submissions
| Soundgarden – Spoonman Lyrics
| 12 years ago
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You can tell what's important in people's lives by how they interpret the world around them. What does that say about people who think every song they hear is about drugs and masturbation? |
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| Katy Perry – The One That Got Away (feat. B.o.B.) Lyrics
| 12 years ago
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So the only thing I can tell about this guy from the song is that he drove a Mustang, stole his parents' liquor and listened to Radiohead. I can't be the only one bothered by how shallow and empty that seems. |
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| Pinback – Seville Lyrics
| 12 years ago
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I think some of the other comments are focusing too much on certain lines while missing the bigger picture. Here's what we can gather from the song: a 4 year old girl named Sheena Bella was killed in a cemetery while holding flowers and praying to God for bravery, and "they're gonna kill us all." Everything else is just elaborating on her dying young, or what the scene of her death looked like. That's all we know from the song, and I think it's deliberately being vague, creating an eerie atmosphere by not explaining exactly what's going on. If the title Seville refers to the Spanish city, then there are several historical battles and plagues that it could be referring to, or it could be something supernatural, maybe even apocalyptic. But trying to make too much sense out it might actually dilute the mood. The important thing is that Sheena Bella died in a cemetery, and we're next. |
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| Chevelle – Jars Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Thanks, that clears up a lot of the smoke the right-wingers have been blowing since the lyrics got posted. For all those people who kept claiming that they heard this song's a rant against environmentalists...
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"I'm a supporter of stopping global warming and saving the environment," Loeffler told Noisecreep. "The only thing is, I took a little bit of a different spin on it. It's a fictional idea, a crazy one. What if we were to save some of the Earth? The imagery is just saving everything into these jars down in the basement. It's very random. It's kind of absurd. If you can picture a cellar and a shelf full of jars and each jar has something a little different in it from the Earth. It's basically just saying, 'Wake up,' but hopefully in a more creative way than just blatantly coming out and saying, 'Stop global warming.'" |
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| Ivy – Kite Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Keep in mind, this is a cover of a song by Nick Heyward. The lyrics were originally written and sung by a man. |
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| Gin Blossoms – Hey Jealousy Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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This is one of my favorite songs, and I love most of it. But one thing has bothered me for years. What town does he live in where driving around the town involves "let[ting] cops chase us around"? Don't cops arrest the people that they're chasing? Every time I hear that line, I think of a Grand Theft Auto game, where you can go home, take a nap, and the police helicopters and armored vans all just give up and go home. Or maybe Dukes of Hazard, where Roscoe always acts like the Duke boys have gotten away after a chase, even though he knows where they live. Maybe the song's just talking about an imagined Bonnie and Clyde crime spree that'll never really happen, a blaze of glory for the two of them to go out in, but the way it's sung, it sounds like it's just his average weekend. Are there really small towns where cops just chase kids around without actually doing anything? Anyway, besides that, great song! |
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| TV on the Radio – Wolf Like Me Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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On the one hand, this song can definitely be about sex, especially the midsection and the last bit about Red Riding Hood. But on the other, it seems like sex and drugs is just the standard answer for every song meaning, and I think there's more to the lyrics than that. It's really about the beast inside everyone, about the victim/partner of such a beast becoming a beast as well. What the "beast" is a metaphor for is up to the listener. You could take the song as being about sex, or drugs, or crime, or anything that goes against civilized nature, and it still works. You could even put the metaphor on the back burner and just run with it being a werewolf song. However you take it though, it's one hell of a song. |
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| Meredith Brooks – Bitch Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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And I'll bet most of the women cheering this song as some sort of empowering female anthem then turn around and wonder why they can't ever seem to meet a decent guy. Speaking on behalf of the guys, let me just say that no, you being a bitch doesn't mean I'll "have to be a stronger man". It just means I'll go find someone who's not an abusive psycho. |
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| Modest Mouse – Ocean Breathes Salty Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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I agree that the song's more general in tone, it's not about a girl or a particular person. One key is where to put the quotation marks in the middle of the song: I take this whole bit as what the earth says as it closes into the grave: "Good luck. For your sake I hope heaven and hell are really there, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. You wasted life, why wouldn’t you waste death?" In other words, it's not one person talking about someone else who wasted life. It's what the world, nature, the ocean, the universe itself is saying to people as they die, people who were too busy to notice the world around them, and who'd probably be too busy for an afterlife to make much difference to them anyway. I don't take it as an anti-religion song, though. It doesn't say there is no afterlife, it just says that many people wouldn't appreciate an afterlife anymore than they appreciated life. |
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| Jason Mraz – I'm Yours Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Yeah, it's the "god forsaken right" part that doesn't make sense to me. Doesn't he mean "god given" right? I'd say it's a clever play on words, but saying that God has abandoned people's right to be loved doesn't really fit with anything else in the song. Did he just misphrase the line when he wrote the song, and it never got noticed all the way up to the album recording? Or did he need a four-syllable phrase to make the rhythm work, and "god given right" just wasn't cutting it? |
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| Ice Cube – It Was A Good Day Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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Cutnpaaste is right, you gotta look at the last three lines. He stops the song because none of it happened, he's just talking about what a good day would be like. |
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| Matchbox Twenty – How Far We've Come Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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Graduation? Breaking up? Are people really that intent on twisting the lyrics around to fit their particular life circumstances? It's just about the end of the world and what it'll mean for each of us. The lyrics are really clear about that. Applying the song to your own life is one thing, but mistaking that for the song's original meaning is another. |
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| Flobots – Handlebars Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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The first time I heard the song I assumed it was about Bush, but it goes a lot further than just him: I'm pretty sure Bush has never tried to rap or worked in a computer lab! I think it's more about America, and about humanity in general, and how gung-ho idealism (the sort of national spirit that America's famous for) can easily get twisted into a God complex. I still get chills from the line "I can end the planet in a holocaust". |
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| The Mighty Mighty Bosstones – The Impression That I Get Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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I like the song, and I get what it's about, but it's still strange that he focuses on the action of knocking on wood as this sign that you've been through unthinkable tragedy. Imagine if he'd used some other good luck superstition...
I've never owned a rabbit's foot
But I know someone who has
Which makes me wonder if i could
It makes me wonder if
I've never owned a rabbit's foot
And I'm glad i haven't yet
Because I'm sure it isn't good
that's the impression that I get
See what I mean? Still a good song, though! |
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| Hinder – Better Than Me Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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This is the kind of stuff guys say to impress women into sleeping with them. If he really thinks she could do much better than him and wants to let her go, then he wouldn't be going on and on about missing her hair in his face and all that. This isn't really a song about her doing better than him, it's a song about him trying to impress her with what a selfless he is for letting her go, so she'll want to stay even more. |
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| Silversun Pickups – Well Thought Out Twinkles Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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I can kinda see it being taken as an Iraq metaphor, but I take the song as being more about apocalyptic fantasies in general, and how empty they are. Each generation thinks it's the last hurrah, this is the end of the world. But then it doesn't end, and so we keep dragging ourselves along, while waiting for the next big sign to come along and promise the end. In that sense, I read the references to sores, scars and the light integrated in your mind as references to nuclear war, the flash of the bomb, the scars and sores of the aftermath, and the industry as the military industrial energy that might take us there someday, and that shares such apocalyptic views with us. |
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| Moth – I See Sound Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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These lyrics aren't even close to right (among other things, it's "I took the cogs and stripped them bare," not "I took the thoughts and kept the best"). And does anyone have any thoughts on the song other than the usual "it's about drugs"? |
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| R.E.M. – World Leader Pretend Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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I always took it as a Cold War song, about building up nations only to have to turn around and fight them (that "Orange Crush," from the same album, dealt with Vietnam only furthered the idea). But there's definitely a melancholy to the song that makes sense if it's more psychological, about fighting through your own defenses. |
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| The B-52's – Rock Lobster Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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Everything on songmeanings is about sex, drugs or body functions. A rock lobster isn't a euphamism for anything, it's a real, and really common, kind of lobster (and in this song it's also a "rock" lobster because it's a rock song--get it, get it?).
Anyway, this song is all about overcoming the pain of discovering that your wife's been cheating on you with one of your best friends. At least, that's what Family Guy taught me. |
submissions
| Motion City Soundtrack – The Future Freaks Me Out Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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The last few comments have made good points about the song being about afraid of the future and responsibility, of feeling powerless about life and wanting to just waste away the days.
But on another level, Betty herself seems to be a child of the '80s, and the "future" that freaks her out seems to be the present day. The song contains numerous references to '80s pop culture: "I'm on Fire" is a Bruce Springsteen single, "Bust a Move" is a Young MC single, "Footloose" was an 80s musical film, velcro shoes were a brief fashion fad, and so on. Even the music itself is very much a retro 80s-style pop song.
In that sense, the "future" that freaks Betty out is the present, and she wants to live in the past, watching television samples of "an era we hate to admit we embrace." They're both holding onto a comforting past that's gone, and afraid of a future that snuck up on them. |
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