Hmmm, nysh has a pretty good, simple explanation for these lyrics. I actually didn't think it had anything to do with love/sex/romantic relationships at all. Maybe it's just because I was thinking about the song in terms of what I see in my own life, but I thought the song was about how girls primarly tend to prefer other girls for friends. Sure, they'll talk to the boys and socialise with them as they must, but girls prefer their close friendships to be with other girls. Hence, the girls want to be with the girls.
Well - I don't know, I'm kind of making an over-generalisation here, and I'm only really talking about what I see in my life. Most of the girls I know don't seem to be interested in befriending boys, unless it's with the intention to become "a little more than friends" (y' know?). I'm perfectly aware that it's not always that way, and that some girls prefer boys as companions (actually, I'm a 15-year old girl, and maybe it's just got something to do with the developmental stage I and my contemporaries are in, and that I'm rather atypical in most respects, but I kind of prefer boys to girls because I understand them better). But I mean, in general.
I just realised that that all came out as an overly wordy way of saying "this song is about how girls prefer girls to boys for friends".
Ha, Pippin, I got the same feeling from this song.
Ha, Pippin, I got the same feeling from this song.
If I had heard it back in high school, I would've had a different opinion. There, most of my friends were girls, and they preferred the company of boys. Now that I'm in college, though, it's very different. My platonic girlfriends there spend most of their time with each other, and I hear from them a lot of anti-boy comments, largely due to some relationship drama llama.
If I had heard it back in high school, I would've had a different opinion. There, most of my friends were girls, and they preferred the company of boys. Now that I'm in college, though, it's very different. My platonic girlfriends there spend most of their time with each other, and I hear from them a lot of anti-boy comments, largely due to some relationship drama llama.
...and then I have a friend at Bryn Mawr who spends all of her time with girls and, coincidentally, just started listening to...
...and then I have a friend at Bryn Mawr who spends all of her time with girls and, coincidentally, just started listening to the Talking Heads.
yeah...Pippin has hit the nail on the head, I'd say.
yeah...Pippin has hit the nail on the head, I'd say.
for the past couple of years, my closest friend has been a woman. she's older than me, but not by too many years. and I'm a man, so...
for the past couple of years, my closest friend has been a woman. she's older than me, but not by too many years. and I'm a man, so...
her other friends assume--based on the length of the friendship, and the mere fact we spend time together--there MUST be something else going on (that she's hiding, or not willing to talk about). no amount of explanation will convince them.
her other friends assume--based on the length of the friendship, and the mere fact we spend time together--there MUST be something else going on (that she's hiding, or not willing to talk about). no amount of explanation will convince them.
but: we ARE just friends. the thought of a more-intimate involvement never occurs to either of us. except as a brief...
but: we ARE just friends. the thought of a more-intimate involvement never occurs to either of us. except as a brief chuckle over: other people's assumptions, or (what seems to us) the self-evident absurdity of she and I ever becoming romantically entangled.
(there are explainable reasons, but it'd be TMI. and anyway I'm already much too wordy in my contributions to this page.)
maybe David was hoping to get at something more profound. for example, his explicit statement that "there's boys and girls," which--given his conceptual-art leanings, at the time--implies much more than what (at first) those simple words would seem to convey. he has an explicit message, part of which is this: there are boys, and there are girls, and they're not the same.
with references to things like abstract analysis and intuitive leaps, he was (I'd guess) hoping to illuminate some of those differences. if so, he focuses more on trying to get inside the girls' heads: perhaps due to the assumption, "hey, I already know how the boys think, so...that part is not as interesting."
but...I don't think David Byrne thinks like other boys. not like other people, either.
nor do I think he succeeds in communicating anything other than a simple, straightforward observation about how males & females tend to behave with each other. he was trying for something more, but failed. some of his other Songs About Buildings and Food are more memorable. this one isn't great, but it's a decent effort.
Hmmm, nysh has a pretty good, simple explanation for these lyrics. I actually didn't think it had anything to do with love/sex/romantic relationships at all. Maybe it's just because I was thinking about the song in terms of what I see in my own life, but I thought the song was about how girls primarly tend to prefer other girls for friends. Sure, they'll talk to the boys and socialise with them as they must, but girls prefer their close friendships to be with other girls. Hence, the girls want to be with the girls.
Well - I don't know, I'm kind of making an over-generalisation here, and I'm only really talking about what I see in my life. Most of the girls I know don't seem to be interested in befriending boys, unless it's with the intention to become "a little more than friends" (y' know?). I'm perfectly aware that it's not always that way, and that some girls prefer boys as companions (actually, I'm a 15-year old girl, and maybe it's just got something to do with the developmental stage I and my contemporaries are in, and that I'm rather atypical in most respects, but I kind of prefer boys to girls because I understand them better). But I mean, in general.
I just realised that that all came out as an overly wordy way of saying "this song is about how girls prefer girls to boys for friends".
Ha, Pippin, I got the same feeling from this song.
Ha, Pippin, I got the same feeling from this song.
If I had heard it back in high school, I would've had a different opinion. There, most of my friends were girls, and they preferred the company of boys. Now that I'm in college, though, it's very different. My platonic girlfriends there spend most of their time with each other, and I hear from them a lot of anti-boy comments, largely due to some relationship drama llama.
If I had heard it back in high school, I would've had a different opinion. There, most of my friends were girls, and they preferred the company of boys. Now that I'm in college, though, it's very different. My platonic girlfriends there spend most of their time with each other, and I hear from them a lot of anti-boy comments, largely due to some relationship drama llama.
...and then I have a friend at Bryn Mawr who spends all of her time with girls and, coincidentally, just started listening to...
...and then I have a friend at Bryn Mawr who spends all of her time with girls and, coincidentally, just started listening to the Talking Heads.
yeah...Pippin has hit the nail on the head, I'd say.
yeah...Pippin has hit the nail on the head, I'd say.
for the past couple of years, my closest friend has been a woman. she's older than me, but not by too many years. and I'm a man, so...
for the past couple of years, my closest friend has been a woman. she's older than me, but not by too many years. and I'm a man, so...
her other friends assume--based on the length of the friendship, and the mere fact we spend time together--there MUST be something else going on (that she's hiding, or not willing to talk about). no amount of explanation will convince them.
her other friends assume--based on the length of the friendship, and the mere fact we spend time together--there MUST be something else going on (that she's hiding, or not willing to talk about). no amount of explanation will convince them.
but: we ARE just friends. the thought of a more-intimate involvement never occurs to either of us. except as a brief...
but: we ARE just friends. the thought of a more-intimate involvement never occurs to either of us. except as a brief chuckle over: other people's assumptions, or (what seems to us) the self-evident absurdity of she and I ever becoming romantically entangled.
(there are explainable reasons, but it'd be TMI. and anyway I'm already much too wordy in my contributions to this page.)
maybe David was hoping to get at something more profound. for example, his explicit statement that "there's boys and girls," which--given his conceptual-art leanings, at the time--implies much more than what (at first) those simple words would seem to convey. he has an explicit message, part of which is this: there are boys, and there are girls, and they're not the same.
with references to things like abstract analysis and intuitive leaps, he was (I'd guess) hoping to illuminate some of those differences. if so, he focuses more on trying to get inside the girls' heads: perhaps due to the assumption, "hey, I already know how the boys think, so...that part is not as interesting."
but...I don't think David Byrne thinks like other boys. not like other people, either.
nor do I think he succeeds in communicating anything other than a simple, straightforward observation about how males & females tend to behave with each other. he was trying for something more, but failed. some of his other Songs About Buildings and Food are more memorable. this one isn't great, but it's a decent effort.
wasn't trying to say, "my closest friend has, [only] for the past couple of years, been a woman."
wasn't trying to say, "my closest friend has, [only] for the past couple of years, been a woman."
but how would I make the intended meaning clearer?
but how would I make the intended meaning clearer?
"for the past couple of years, there's one person who's been my closest friend. BTW she's a woman."
"for the past couple of years, there's one person who's been my closest friend. BTW she's a woman."
must be a simpler way than that.
must be a simpler way than that.