| Radiohead – No Surprises Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| I believe you're exactly right, but I'd like to add that I believe the line "I'll take a quiet life, a handshake of carbon monoxide" is intentionally multivalent (can mean more than one thing at once) and he is both referring to suicide by asphyxiating himself with his car, and "a handshake of carbon monoxide" could refer to smoking a cigarette- a way that people stuck in such a rut passively (and slowly) commit suicide in lieu of doing it all at once- say, smoking a cigarette or two at work every day, and perhaps that is a perfect illustration of the fact people stuck in such "safe" lives signal (unconsciously, most of us) that they want out. | |
| Radiohead – No Surprises Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| I heartily agree with your unpopular, but most likely, accurate understanding of what he meant. | |
| Radiohead – Little by Little Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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Perhaps harkening back to his earlier song "No Surprises" with the opening lyrics "A heart that's full up like a landfill. A job that slowly kills you". It's hard to make out exactly which he's saying there. The exact wording- if it's "job"- sounds like past tense "the job that killed you". |
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| Foster the People – Pumped Up Kicks Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| Oh wait, my bad. LOL! You did pick up on the possibility that he might be planning to shoot his dad. I have this terrible habit of not being able to finish reading the very last bit of someone else's post, before I get so excited I have to reply. D'oh! I do the same thing with $5 dollar footlongs from Subway. Can never quite finish the last little bit. | |
| Foster the People – Pumped Up Kicks Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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I think, not only is the second verse saying his dad is abusive (which is the "surprise" he has for the kid) but the verse "Yeah, the slight of my hand is now a quick pull trigger I reason with my cigarette" is him waiting with his gun to turn it around on him and kill him. One of the Columbine shooters killed his parents, I believe (or one of those crazy school shooters did) before he went to school and started killing other kids. Very intuitive of you to pick up on all this- I believe you're even right about the cigarette referring to his conscience or to his self-reflection (the thing everyone tends to do when they smoke). I got the same exact interpretation from it the first time I heard the song. |
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| The Dandy Warhols – Sleep Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| That's exactly what the song made me think about the first time I heard it. Someone I can never have, and never forget. Damn her. | |
| Nirvana – You Know You're Right (Home Demo) Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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This'll never open hate For me is here to say = It's another opiate For me this is the same Which fits the last line about medication. Also... I could never have a seam = I could never have a scene The meaning to that is obvious. Also... It's some things follow you = If some planes followed you I don't know what that means, but it sounds much closer to what he's saying. The next line, all I can make it is: "I will never want a drew (or "wand I drew", or "want it true")" And lastly... I will always want to faint = I always want to clean (or flee?) |
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| Nirvana – Don't Want It All Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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So, creepily [accidentally?] prophetic. Like someone above me said: Never finished his sentence [both, the final sentence on his suicide note, and his stay at rehab- which to him was a prison] Remained in seclusion [in the greenhouse] For the next few days [the length of time before they found him] Family is circling [searching for him frantically] He having moved up All the styles of heresy Finally he appeared unexpectedly [the electrician] Looking for company. [like his ghost got lonely] Of course, the meaning he probably really intended was the way he disappeared and isolated himself from people [think "I wanna be alone" in Sliver] and after a few days, finally appeared, looking for company, because he got lonely. I forget whose house it was, but in Heavier Than Heaven, Kurt was staying at someone's house while on tour, and they couldn't find him, until they looked in the nursery and he was sitting in the darkness alone, just staring. I've always been that way, too. I look through my family photos and I'm missing in most of them, because I had always gone somewhere to be by myself. Always felt like a stranger in my own family. It irks me that I wrote a song a long time ago with the lyrics "Imprisoned in my confusion, and you'll never let me finish my sentence, I was innocent the day you gave me life" only to find Kurt had already used the same metaphor. Damn! |
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| The Shins – Phantom Limb Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| I got the joke of the title immediately after I first found this song. Yeah, the girl is missing a weiner, but she still feels as though it's there. | |
| The Shins – Phantom Limb Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| "sprayed on tans" has got to be a metaphor for fakeness, I say. The lyrics to this song are so stream of consciousness and enigmatic as to be indecipherable, it seems. He must have had a little too much "pilfered booze" when he wrote it. It's still a great tune, though. | |
| Lifehouse – Wish Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| I'm convinced this is a sequel to "Just Another Name". | |
| Lifehouse – Just Another Name Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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"Everybody knows your name, but they don't know who you are" sounds to me like a celebrity. And also: "She said, 'Fame will bring you down', At least that's what she used to say." A celebrity whose lost her identity in the tabloids and the crowds and the acting. |
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| Built to Spill – Else Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| alovelyfadeout, you have the soul of a poet: "this song isn't necessarily pessimistic, aparthetic[sic], or optimistic but rather a feeling of comfort and acceptance." Beautiful, and- I think- accurate description. | |
| Luxury – Biography, Autobiography Lyrics | 17 years ago |
| Okay, I have never heard this song, but I have heard every song from the album containg "to you who were my hope and gave me light", and every song from the album containing "I know why the caged bird sings", and I had to respond to something about Luxury, because, I think, they left the side of the pool and swam out there into the middle (unlike most Christian bands I've seen). Never heard this song, but it sounds like they're mocking Christians who invite everybody with every religion to the table- including Satan (the dragon) hIMSELF. | |
| Red Hot Chili Peppers – Dosed Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| I also think that what he's trying to say is that there aint nothing wrong.... with a little bump and grind. | |
| Red Hot Chili Peppers – Dosed Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| Why do people get so up in arms about how "you people just think every [insert band name here] song is about drugs!". Yeah, but people like you would never accept an explanation that it's about drugs, even when it's a song that really IS about drugs. | |
| Red Hot Chili Peppers – Dosed Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| I think a few people hit the nail on the head, when they said the mountain is the height of this girl's addiction, and she's just so delusional and addicted that their relationship is something he never had anyway, because she let him close to her, but she's still unreachable. I think she was a friend who got addicted to something and died. This reminds me of Bridgett Andersen, the child actress from Savannah Smiles who died of a heroin overdose in 1997. | |
| Red Hot Chili Peppers – Californication Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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"Space may be the final frontier But it’s made in a Hollywood basement Cobain can you hear the spheres Singing songs off station to station And Alderon’s not far away It’s Californication" I think the person who said the "spheres" references aristotle's spheres, wherein the planets and stars move, and at the outermost plays music that can only be heard from earth by the enlightened is right. Alderon (Alderaan) has to be from Star Wars, being the first planet destroyed by the deathstar. I think Kiedis knows astrology, or astronomy, because in "Can't Stop", at the end of the song he says "Comin' from a space to teach you of the Pleiades". The Pleiades of course, are a constellation. So, Kurt is out in the spheres hearing their music, in space (the final frontier), hearing songs from the David Bowie album "Station to Station". Alderaan is nearby us (the earth), having been destroyed by the death star, meaning we're next. Oh, and by the way, the Red Hot Chili Peppers toured with Nirvana, so they knew Kurt personally. |
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| Aaron Sprinkle – A Friend I Had Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| This song ought to end up on Smallville or Lost. It's so beautiful. The lead instrumental part reminds me of drifting down a river in an innertube. The first time I heard it was also the first time I met my first girlfriend, and so in some ways I can't listen to the song anymore, because it's turned out to be too ironically life, imitating art, imitating life. The person he's singing about, whoever it is, it sounds like someone he loves, either romantically or platonically, who has become darker and more cynical in their heart. That is the girl I remember who was standing right beside me the first time I met her, right at the moment I ever first heard Aaron say, "How can I know where you are love, when you're right beside me?". I feel now like I'm standing in her shadow, and I was waiting for her, but now she's drifted far away from me. So alternately, for me, it's about me or her. I wonder who Aaron actually wrote it for? | |
| Beck – Lost Cause Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| I'm pretty sure it's not "there's no one left to get your back now", but rather "there's no one left to watch your back now". | |
| Keith Green – You! Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| Why do I find the cooing noises at the end of this song so haunting? | |
| Bob Dylan – All Along the Watchtower Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| It is about the reincarnated Buddha inhabiting all twelve of my chakras, you idiots!!!!! GOD!!!! | |
| Bob Dylan – All Along the Watchtower Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| No, no no!!! I just wanna say YOU ARE ALL WRONG!!!! That is not what the song is about!!! Get it RIGHT!!!!! | |
| Lifehouse – You Belong To Me Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| It's at that part on Shrek where they eating rat-kabobs, just I never heard it before cuz I always shut it off when that part gets too dirty | |
| Israel Kamakawiwo'ole – White Sandy Beach Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| Shoot, I've never even been to Hawaii and this song takes me there in spirit. I've always wanted to go there. I bet they have REAL nice garbage cans there. | |
| Finger Eleven – Awake And Dreaming Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| I don't know who he's talking about escaping from, but it brings back memories I can't remember, and that I can only remember the impressions of. Somebody once trapped me like that. Maybe they still are. Fuck em all to hell. | |
| Michael W. Smith – Secret Ambition Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| I realize more and more every day that I don't know WHO Jesus really is. This song reminds me how much I don't. I'm struck by this uncanny feeling every time I read the gospels and hear Jesus' words, almost like hearing a sound in the next room and expecting to find your cat had knocked something over, only to be greeted by a ghost, or walking at night, and not realizing til the next day that you'd been walking two feet away from a 300-foot drop off a sheer cliff. The church often makes two mistakes simultaneously: one is thinking they know exactly who God is, and the other is thinking they can't know Him anymore than they already do. The more I learn about God, the more wild and mysterious- alien even- He becomes to me. No one expected the Gospel. These people expected their Messiah to be a vengeful warrior who would slay all their enemies, only to meet a humble carpenter named Jesus, and have Him explain that they themselves were also God's enemies. Then He died for His enemies and they became His friends. Thinking they'd only been following a good man for three years, to realize He was actually the One Who formed their beating hearts. For Phillip to ask to see the Father, and for Jesus to reply, "Phillip, have I been with you so long, and you still don't know Me?" Phillip must have turned white as a ghost. John said, "behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us; that we should be called the sons of God" I bet in total disbelief and surprise 'til the day he died. Paul said, "Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we could ever ask or imagine". | |
| Keith Green – Your Love Broke Through Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| If I tried to write all the autobiographical information for why Keith wrote this song it would take several pages, so I'm just going to write what this song means to me. Plus, I don't want to steal the words away from anyone else who'd like to add info about Keith. Suffice it to say, though, that Keith experimented with drugs throughout his teen years and was constantly joining up with anyone else who would join him in his spiritual quests for truth. When he finally found Jesus (or as he would say, Jesus found him) he realized all the wisdom he thought he'd had was really just a curtain that hung over his eyes, a stone that held his heart inside a tomb, and Jesus rolled it all away. It's hard to describe to anyone who doesn't know Jesus what that's like. To realize how dark it is inside you, and to realize that, given an eternity, if there weren't a hell, you would create it inside yourself, by the choices that you make, and to realize like a heroin addict or a pedophile, that you can't stop doing the things you do. Then to begin despising your own behavior. Then to realize and even agree with God that you deserve to live in hell. Then most unexpectedly, God comes down and bears your punishment for you and sets you free. You realize you've never actually known freedom before. It's devastating. It brings you to your knees. It hurts like the light of the sun in your eyes, when you've spent your entire life inside cave. It's like Edmund in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, in the middle of this mysterious one from beyond the sky pays the death penalty for you. Words fail me. | |
| Radiohead – Kid A Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| Has anybody ever heard of the Sakakibara murders in Japan? If not, look it up on wikipedia. Sakakibara is the moniker of a (at the time) 14-year-old student from Kobe, Japan who murdered an 11-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl between March and May of 1997. His real name has not been released to the press as per Japanese legal procedures prohibiting the identification of juvenile offenders, and he is officially referred to as "Kid A" in Japanese legal documentation. On May 27, 1997, the head of Jun Hase, a student at Tainohata Elementary School, was found in front of the school gate hours before students arrived for classes. Hase had apparently been beheaded ["We got heads on sticks"] with a knife, with further mutilations being done before being left at the front. Issei Sagawa, who had killed and eaten a female student while he was studying abroad, then been extradited back to Japan, determined unfit to stand trial, and then released as a free man, wrote a book about the "Kid A" murders. His book was called "Shonen A", which of course means "Kid A". | |
| Nirvana – Verse Chorus Verse (Version 2) Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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God's got us trapped? Well, in a manner of speaking, if He exists, he can't help that. He can't help the fact that He created us and not us Him, and we exist in His created space, since we can't create our own. This certainly offends all of us who want to be our own little gods, doesn't it? Not fair! He's bigger!! He's got control and not us?!?! Not fair!! I can just see a two-year old throwing a tantrum, saying to his parents, "Not fair!! You gave birth to me and you're bigger and more powerful than me, and you've got control over my life!?!". I don't see God as a mean kid with a magnifying glass. There is a law that transcends all of us, including Him, and even He has put Himself under it. It's the standard by which things are measured good or evil. We all rebel against Him and His laws, and we're like two-year olds running out into traffic, giving our father the finger, and if He forcefully saves us we kick and scream, because he's violated our will!! He'll only forcefully save us so many times, before He gives up on us. That is the beginning of God's wrath-- not fire and torment-- but letting you live how you want, letting you destroy yourself. Kurt got what he wanted in the end. He pumped his veins full of poison and put a gun to his head. |
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| Nirvana – Verse Chorus Verse (Version 2) Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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God's got us trapped? Well, in a manner of speaking, if He exists, he can't help that. He can't help the fact that He created us and not us Him, and we exist in His created space, since we can't create our own. This certainly offends all of us who want to be our own little gods, doesn't it? Not fair! He's bigger!! He's got control and not us?!?! Not fair!! I can just see a two-year old throwing a tantrum, saying to his parents, "Not fair!! You gave birth to me and you're bigger and more powerful than me, and you've got control over my life!?!". I don't see God as a mean kid with a magnifying glass. There is a law that transcends all of us, including Him, and even He has put Himself under it. It's the standard by which things are measured good or evil. We all rebel against Him and His laws, and we're like two-year olds running out into traffic, giving our father the finger, and if He forcefully saves us we kick and scream, because he's violated our will!! He'll only forcefully save us so many times, before He gives up on us. That is the beginning of God's wrath-- not fire and torment-- but letting you live how you want, letting you destroy yourself. Kurt got what he wanted in the end. He pumped his veins full of poison and put a gun to his head. |
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| Nirvana – Verse Chorus Verse (Version 2) Lyrics | 18 years ago |
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This is about God. Read Heavier Than Heaven, as it might clarify some things. Kurt became a Christian in the youth group of a local church, the South Aberdeen Baptist Church. He and Krist both went there. Kurt's was friends with Jesse Reed, who was also the son of the youth pastor there, Dave Reed. For about four months Kurt preached to his friends about the evils of drugs. Dave Reed invited the then-homeless Kurt to come stay with his family. One day Kurt lost his key to their house, and so he broke a window to get in. They kicked him out for that. He then resumed smoking pot and at some point renounced Christianity. Anyway, though, this song is about God trapping us like grasshoppers in a jar, covering us with grass [the lyrics 'in dust' are wrong], poking breathing holes in the top of the jar and storing us in his laundry room, and the "conclusion came to you" that that's what's really going on. Being a Christian myself, I disagree with this idea, but can understand where a person who believes it is coming from. It's offensive to think we're inferior to God, and that we're just insects to him. It's funny, there is actually a verse in the bible, Isaiah 40:22 that says: "He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads them out like a tent to live in." And though I'm sure Kurt was unaware of this, the imagery of God threatening to squash us like insects is all-too ubiquitous in our secular-humanist society. |
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