| Velocity Girl – Pop Loser Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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yeah. This page's lyrics are shit. Yours are correct. Thanks. This song is so great. And clever. |
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| The Innocence Mission – Look For Me As You Go By Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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While I feel the Christian interpretation is valid, it's not exclusive. The Christian elements are certainly there, but the song could be sung to a human being. The hope that someone you love completely, someone you need to survive, someone so bright that by comparison you are dim, will recognize you and welcome you into their arms; the fantasy that this unification will deliver you both from adversity -- it's this somewhat obsequious, but very pure (innocent) and powerful declaration of faith. In another human being. OR in Christ. Or in both... because just as every stranger you turn away is for all intents Christ himself, so too is it true that when you truly believe with all your being in the magnanimity of any sort of thing that you know you were meant to believe in -- be it Christ, a person, the fundamental Oneness of the Universe, Animism, Shamanism, whatever -- this faith is the same: pure and indestructable. The Christian elements here thus serve as a signpost for a more general kind of faith, as applied to a person, or what have you. I just like the idea that it's a person. The idea of that kind of intensity of feeling for a person. That kind of insecurity. It's beautiful, relateable, and intriguing. Oh god, the way it builds. |
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| The Innocence Mission – Brotherhood of Man Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| this song literally makes me less cynical. | |
| The Mountain Goats – Pale Green Things Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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The fourth horseman of the apocalypse is called Death and rides a pale horse... the word used to describe the color of the horse is sometimes interpreted as a pale green. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Apocalypse#Pale_Horse besides that, I think the mixed message of the pale green things is entirely wrapped up with the mixed feelings he has over the death. |
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| The Mountain Goats – Deuteronomy 2:10 Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| also, I think this song is indeed what toastnuances quoted Darnielle is saying, and that I wish more people on here would keep in mind that those layers of figurative language are in many Mountain Goats songs and that they're often not exclusively literal. It would take so much effort to analyze and explain what this song is trying to express, why bother, when you can just feel it in lines like "I have no fear of anyone, I'm dumb and wild and free" | |
| The Mountain Goats – Deuteronomy 2:10 Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I really, really have taken to this song, because I have always been very seriously, personally moved by the same footage of the last tasmanian tiger. I am just so grateful that it is John Darnielle who has written the song. I tear up as I write of it. this is the last one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odswge5onwY |
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| The Mountain Goats – Color in Your Cheeks Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| it doesn't matter what they're drinking; all that matters is that it'll put color in your cheeks. | |
| The Mountain Goats – Pigs That Ran Straightaway into the Water, Triumph of Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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I think you guys are giving this guy too much credit. The protagonist. I think this song is about denial. Even when he's in the big bus headed southeast from the courthouse (to prison, or the rehab center), he's in denial. "You" refers to authority of any kind: God, drugs, law enforcement, the judicial system. Then with the chorus he seems to both know he's screwd but at the same expect to triumph... Based on nothing, really. It's like the pigs, possessed by demons, running off the cliff, and how they do exactly what they have to do. |
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| The Magnetic Fields – For We Are The King of the Boudoir Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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Noticing the royal "We" is essential to this song making any sense whatsoever. And 17th century would be more accurate, you mean Louis XIV (well, he's kinda both). But it's more 17th century anyway since the harpsichord is such a baroque instrument and absolutism a baroque concept, and baroque is by and large more 17th century. Those aspects of it that express the same attitudes as this song were working their way towards being reacted against during the first half of the eighteenth century, and after that there was the enlightenment and classicism. But then the harpsichord was popular throughout the eighteenth century as well, just, not versailles-style absolutism like this song is evocative of. |
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| The Magnetic Fields – Yeah! Oh, Yeah! Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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some anon on wikipedia uses this song as synecdochic of the entire meaning/form of 69 Love Songs in general. He or she (and not me) writes: Another way of understanding 69 Love Songs is through Merritt's praise of an artist (Laurie Anderson) who "write[s] heartbreaking melodies with words that make fun of heartbreaking melodies."[3] Consider "Yeah! Oh, Yeah!" where Stephin and Claudia, playing jilted lovers modeled closely on Sonny & Cher, sing their complaints to one another, overplaying and overstating their grievances such that their words become garish declarations of woe ("what a dark and dreary life / are you reaching for a knife?") to which the other character isn't really capable of responding but must still follow in tone ("yeah, oh yeah"). The lack of a firm distinction between content (what is sung) and form (the way it is sung) implies that this couple lives and dies by virtue of how persuasively they can sing to one another, and illustrates the persistent Magnetic Fields songwriting device of trapping a character within the conventions or formalities of a genre. |
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| The Olivia Tremor Control – Define a Transparent Dream Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I'm completely sick of people vaguely comparing Elephant Six stuff with the most famous and ridiculous band ever. So they sound alike, so what? Don't the Beatles get enough attention already, while these guys get virtually none? Even if you're still so ingenuous as to love the Beatles, the Elephant 6 guys come from a very different time, place, and attitude. Please show some respect for their own creativity in expanding on and manipulating a similar sound for their own ends and for their own reasons, without millions of dollars or fame, and knowing that they could never get those things with this approach. Also, I think it's "Juice and coffee" in the morning, and I thought (but am now unsure) that it was "Model" portrait heads of G.S., rather than "My old." |
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| Talulah Gosh! – Bringing Up Baby Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| wait, so, it actually is about the movie? I didn't realize that was "Katherine Hepburn" at the end until I saw this. That makes sense, now, the line about the dinosaur missing, and the heel... It's from Hepburn's character's perspective, obviously, who is just the kind of character Talulah Gosh is always empathizing with. | |
| Six Organs of Admittance – Strangled Road Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| notions of what's "dark and negative" are relative and possibly irrelevant concerns, as are many/all other notions. | |
| Six Organs of Admittance – Strangled Road Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| notions of what's "dark and negative" are relative and possibly irrelevant concerns, as are many/all other notions. | |
| of Montreal – Penelope Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| cooperton: Whenever the characters of the Gay Parade's boys choir sing, it causes the postal workers to all whisper "calendar." I don't think Of Montreal are the characters of the Gay Parade -- I think the characters of the Gay Parade are just that: the various characters mentioned on that album. | |
| of Montreal – Go Call You Mine Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| I really love the first minute, with all the different instruments playing the theme, which is actually quite complicated. It sounds phenomenal! and the song itself is charming and even slightly weird. | |
| of Montreal – Mimi Merlot Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| Mimi Merlot is NOT the most convincingly non-fictitious character that I know. | |
| of Montreal – Rose Robert Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| I love this idea of a totally weird but totally perfect for each other couple. The guy dressing up as a turn of the century girl and the girl dressing up as a turn of the century guy and them just going out for strolls... and just gurgling and squeeking. | |
| The American Analog Set – Aaron And Maria Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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they came to brooklyn because they had artistic aspirations and thought it would be cool, that they were better than everything else. but as we know, it's where the rich kids hide and the years go by. but it's hard and stagnant. so they live off of this trust, the wealth that once generated it now dried up -- so even their original class is now irrelevant. they're just like anyone else, only less cared for. and they're scared but they only fight because they love each other, or at least that's what they hope. and there's this pregnancy to worry about. and so it goes. and no one gives a fuck. |
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| The American Analog Set – Where Have All The Good Boys Gone? Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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bro/sis incest. there. now I've ruined the song for any of you who have siblings. |
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| The American Analog Set – The Kindness Of Strangers Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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^^ggg84 I did not know that. I only knew about how it's the last line in streetcar. |
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| The American Analog Set – Fuck This... I'm Leaving Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I have some problems with the way this is transcribed... I take it as "do what good girls don't do good," as in, the incorrect version of "do what good girls don't do WELL." There's no reason for there to be a colon there and it's a totally subjective decision. in other words, girls, do well what the good girls can't. it's not necessarily a call to fight the power, but it is anti-conformist and operating in gray areas. this fits with "do what your dad don't say [you] should." it comes down to art, I think. the third verse is about writing or painting from the experience of mundane living. The second one is about keeping a good conscience by being dishonest with others. it's all pretty deep. not just pretty. |
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| The American Analog Set – Blue Chaise Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| maybe mental problems too | |
| The American Analog Set – Magnificent Seventies Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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ooooooh ahhhhhh |
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| Beat Happening – Secret Picnic Spot Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| this is a great song! glory be and praises. the secret picnic spot: a world just for us, a place of beautiful sacred ritual, of terribly sacred ritual, of rewarding and thoughtful and grim ritual. it happens to be fairly medieval, gothic even. But tender. Basket turned broomstick; a hayride over the big blue and black. | |
| Beat Happening – Hot Chocolate Boy Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| Hot chocolate boy sounds like HE is kind of awkward. Like he has trouble talking to girls. Like he walks by his crush's house late at night with deep longing and a bit of curiosity. We feel bad for him but there's nothing we can do to help him because he's probably too damaged, from an early age. I like the line "watching tv, and watching how tv has nobody, and no one at all" | |
| Valley of the Giants – Whaling Tale Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| This is an incredible story. It's just an incredibly moving thing to hear it. The musical background has a part in it, sometimes it seems like that lone guitar is going with the cadence, meter, and melody of the words. But when the music kills and the story concludes... man, if you were listening the whole time, it just gets you. it's a hard, hard place to be in, and god damn are you ever there. I'm not sure if it's the way the man is telling it, or is it the music, or is it really both? I'd like to hear it without the music just to test the effect. The man certainly knows where to take dramatic pauses, that's for sure. And at the end you can tell he's almost crying for that penguin, when he starts having trouble putting the words together. Then he just resolves at the end. what can you do? it's the way of the world. | |
| Vetiver – Amour Fou Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I thought it was "and more food," until I checked the title. I'd like it better if it was "and more food." Insatiability defined. |
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| Vetiver – Oh Papa Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| oh, and by the way it makes sense, since devendra's chummy with Andy Cabic/Vetiver. I kind of assumed that as a given in my post. | |
| Vetiver – Oh Papa Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| so, who else heard this song and thought of devendra banhart's "Ay Mama"? Both this and Niño Rojo came out in 2004 (although I don't know which came first, and don't forget that Devendra released two albums that year, as well, and Niño Rojo was the second) and both open the albums (basically, since Ay Mama comes after a cover). They're very similar sounding songs and have very similar concerns. What I'm saying is, they're two sides of the same coin, two answers to the same question. | |
| Joanna Newsom – Sawdust and Diamonds Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I feel really bad that so many people are missing the references to taxidermy. I believe the taxidermist represents a lover, and the taxidermee (generally the dove). Sawdust is what taxidermists use; glove, glue, pliers, etc... I think people hide diamonds in taxidermy sometimes. A long time ago, I saw a scooby doo or something where a smuggler was hiding the diamonds in taxidermy critters. I On that note, the verse push me back into a tree bind my buttons with salt fill my long ears with bees praying: please, please, please love, you ought not! no you ought not! I believe it's beads and not bees. Could be wrong, but that she says she has long ears, it's like she's imagining herself as a bunny. I think interpretations that see this song as being about the harp are balloney. |
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| Beat Happening – Our Secret Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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this was the only beat happening song I liked but they're irresistible once you've opened up to this one. it has it all: calvin's incredible voice at probably its most intense; incredibly strange lyrics (I mean, how IS that why they're running away? the mind reels at the possibilities); the caravan instrumentation and lo-fi drums&jangle. It's like the überbeathappeningsong. I thought it was "special secret way" in the first verse. |
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| Beat Happening – Youth Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I always heard "When you're young you can afford to be bold" as "when you're young you can afford to be old." I like it much better that way. | |
| Beat Happening – Godsend Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| It's nothing super-special but the waves of guitar sound on this are great. | |
| Beat Happening – Indian Summer Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I don't think they'd make the song if it was purely about the place in Olympia, because of the other meaning of Indian Summer. But I'm sure that's part of it. It's about country-side enjoyment and playing around in late summer, at least. it's less about actual events than fantasy hopes, something kids do a lot when they really enjoyed being someplace and want to go back. "We'll come back for Indian Summer and go our separate ways." That separate ways is what I think a lot of people ignore when they listen to it. People like it for the simple, strong pastoral imagery, and the adorable idea of having a picnic in the cemetery, croquet, abandoned farms, picking fruit, etc. I think the bit about norms and the abandoned farm is kind of a nostalgia or longing for simple, small scale agrarianism, and overall the song celebrates that kind of thing as being plain fun. As far as deeper meaning goes, it can go in a purely twee direction like morbot suggests or it could go in a more twisted direction like 1fish does. Knowing beat happening it's probably meant kind of on that line between tongue-in-cheek creepiness/irony and real sincere longing for these peaceful love days, deliberately ambiguous, like some of the lines. Do you really think calvin thinks "we will never change, no matter what they say"? | |
| Beat Happening – Teenage Caveman Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I read this song as being an expression of being part of the frustration with but celebration of being part of this fringe music movement of the time. It's one of these concerts where everyone is some kind of reject or outcast (or sees themselves that way) and they all have that in common. Also I think the first line is "Guitars start spinning," not "His tires." I think the bit about hair cuts straight out of the past is a joke, because people at concerts like this would've had retro haircuts but the rest of the song is using the caveman metaphor. |
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| Beat Happening – Tiger Trap Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I agree with marchingant mostly... this song is so bizarre, it's way out there (like so many beat happening songs). Sadness is just the beginning, it's totally ambiguous. "On the trail of finding all about you" is expected to be an in-love line but it could also be negative, just as a phrase. You can find out things about people that are bad. And the whole treasure map thing, with pirate references, is also bizarre. then there's the Tiger Trap reference, you know, the band? What's that all about? |
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| The Decemberists – Bridges and Balloons (Joanna Newsom cover) Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Also he makes "buoy" sound like "boil" but eh. that could just be some utterly bizarre pronunciation. but what got me was how -- as opposed to what's on this sheet of lyrics -- clearly he says "be" instead of "touch" where the milky moon line is concerned. That's gotta be a deliberate choice, maybe to do with the awkwardness of that line (because it HAS always seemed kind of weird to me). I have a live version where he says "touch," though. also, this version of the songs seems to be two chords for the verse, two others that are involved in the chorus. I don't know anything about music though so does anyone know which chords these are so I can demand that a friend of mine learn it on guitar? |
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| Belle & Sebastian – A Century of Elvis Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I think it's more fun to look at it as being about Elvis Presley, apparently alive and just hanging around, with insight towards the character of a couple band members and towards the marriage, just kind of thrown in. I think that the song overall is meant as a delightful bit of psuedo-Carrolian nonsense, where you can barely ever be sure what's true and what's there to throw you off. | |
| Stereolab – Brakhage Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I've seen a little of his stuff on youtube, but apparently he's done all kinds of things. he didn't believe in sound in cinema, as I understand it, so his works are silent. hence, there's a guy who nailed this song to the images of one of his films, and it works decently when it's not just distracting. | |
| Sufjan Stevens – Niagara Falls Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| the "I was brave" repetition is a lot like the "seven swans" repetition in that song. | |
| The Books – A Little Longing Goes Away Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I think it could also be interpreted as rather unsure of itself. As though it's saying, these truths are much to obvious to be true, right? Maybe the idea is that these truths are not necessarily true, just possibly true. |
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| The Books – Be Good To Them Always Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| this song is the books' most remarkable use of the melody of the spoken word. | |
| The Books – An Animated Description of Mr. Maps. Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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This has some awfully brilliant lines, it's one of a few just absolutely stand-out songs on this album. The bit about the "color he had never seen before" is brilliant, and so's the part about synesthesia. And the distinctiveness of maps's character is remarkable; the sheer variety of unusual attributes and experiences in maps's life compels an instant fascination. I'm really curious where that clip comes from. If that line's a reference to bio-diesal, I doubt it's a good idea to consider that fact over the fact that, well, his car smells like donuts and chicken fingers, and that that's a "friendly aroma" (ugh, imagine smelling that combination on a full stomach). The strangeness of the olfactory image is the emphasis, not the possibility that it's WVO. When it comes to meaning, at first I was thrown off by the the first (I never knew what it was until now). Going from there, I think I now have a pretty good understanding of the song and of Maps's character. Since there's another bit there about the sky, I'm going with the idea that it's the planets and not the Classical gods. This song is full of unusual sensory imagery: the line about the planets, the line about the new color, the number-color synesthesia; they are key to all of the verses besides the newscast-style one. I'm trying to be careful about 'the newscast verse' because I'm not sure we can trust its narrator to know all these things about Maps. It speaks about him from far away -- but it seems to speak from personal experience, what with the "now," interjection. However, the narrator the rest of the time is omniscient. Still, I consider the description of maps in the second verse at least possible, probably at least part-true, and possibly completely true. As I was saying, the imagery in most verses plays with strange associative connections and the implications of the connections between senses, thoughts, and feelings. Two of these images are more easily identifiable as such (number-color synesthesia is an association and interchangability of sight (color and/or number) and concept (color and/or number), and the sight of Mars feeling like Neptune is an association between sight and (awfully specific) gut feeling. There is another in the idea of a dreamed new color being terrifying makes up one (an association between sight and emotion -- not just any sight, either, but one strange and amazing. and not just any small twinge of fear, to boot, but screaming, waking terror. It is in these multiplicities of experience and thought processes that Maps elevates, or, at the very least, elevate his perception of himself, above all of his fellow man -- who if all millions were put up in one place to float together, they would probably not get along. But it'd be a sight to see, thinks Maps. The playful passage of hours on the road by trying to reclaim his "inner child" is not about associative connections, but it does put a cap on Maps's character and the way he looks at things. An "inner child" is a strange thing for the Books to reference; it's a vague term of popular psychology used for lots of things by the general public; it's not like there's really a child version of the self locked away in some corner of the mind -- the goal of reclaiming a literal inner child is ludicrous. People attempt to therapeutically "heal" their inner child while recovering from addiction. While Maps may have a compulsion for "nefarious things," I'm convinced that he's being deliberately ironic, as the song does say, in order to pass the time. This is because his extensive contemplation of matters of the self doesn't seem like the kind to lead him to pursue something impossible like that (the inner child is a concept that other people came up with as a culture, and Maps considers his understanding of things to be superior to most other people's and doesn't value cultural perception). He seems like the kind of person who wouldn't consider such a step, even if possible, necessary in recovering from addiction -- his philosophy, I think, would be to get over addiction with the sheer clarity of thought -- that such consciously added steps unnecessarily complicate things and muddle minds, and already muddle most other people's minds. He would do something like this for kicks, in self-humoring parody of his own contemplativeness and to pass the time -- which would be quixotic, both deliberately and not deliberately, actually, and that's what this line is saying. The line probably doesn't contain one of those associative images, though I originally supposed it must. It is very fleeting and subtle way of polishing the finish on his character. This perhaps leads the listener not to expect the directness of the second part of that verse, which says that because of the way he views his clarity of thought and concept as superior, he is at all times trapped in the "loud" truth that, understandably, no matter how much he wants other people to understand him, they never can. In fact, it's so loud, that nobody can comprehend it. This could explain why he's perceived to resent society and all organizations -- he does mistrust these things and tend not to agree with them, but he knows he can't blame people for not understanding the way he senses, thinks, and feels. He can't blame them for their inability to understand what he wants them to understand. So it's about conscious thought and perception. |
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| Sufjan Stevens – Pittsfield Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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oh, and the way it comes out softly from underneath the mass at the end is good. The way Sufjan's (latest) albums roll around -- he's all about rising and falling. incidentally, Sufjan's idea of a dissonant crescendo is much more advanced than the usual building chaotic mass vis-a-vie "A Day in the Life." Look at the fact that the maximum level is just a single guitar) |
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| Sufjan Stevens – Pittsfield Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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yeah, it sounds like "two thre--" and gets cut off. There could be a very quiet "four." I was initially attracted to this song because I also have mother issues. When I heard the song I thought it was pills, not bills, but I guess bills makes more sense -- who hides pills on the floor? Isn't it "unsaid things begin to change US"? as in, he says "us" at the end of that line. The song is amazing in how profoundly personal the subject matter is, but even more so in how well it gets across how much it means to the singer and writer. The somewhat dissonant musical build-up at the end makes the song for me. If you don't understand it, I don't think you understand where Sufjan's coming from or what he's trying to say. Plus, the song would be way too sappy without it. |
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| Owen Pallett – I'm Afraid Of Japan Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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the guy's concept was dungeons and dragons school of magic "enchantment" for this one. link: http://www.ampnet.co.uk/rock/Final_Fantasy/final_fantasy_footnotes.html but that's hardly the song's meaning. its meaning is much more subjective. |
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