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.
A boy with a coin he found in the weeds
With bullets and pages of trade magazines
Close to a car that flipped on the turn
When god left the ground to circle the world
A girl with a bird she found in the snow
Then flew up her gown and that's how she knows
That God made her eyes for crying at birth
Then left the ground to circle the Earth
A boy with a coin he crammed in his jeans
Then making a wish, he tossed in the sea
Walked to a town that all of us burn
When god left the ground to circle the world
With bullets and pages of trade magazines
Close to a car that flipped on the turn
When god left the ground to circle the world
A girl with a bird she found in the snow
Then flew up her gown and that's how she knows
That God made her eyes for crying at birth
Then left the ground to circle the Earth
A boy with a coin he crammed in his jeans
Then making a wish, he tossed in the sea
Walked to a town that all of us burn
When god left the ground to circle the world
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Fortnight
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift
Light Up The Sky
Van Halen
Van Halen
The song lyrics were written by the band Van Halen, as they were asked to write a song for the 1979 movie "Over the Edge" starring Matt Dillon. The movie (and the lyrics, although more obliquely) are about bored, rebellious youth with nothing better to do than get into trouble. If you see the movie, these lyrics will make more sense. It's a great movie if you grew up in the 70s/80s you'll definitely remember some of these characters from your own life. Fun fact, after writing the song, Van Halen decided not to let the movie use it.
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.
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,
Blue
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
“Blue” is a song about a love that is persisting in the discomfort of the person experiencing the emotion. Ed Sheeran reflects on love lost, and although he wishes his former partner find happiness, he cannot but admit his feelings are still very much there. He expresses the realization that he might never find another on this stringed instrumental by Aaron Dessner.
It was helpful to know that this was part of a work inspired by anger at the goings on of the last decade. Through that lens, it's pretty simple, actually.
The boy is us as people, indifferent in our day-to-day behavior to the fact that civilization is has already spun out of control, driven by war and greed. The coin is the shiny distractions and meager comforts that keep us complacent in the fsce of its destruction. War and greed have already won and God has left the Earth.
The girl is indeed the loss of innocence, whether by rape or just life, born to tears and betrayed by a God who has left her to suffer alone.
The boy doesn't even appreciate the coin, and throws away what little he has of value on an empty wish for something more. And so he walks to the town that all of us have burned, that idyllic hometown that no longer exists if it ever did, long ago emptied of its soul by strip malls and chain stores. It is ourselves we have betrayed.
God has left the Earth, and we no longer care for anyone but ourselves, and that will be the end of us.
I don't know how to react to this interpretation, because I completely agree with it, but at the same time it makes me so sad to think that we're tearing our own world apart. Not just the physical world, but also ourselves. How far we have fallen, we lost children of the world. It's a picture that is both sadly beautiful and horrifying in its utter truth, and there is little that can be done to stop it if the world continues as it is now.