| Kanye West – Street Lights Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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Street Lights is such a simple song, has such simple lyrics, but somehow manages to capture an emotion so complex that, I'll go so far as saying, no other song I've heard has managed to get it right. (This is long, seriously don't read it if you're not looking for an Op.Ed. haha) My interpretation of the songs meaning is this: I'm sure that everyone can remember high school, and life before it. Growing up was defined by firsts. The first song you really connected with, your first car, or your first kiss. Everything was new and exciting, and time seemed to last forever. Every moment seemed to last a lifetime. When summer would finally arrive and school was out, those few short months felt like years. Most of all, even though you knew that you were growing up, there was this whimsical belief that that things would never change. By the twelfth grade you started to feel it. Time moving faster, people really changing, the dream becoming real. Then graduation, the last hurrah of youth. All of the sudden you had to make a choice. All the dreams you had of where your life would end up, now you had to make it happen. For me anyway, It's at this juncture in life that the song pics up. You know your dream, and you make the choice to follow it, you get in the cab and you pay the fare. The emotion that the song expresses is complex because it's not regret or despair, but it's not hope or joy either. It's a combination of so many different emotions. You know that you have done your part and are headed towards your dreams, but at the same time life is different. Those same moments that as a kid lasted forever just fly past, there for an instant and then gone. You're an adult, but your not perfect and you wonder, with time slipping past so quickly, if you'll still have a chance to become a better person. All the while your fond memories of growing up, and how simple it all was, slowly fade. Absolutebap hit this part spot on: It's the feeling of missing a place that you can no longer call home, and a time that will never return. Life's just not fair because to get where you are going, you have to leave where you are. It's the purest combination of happiness and sadness that you feel when you first embark on your own life journey, and you take a moment to reflect. It's knowing where you are going but not knowing what to expect. Kanye says it best, it's being, "In the streets." |
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| Eagles – The Sad Cafe Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I have to amend my previous comment. The last bit about the narrator deciding to revisit the past. He returned to "sad cafe" hoping to find the life he so fondly remembered, but once arrives he realizes how little it all has changed, and how as the years pasted he had idealized the memories he was clinging to. All at once it makes sense to him. He no longer needs answers because he has found peace with the way his life has played out, and wants only to bask in the memory of what it was like to share a dream. |
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| Eagles – The Sad Cafe Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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The Eagles is that one band that I always come back to. They were one of the first bands that I really got into, and even though I don't listen to their music all of the time whenever I do I find something that relates to my life. My interpretation isn't based on the history of the band or even a popularly held believe, it's just what the song means to me, but I still feel like sharing it. To me, the "sad cafe" is a metaphor for a special place and/or time in a persons life where they shared dreams, ambitions, outlook and friendship. It could be high-school, college, a home town, or even an era (eg. the 70s). "we could sing right out loud, the things we could not say" - this line reminds me of reckless freedom and haphazard ways. kind of like the saying "gotta learn to run before you can walk". "oh expecting to fly..." people believed that their dreams, no matter how outlandish, would come true. The kind of boundless optimism that can never last. In many ways "the sad cafe" is a metaphor for growing and changing and the sincere happiness one gets from sharing a vision or a dream. The song is about the nostalgia one feels when looking back at the time that was the "sad cafe" and the people who were there with him, with the sober clarity gained by experience and the passing of time. The line, "the clouds rolled in and hid that shore," signifies the end of that time. Some people go off to pursue their dreams, others give up, and some are paralyzed by inaction yet cling to what they wish they could achieve. The narrator, looking at his own life and where it has taken him, wonders why he has been so lucky, wonders why he has come so far while some of the people he remembers never made it. He has fond memories of this long gone time and place, yet he feels that maybe the memories ("maybe the time has drawn the faces I recall") are just an idealized version of the way things actually were. Finally, he decides to revisit the past, the place where his journey began. Perhaps he is looking for closure, perhaps answers to old questions, or maybe he just wants to remember what it felt like to share a dream. |
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| Eagles – The Greeks Don't Want No Freaks Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| I really want to believe that this song was written about a frat party. | |
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