So this has been.my favorite song of OTEP's since it came out in 2004, and I always thought it was a song about a child's narrative of suffering in an abusive Christian home. But now that I am revisiting the lyrics, I am seeing something totally new.
This song could be gospel of John but from the perspective of Jesus.
Jesus was NOT having a good time up to and during the crucifixion. Everyone in the known world at the time looked to him with fear, admiration or disgust and he was constantly being asked questions. He spoke in "verses, prophesies and curses". He had made an enemy of the state, and believed the world was increasingly wicked and fallen from grace, or that he was in the "mouth of madness".
The spine of atlas is the structure that allows the titan to hold the world up. Jesus challenged the state and in doing so became a celebrated resistance figure. It also made him public enemy #1.
All of this happened simply because he was doing his thing, not because of any agenda he had or strategy.
And then he gets scourged (storm of thorns)
There are some plot holes here but I think it's an interesting interpretation.
Buy now, I kill for a living
Buy now, I kill for a living…
I’m fitted for a heat-resistant sleeve
Keep your distance please
Your persona’s in question my phosphorescent skin
makes your heat pistons freeze
I’m a hallucinogen pez-dispenser, led ventures
With a group of umpla-lumpa parachute troopers
Who discredit theories and behead your mentors
Who can radio wave windsurf to invert what is common knowledge
I will insert my solemn promise to style until my limbs burst
Negotiate with marketing consultants, giving me the once-over
Wearing grim smirks
They would like me to convert my gritty edge
To unearth my earning potential
But my face is so sun burnt
Due to all the grassroots grunt work
That I won’t be co-opted
And every photo-op needs to be photoshopped cropped and snipped
But I’m a street vendor kinds sir
This style-free is dopamine
It’s a meat tenderizer at the gallery opening
You can join my suicide cult
Membership is free
Take these cyanide eye-drops
And peppermint hemlock
This is what you have been billed for
Dancing on the kill floor
To vibrant woofer, clients butchered to a film score
This is what you have been killed for
Dancing on the kill floor
To vibrant woofer, clients butchered to a film score
Contrast bohemia to my workplace
When I’m racing in carpool lane
to sell shit to an art school lame
-Don’t you think you’re hot shit
Well what do you have to offer-
A dead archetype able to be purchased on a credit card swipe
But they can they pinpoint and nail
My distance between art and commerce
With just an invoice of a sale
I will disappoint an ail
Those who want to deny us the majority rule
When a will jump in my primordial pool
Without knowing where their swim trunks were
But not everyone knows
What they’re called on to encumber
You can’t know by just logging on with a pin number
Buy now
You pasty Brits
Buy now
You crazy chicks
Buy
Cuz I don’t pay attention to rules,
regulations or safety tips
Love us
Eligible bachelors
Love us
Cuz we’re the Blowed rappers
Loved
Cuz I tour the country so much
I can do it blindfolded with no road atlas
Unrelated to your three-legged
preachy bootleggers will do away with you
CD duplicators make vegans
Do the salad bar swing-pivot
Wave your valid parking tickets
At the endangered sea-urchin
Tell me the name of your political activist key person
And I’ll tell you what’s under the blips of the clean version
Of the infamous rap rant
Trickling down the baggy pant leg
of this unhappy class aid
Covered in shell fragments of this
Graffiti tagged glass egg
I can sell anything to a hip-hopper
like it’s my cathartic something
But I don’t make enough to go apartment hunting
You can dance to death
And for no extra charge
Give me your debit card
So you can have sex with stars
This is what you have been billed for
Dancing on the kill floor
To vibrant woofer, clients butchered to a film score
This is what you have been billed for
Dancing on the kill floor
To vibrant woofer, clients butchered to a film score
…
Buy now,
I kill for a living
Buy now,
I kill for a living…
Buy now, I kill for a living…
I’m fitted for a heat-resistant sleeve
Keep your distance please
Your persona’s in question my phosphorescent skin
makes your heat pistons freeze
I’m a hallucinogen pez-dispenser, led ventures
With a group of umpla-lumpa parachute troopers
Who discredit theories and behead your mentors
Who can radio wave windsurf to invert what is common knowledge
I will insert my solemn promise to style until my limbs burst
Negotiate with marketing consultants, giving me the once-over
Wearing grim smirks
They would like me to convert my gritty edge
To unearth my earning potential
But my face is so sun burnt
Due to all the grassroots grunt work
That I won’t be co-opted
And every photo-op needs to be photoshopped cropped and snipped
But I’m a street vendor kinds sir
This style-free is dopamine
It’s a meat tenderizer at the gallery opening
You can join my suicide cult
Membership is free
Take these cyanide eye-drops
And peppermint hemlock
This is what you have been billed for
Dancing on the kill floor
To vibrant woofer, clients butchered to a film score
This is what you have been killed for
Dancing on the kill floor
To vibrant woofer, clients butchered to a film score
Contrast bohemia to my workplace
When I’m racing in carpool lane
to sell shit to an art school lame
-Don’t you think you’re hot shit
Well what do you have to offer-
A dead archetype able to be purchased on a credit card swipe
But they can they pinpoint and nail
My distance between art and commerce
With just an invoice of a sale
I will disappoint an ail
Those who want to deny us the majority rule
When a will jump in my primordial pool
Without knowing where their swim trunks were
But not everyone knows
What they’re called on to encumber
You can’t know by just logging on with a pin number
Buy now
You pasty Brits
Buy now
You crazy chicks
Buy
Cuz I don’t pay attention to rules,
regulations or safety tips
Love us
Eligible bachelors
Love us
Cuz we’re the Blowed rappers
Loved
Cuz I tour the country so much
I can do it blindfolded with no road atlas
Unrelated to your three-legged
preachy bootleggers will do away with you
CD duplicators make vegans
Do the salad bar swing-pivot
Wave your valid parking tickets
At the endangered sea-urchin
Tell me the name of your political activist key person
And I’ll tell you what’s under the blips of the clean version
Of the infamous rap rant
Trickling down the baggy pant leg
of this unhappy class aid
Covered in shell fragments of this
Graffiti tagged glass egg
I can sell anything to a hip-hopper
like it’s my cathartic something
But I don’t make enough to go apartment hunting
You can dance to death
And for no extra charge
Give me your debit card
So you can have sex with stars
This is what you have been billed for
Dancing on the kill floor
To vibrant woofer, clients butchered to a film score
This is what you have been billed for
Dancing on the kill floor
To vibrant woofer, clients butchered to a film score
…
Buy now,
I kill for a living
Buy now,
I kill for a living…
Lyrics submitted by egg
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Ave Grave
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Love in a Vacuum
'Til Tuesday
'Til Tuesday
Well, in my opinion this song is about being a young & maybe a little naive &/or introverted girl and finding yourself loving a man who is at first very charming, carefree & outgoing, and seems at first to be without limits, as in
"There was a time
you opened up every doorway
you didn't mind if everything
wasn't your way"
then that man starts to gradually become more introverted & shows their more possessive/obsessive side to you as the relationship progresses, even while they keep up the appearance of being carefree & outgoing to everyone else,
"Don't pull away
that goes against what you told me
I look in your eyes
I realize what you've sold me
is love in a vacuum"
so you confront them about the way they're acting and of course they deny it,
"I think you've changed
but you insist that
that's not true"
quite possibly they are an addict of some sort, my guess would be cocaine, &/or showing very obsessive behavior towards you (early on in the video for this song we see the man hanging a picture up, it is a very large portrait of Aimee & it is prominently displayed in his/their apartment for the duration of the song), thus their "love in a vacuum",
"You look so strange, so distant
that you're hardly you
Now I can see
how you have been acting different
You say it's me
but I know
that it isn't
it's love in a vacuum"
but still you are in love with them and don't want to leave them and you know that they are truly in love with you and they don't want you to leave them either, maybe they are convinced you can save them from themself, maybe they are so broken that the possibility of an overdose &/or suicide attempt is very real and you want to get through to them that their behavior not only dangerous but it is also just pissing you off and if they don't wise up they run the risk of loosing you, as in the lines
"You will be lonely
if you leave me alone", so you want to save them but can't get through to them due to the addiction &/or emotional problems they have,
"Love in a vacuum
and that's not enough
love in a vacuum
You will be lonely
you'll be the only one who feels this way
You will be lonely
if you leave me alone
You will be lonely
you'll be the only one who feels this way
it's just not enough"
you want them to understand that the love they are giving you is not enough when it is filtered through the vacuum of their drug addiction &/or emotional impairment,
"You will be lonely
you'll be the only one who feels this way
it's just not enough
and just wait
you will be lonely
Love in a vacuum
Love in a vacuum
and that's not enough
Love in a vacuum".
'Love In A Vacuum' for me is a hauntingly truthful acute argument on the loneliness of obsession and almost inevitable loss of love that follows people who are broken in some way or another; the obsessives, the coke heads, the drunks, addicts or the just-plain-old emotionally broken; a razor sharp, lyrically driven, deceptively poppy, yet ultimately-depressing-in-the-best-way song.
Quintessential Aimee Mann.
Jesse with the long hair....
Robert Earl Keen, Jr.
Robert Earl Keen, Jr.
Classic love story true to his western tx roots. One of my favorites as a story, but I think there are alot of songs that are amazing not even listed on this site. I guess I should figure out how to add them, because I have about 8 REK cd's.
Siberian Kiss
Glassjaw
Glassjaw
its amazing how far music can come.. 24 years after it released and its one of the most heartfelt songs ive heard
Step
Ministry
Ministry
Both as a standalone and as part of the DSOTS album, you can take this lyric as read. As a matter of public record, Jourgensen's drug intake was legendary even in the 1980s. By the late 90s, in his own words, he was grappling with massive addiction issues and had lost almost everything: friends, spouse, money and had nearly died more than once. "Dark Side of the Spoon" is a both funny & sad title for an album made by a musical genius who was losing the plot; and this song is a message to his fans & friends saying he knows it. It's painful to listen to so I'm glad the "Keith Richards of industrial metals" wised up and cleaned up. Well done sir.