The song 'Fortnight' by Taylor Swift and Post Malone tells a story about strong feelings, complicated relationships, and secret wishes. It talks about love, betrayal, and wanting someone who doesn't feel the same. The word 'fortnight' shows short-lived happiness and guilty pleasures, leading to sadness. It shows how messy relationships can be and the results of hiding emotions. “I was supposed to be sent away / But they forgot to come and get me,” she kickstarts the song in the first verse with lines suggesting an admission to a hospital for people with mental illnesses. She goes in the verse admitting her lover is the reason why she is like this. In the chorus, she sings about their time in love and reflects on how he has now settled with someone else. “I took the miracle move-on drug, the effects were temporary / And I love you, it’s ruining my life,” on the second verse she details her struggles to forget about him and the negative effects of her failure. “Thought of callin’ ya, but you won’t pick up / ‘Nother fortnight lost in America,” Post Malone sings in the outro.
If only I could
Clear my eyes
Then I might breathe once more
Then I might breathe again
Old sun and stars,
And oceans below me
Guide my strides over
Jagged shards, under foot
Old sun and stars,
And oceans below me
Guide my strides over
Jagged shards, under foot
To slash to the sound
How many sit on woe or peril?
How many walk on their own?
Into the truth
Let myself burn
Now it's written
1000 shards
Clear my eyes
Then I might breathe once more
Then I might breathe again
Old sun and stars,
And oceans below me
Guide my strides over
Jagged shards, under foot
Old sun and stars,
And oceans below me
Guide my strides over
Jagged shards, under foot
To slash to the sound
How many sit on woe or peril?
How many walk on their own?
Into the truth
Let myself burn
Now it's written
1000 shards
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Fortnight
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift
Fast Car
Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman
"Fast car" is kind of a continuation of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run." It has all the clawing your way to a better life, but in this case the protagonist never makes it with her love; in fact she is dragged back down by him.
There is still an amazing amount of hope and will in the lyrics; and the lyrics themselve rank and easy five. If only music was stronger it would be one of those great radio songs that you hear once a week 20 years after it was released. The imagery is almost tear-jerking ("City lights lay out before us", "Speeds so fast felt like I was drunk"), and the idea of starting from nothing and just driving and working and denigrating yourself for a chance at being just above poverty, then losing in the end is just painful and inspiring at the same time.
Dreamwalker
Silent Planet
Silent Planet
I think much like another song “Anti-Matter” (that's also on the same album as this song), this one is also is inspired by a horrifying van crash the band experienced on Nov 3, 2022. This, much like the other track, sounds like it's an extension what they shared while huddled in the wreckage, as they helped frontman Garrett Russell stem the bleeding from his head wound while he was under the temporary effects of a concussion. The track speaks of where the mind goes at the most desperate & desolate of times, when it just about slips away to all but disconnect itself, and the aftermath.
Gentle Hour
Yo La Tengo
Yo La Tengo
This song was originally written by a guy called Peter Gutteridge. He was one of the founders of the "Dunedin Sound" a musical scene in the south of New Zealand in the early 80s. From there it was covered by "The Clean" one of the early bands of that scene (he had originally been a member of in it's early days, writing a couple of their best early songs). The Dunedin sound, and the Clean became popular on american college radio in the mid to late 80s. I guess Yo La Tengo heard that version.
Great version of a great song,
When We Were Young
Blink-182
Blink-182
This is a sequel to 2001's "Reckless Abandon", and features the band looking back on their clumsy youth fondly.
If I take aranneas' comment seriously, this song might be referring to Aaron Turner's following statement:
"Through explaining the last two albums time and time again, I just started to become weary of the topic, and I started to feel like I was losing my connection to the music and the lyrics simply from having repeated it so many times." (From Wikipedia)
'Gathered scribes over, jagged shards under foot' may be a reference to how scribes (journalists, interviewers) repeatedly ask him about his lyrics and how it's uncomfortable for him like some jagged shards under his foot.
In the same vein,
"Into the truth Let myself burn Now it's written 1000 shards "
might refer to how his inclination against repeatedly explaining his lyrics is the truth for him.
Just absolute arrows in darkness these ideas. I could probably come up with an explanation which is just as convincing to myself, with a totally different meaning ;)
Shows that even with havoc you can still push on and continue the odyssey in which you have endured.
JI hate to say that any of the lyrics on this alblum are any one thing... but i think he may be saying: How can they sit on woe or peril...
Also, i believe that the last stanza may more closely resemble: And so the truth, It burns so bright. Now its written, 1000 Shards.
"Old sun and stars - Celestial "And oceans" - Oceanic "Below me" - Panopticon, perhaps?
Somehow tying together the concepts of their earlier albums. I don't know their early stuff well enough to draw the connection, though.