| Okkervil River – Singer Songwriter Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| Should be "You've got outsider art by an artist who arguably kidnapped a kid on the wall" | |
| The Magnetic Fields – The Death of Ferdinand de Saussure Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Ferdinand de Saussure was the father of modern linguistics. My best guess as to why he's referred to here is his idea of "the arbitrariness of the sign" -- the link between a word and the concept it signifies is arbitrary and relational. That is, it exists not on its own terms but as part of a complex and varied system: "in language there are only differences, and no positive terms." So a word like 'love' -- or, for that matter, 'game' or 'bird' -- simply can't have a universal meaning by itself. No understanding, no closure. Holland-Dozier-Holland were the great songwriting team behind tons of Motown hits (You Can't Hurry Love, Stop in the Name of Love) that spent little time wondering whether 'love' had meaning and more time wondering why it hurt so bad. |
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