Cecilia is a hooker and a stripper ("dancing...in a place where lonely men make their opposites match"). She has a daughter (Amanda) and has vowed that she will stay away from drugs and clean up her life for her kid ("things you promised that you never did"). But she has been beaten by a Jon ("black and blue...", a hospital "patient in a party dress") and her pimp "Whitey" says that it will make her less desirable to the men ("she ain't a hit no more"). He sends her to get more drugs (the "daily score"), possibly from the narrator (Elliott??). This saddens the narrator. He is afraid that Amanda will follow in her mother's footsteps, and that he is contributing to this outcome ("she asked me can I fix it so YOUR record plays the rest of HER song" isn't just literal and the weird pronouns aren't accidental: "YOUR record"=the mother's lifestyle, "HER song"=Amanda's life.). Amanda wants to be a dancer like her mother, she looks up to her and asks the narrator about it but he obviously doesn't want to tell what kind of dancer she is. He wants to protect her. But in the end Amanda does become her mother. She puts on "a new party dress" (mirroring the party dress worn by her mother in the hospital after being beaten) and Amanda starts "dancing to a record YOU scratched" (aka living her mother's lifestyle) with her own version of a lying, drug dealing pimp (the "dealing amateur actor making opposites match").
All in all it's a sad story of the cyclical nature of addiction, abuse and exploitation. It's made all the worse because the scenes with the narrator talking to the little girl about dancing feel so innocent even as the 'dancing' and the 'records' serve as metaphors for the inevitability of her innocence being breached. And all sung to a poppy upbeat melody, just to underline the contrast one more time.
Heartbreaking and brilliant as only Elliott can be.
Here's my take on the b-side [non-live] version:
Cecilia is a hooker and a stripper ("dancing...in a place where lonely men make their opposites match"). She has a daughter (Amanda) and has vowed that she will stay away from drugs and clean up her life for her kid ("things you promised that you never did"). But she has been beaten by a Jon ("black and blue...", a hospital "patient in a party dress") and her pimp "Whitey" says that it will make her less desirable to the men ("she ain't a hit no more"). He sends her to get more drugs (the "daily score"), possibly from the narrator (Elliott??). This saddens the narrator. He is afraid that Amanda will follow in her mother's footsteps, and that he is contributing to this outcome ("she asked me can I fix it so YOUR record plays the rest of HER song" isn't just literal and the weird pronouns aren't accidental: "YOUR record"=the mother's lifestyle, "HER song"=Amanda's life.). Amanda wants to be a dancer like her mother, she looks up to her and asks the narrator about it but he obviously doesn't want to tell what kind of dancer she is. He wants to protect her. But in the end Amanda does become her mother. She puts on "a new party dress" (mirroring the party dress worn by her mother in the hospital after being beaten) and Amanda starts "dancing to a record YOU scratched" (aka living her mother's lifestyle) with her own version of a lying, drug dealing pimp (the "dealing amateur actor making opposites match").
All in all it's a sad story of the cyclical nature of addiction, abuse and exploitation. It's made all the worse because the scenes with the narrator talking to the little girl about dancing feel so innocent even as the 'dancing' and the 'records' serve as metaphors for the inevitability of her innocence being breached. And all sung to a poppy upbeat melody, just to underline the contrast one more time.
Heartbreaking and brilliant as only Elliott can be.