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.
This girl has got a smile
That can make me cry
This girl just burns with love
She's burning burning deep outside
Night time night time
Sets my house on fire
I'll turn into the melting man
I'll lose my life
To feel I feel desire
Oh I should feel
Like a polar bear
Like a polar bear
It's impossible
She flies outside this cage
Singing girl-mad words
I keep her dark thoughts deep inside
As black as stone
As mad as birds
Wild wild wild
And never turn away
Sends me all her love
She sends me everything
She sends me everywhere
Oh I could be
A polar bear
Oh I could be
A polar bear
But it's impossible
I try to talk
The sky goes red
I forget
So fill my head
With some of this
Some of that
Some of every word she said
Oh I should be
A polar bear
But it's impossible
That can make me cry
This girl just burns with love
She's burning burning deep outside
Night time night time
Sets my house on fire
I'll turn into the melting man
I'll lose my life
To feel I feel desire
Oh I should feel
Like a polar bear
Like a polar bear
It's impossible
She flies outside this cage
Singing girl-mad words
I keep her dark thoughts deep inside
As black as stone
As mad as birds
Wild wild wild
And never turn away
Sends me all her love
She sends me everything
She sends me everywhere
Oh I could be
A polar bear
Oh I could be
A polar bear
But it's impossible
I try to talk
The sky goes red
I forget
So fill my head
With some of this
Some of that
Some of every word she said
Oh I should be
A polar bear
But it's impossible
Lyrics submitted by oofus, edited by Mellow_Harsher, 24beer$
Bird Mad Girl Lyrics as written by Robert James Smith Laurence Andrew Tolhurst
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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I think THE TOP is one of the Cure's most underrated, misunderstood albums. If you truly delve into it with an open mind (and lots of chronic/other hallucinageens help), you will discover that the album has it's moments, exemplified by this song. The Cure were so free then. Robert allowed himself to unravel. He sang us his visions and his dreams. In this song I think Birdmad Girl is a metaphor for drugs -- as in birds fly hiigh ~ a la Birdmad and don't we always refer to drugs with female psudonyms -- Mary Jane, Tina, Kitty...
"the polar bear was a symbol (zoo-wise) for me of insensible savagery caged to be stared at. or something like that...? " R. Smith, December 1990
here's the dylan thomas poem thought to have inspired it:
"Love In The Asylum"
A stranger has come To share my room in the house not right in the head, A girl mad as birds
Bolting the night of the door with her arm her plume. Strait in the mazed bed She deludes the heaven-proof house with entering clouds
Yet she deludes with walking the nightmarish room, At large as the dead, Or rides the imagined oceans of the male wards.
She has come possessed Who admits the delusive light through the bouncing wall, Possessed by the skies
She sleeps in the narrow trough yet she walks the dust Yet raves at her will On the madhouse boards worn thin by my walking tears.
And taken by light in her arms at long and dear last I may without fail Suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars.
as for what it means to me, well...
"I'll turn into the melting man I'll lose my life To feel I feel desire"
i've always felt this is saying that his feelings for her make him melt away[implying he's frozen inside] and disappear[leave], because he doesn't feel comfortable with the desire he feels for her
"Oh I should feel Like a polar bear... It's impossible"
and this says he wishes he were a polar bear[something that lives in places FULL of ice, but they don't melt away], so he could feel desire for her without "melting"(or leaving). yet, it's impossible...probably due to the kind of girl she is and he feels inadequate.
so this song, for me, is loving someone i can't really handle, someone i wish i could be close to, but my desire scares me and i don't think i'm capable of dealing with the idea of pursuing the person, so i melt away...though i wish things were different. i wish i were a polar bear.
this is one of my favorites.
He loves this girl who is impulsive, vibrant, full of life, and mad as birds.
He's the opposite of her, tedious, restrained, boring. Compared to her, he might as well be a polar bear.
He would give up everything to feel like she does. He would turn into the melting man.
Actually a polar bear is exactly what he isn't, and wishes he was. In the middle of the song, she makes him feel like he could be a polar bear. But it ends up going back to being impossible in the end. Also, I'm not sure I would consider him tedious and boring. Though he could be restrained especially before meeting her...
Although, after reading some of the other entries, I could be entirely wrong... T_T
The entire Top album is awsome! Extremely underrated and often over looked.
@monster36604 I always enjoyed it. As you say most people ignore it.
I think it's about loving someone wild and impulsive -- one of those people who's in love with the world, who appreciates everybody and everything and finds beauty in the simplest of things -- with all of your being. But you know you can't be with them. It's about feeling lonely and isolated without someone. Definitely one of my favorite songs.
u fucked up the title assman
Its one of Peti's favorite songs. So strange and undefineable like the whole top album. Really preoccupied with birds on this album.
i love this song, and the way he says 'i should be a polar bear, but it's impossible' at the end..
robert wrote about a story he read in the paper about a young girl in a mental institution.
This song is definatey inspired by Love In the Asylum- when he recorded the demo for this song, he just sung the poem because he didn't have any words yet. XD
This might explain the polar bear bit: "The polar bear was the symbol (zoo-wise) for me of insensible savagery caged to be stared at. Or something like that..." (Cure News 10 - December 1990)
fabulous