Our man Abu squeezes off twenty tracer rounds
And that's when she jumps the turnstile
And as she clings to the roof of the speeding train
The Double A down to Sheridan Square
Her cell phone rings
It's, like, her stupid father
Be in the door by ten, again
Pixeleen
Dream deep my three-times perfect ultrateen
Pixeleen
Born in the bogs of Jersey
Trained how to love and spy hard
Dropped on the streets of Roppongi
Soaked through on the floor of a noodle shop
And when Abu rams the clip in the mini-Glock
Up on the catwalk inside the warehouse
You whip a knife from the top of your go-go boot
With just a flash of spectacular thigh
Your pager starts to throb
It's your as-if boyfriend Randall
Better keep it real, or whatever
Pixeleen
Rave on my sleek and soulful cyberqueen
Pixeleen
Penned by a hack in the Palisades
Backed by some guys from Columbia
Shot all in digital video
For a million and change
Flashback to cool summer nights
Freddy can we cut to the chase?
In the room above your garage
Everything about me is different
Symmetrical and clean
This is what I see
Just a girl in girlie trouble
Dancing in the video with gun and tambourine
Pixeleen
Be good my three-times perfect ultrateen
Pixeleen
Born on the floor of a noodle shop
Dropped in the bogs of Jersey
Shot by a guy from Columbia
Soaked through all in digital video
Girl with the sweet backstory
Pitched in a trailer in Burbank
Cast by a cool enough yes man
Screened at a festival in Utah
And that's when she jumps the turnstile
And as she clings to the roof of the speeding train
The Double A down to Sheridan Square
Her cell phone rings
It's, like, her stupid father
Be in the door by ten, again
Pixeleen
Dream deep my three-times perfect ultrateen
Pixeleen
Born in the bogs of Jersey
Trained how to love and spy hard
Dropped on the streets of Roppongi
Soaked through on the floor of a noodle shop
And when Abu rams the clip in the mini-Glock
Up on the catwalk inside the warehouse
You whip a knife from the top of your go-go boot
With just a flash of spectacular thigh
Your pager starts to throb
It's your as-if boyfriend Randall
Better keep it real, or whatever
Pixeleen
Rave on my sleek and soulful cyberqueen
Pixeleen
Penned by a hack in the Palisades
Backed by some guys from Columbia
Shot all in digital video
For a million and change
Flashback to cool summer nights
Freddy can we cut to the chase?
In the room above your garage
Everything about me is different
Symmetrical and clean
This is what I see
Just a girl in girlie trouble
Dancing in the video with gun and tambourine
Pixeleen
Be good my three-times perfect ultrateen
Pixeleen
Born on the floor of a noodle shop
Dropped in the bogs of Jersey
Shot by a guy from Columbia
Soaked through all in digital video
Girl with the sweet backstory
Pitched in a trailer in Burbank
Cast by a cool enough yes man
Screened at a festival in Utah
Lyrics submitted by blackiswhite
Pixeleen Lyrics as written by Walter Carl Becker Donald Fagen
Lyrics © Wixen Music Publishing
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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i think it's about the life of a video game character who goes on action adventures.
That's not a lot of info on the song, so others should add.
One of my new favorites due to Carolyn Leonhart's gorgeous vocals.
Soaked through on the floor of a noodle shop
Penned by a hack in the Palisades
Backed by some guys from Columbia
Shot all in digital video
For a million and change
Born on the floor of a noodle shop
Dropped in the bogs of Jersey
Shot by a guy from Columbia
Soaked through all in digital video
Girl with the sweet backstory
Pitched in a trailer in Burbank
Cast by a cool-enough yes-man
Screened at a festival in Utah
Wow that is a finger to hollywood and one too to NJ...and bad movie production... but I do have a cool new nickname for my wingman... Abu
The first verse/chorus combo details the germination of this character. This is open for interpretation, but I can imagine that Pixeleen is the idea of a 16 year old female artist who's imagined herself as a teenage action hero. Her father wonders what she's drawing while at dinner and she explains her idea. He laughs it off, she gets mad and tosses her work on the floor of the "noodle shop."
So later a budding screenwriter happens upon this sketch when he goes to pick up his dinner. He takes this idea, comes up with his own storyline, and pitches it to a studio as a potential feature film. These older men take the innocent idea and inject "sexiness" into her character, in order to sell on the big screen.
In the bridge, the boundary between reality and fiction dissolves, as the character herself speaks to this "hack." She laments that she used to have character, but that she's been sterilized by people who want her to make them money instead of having true meaning. A film critic who has seen a private screening then pans it for that exact reason.
The final chorus condenses the entire chronology into 8 lines, in the wonderfully-sardonic fashion we've come to expect from Fagen and Becker.
There are two things for me that stand out about this song: First, the vocals of Carolyn Leonhart, and second, the understated grand piano by Bill Charlap.
So fast forward to 2013 - I actually read the lyrics 2nite; never could understand what they were singing about when I'd listened to the song for the last 10 yrs in the car. What a surprise!!! It's kind of a joke? Geeeez - had no idea what this song was about.
I'm the epitome of - "listen to the tune and the way the words sound with the music - who cares what they're singing about!" Basically I never know what they're singing about. In fact - there was a 70s song "I saw your face and that's the last I seen of...." I had been singing "...MY HORSE". So I asked my better half - what did that poor man do such that his girl wouldn't let him hang out with his horse anymore? She said "WHAT?". So I jumped back into the ongoing chorus "...I saw your face and that's the last I seen of my horse!" HOLEY MOLEY girlfriend laughed her aysss off. OMG - it was 2012 when I finally learned HORSE is not a word in that song. So 36 yrs I been singing the wrong lyric there?
Point is - if I could mess up that simple song from 1976, how in hell could I ever be expected to make sense of all that's going on in Pixeleen?
Wanting to get away from her humdrum existence, she tries seducing the older-man narrator "in the room above her garage," as if she really is the sophisticated, mature person she believes herself to be from her video games, hoping that he will "take her away from all this" kid stuff. (That's not a lyric quote, just a cultural one.)
The narrator rejects her, saying that all he sees is "a girl in girly trouble," someone who would be given a "gun and tambourine" in a music video (a classic musician's insult: the tambourine is traditionally what you give the "hot chick" you want to have appear on stage with your band, but who has absolutely zero actual talent).
In the last verse, all the imaginary backstory elements are swapped around in a nonsensical mishmash, reiterating that this girl's imaginary persona is meaningless, and nothing like her real-life one.