, carrying the singer away to some sort of psychological prison. "This stuff so strange and lonely England fades away/In your eyes" -- the singer acknowledges that what they had what empty and shallow, yet the outside world seems to disappear in the moment of such intimacy, regardless of how fake and temporary it is in the end. "Ninety-four degrees through the stillness, through the heat/The cars go by on Fifth" -- 94 degrees Fahrenheit is the average internal temperature of the human body, so the singer is essentially referencing the heat emanating from the other person, yet life is still going on outside of this elopement, since while time is frozen to "stillness" for the singer, cars are still moving and people are still going about. And since the love is over and there's nothing left "It's time for us to go/Let's take a ride".
"One more night spent on your mirror....this stuff, so strange and lonely, England fades away..."
Sounds like an Englishman in an exotic country doing hard drugs with an exotic woman. Even though the situation & circumstances are lonely, shallow, meaningless, foreign & detached (calling her "Angel" makes it feel like it's just some anonymous woman he barely knows), but he's got hard drugs in his bloodstream, "breathing slow...", that steady, pulsing comfort: ....But after the passion dies down, and the edges of boredom & restlessness & emptiness start poking in, it's time to "take a ride"...maybe to score some more "strange stuff" to snort off of a mirror or just a change of scenery, but either way, on the run from something...
The other comments are very interesting and I agree. I Didn't know what a "Black Maria" is, thanks for clearing that. I want to mention in addition that this a moody, brooding menacing song and that the lyrics and the music fit perfectly to each other. You can imagine a moist cold night and a dry dusty heat at the same time (due to the deep monotonous bass and the western guitar sound). I'm sure the lyrics deal with sex (without much emotion) and drugs. So it bears some Rock'n Roll in the classic sense. But without doubt it's one of the Sisters' finest songs and one of my all time favorites in general. Let's take a ride.
The other comments are very interesting and I agree. I Didn't know what a "Black Maria" is, thanks for clearing that. I want to mention in addition that this a moody, brooding menacing song and that the lyrics and the music fit perfectly to each other. You can imagine a moist cold night and a dry dusty heat at the same time (due to the deep monotonous bass and the western guitar sound). I'm sure the lyrics deal with sex (without much emotion) and drugs. So it bears some Rock'n Roll in the classic sense. But without doubt it's one of the Sisters' finest songs and one of my all time favorites in general. Let's take a ride.