submissions
| Off Minor – A Transient Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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I think with "problems" we need to be more specific. You can make any number of changes to your living circumstances, but changing your own personality is one of the hardest and most futile things that you can attempt. No matter how self-aware we get, certain aspects of ourselves are beyond our own comprehension and control.
The last line is the lesson: it's all about what you attach value to. Where you are (i.e. your external circumstances) will do nothing to change who you are as a person. Measuring yourself up external values is the wrong way to go about looking for happiness. One of the hardest, most unceasing, and yet most important lessons in life is coming to terms with yourself. It's ultimately more fulfilling to make the most out of the way you are. If anything, where you are should be a function of who you are, and not the other way round. |
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| Say Anything – Ahhh... Men Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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"Can I lie with you in your grave?" is one of the most powerfully direct one-line statements of love in a song that I can think of. |
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| Have Heart – The Same Sun Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Heavy references to and even direct quotes from E.E. Cumming's "now does our world descend" here:
http://www.americanpoems.com/poets/eecummings/318
Both this song and the poem explain themselves really. Life-affirming stuff. |
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| Converge – Wretched World Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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this is really interesting. i like the ambiguity of it all, like the line break between "you never do" and "own these..." like i'm assuming that he's asserting that the person he's addressing never responds to his touch, but is he saying that the person it's addressed to never "owns" these dire nights etc meaning that they never directly invest in their relationship with the speaker or take any responsibility for the relationship, or is it more of an imperative command to this person, or both? either way, i read this as describing a kind of loveless or non-reciprocal relationship, one that the speaker puts more work into than the other party, possibly one that the speaker feels trapped in. i read the last line as saying that although the relationship isn't fulfilling for the speaker, it's comforting for him and he doesn't want to let it go. |
submissions
| Why? – Twenty-Eight Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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the first two lines pretty much sum this up. sounds like he's still hung up on a girl who doesn't want to get into a relationship with him and he's too in love to let go. explains that his "heart's as big as texas" - i.e. how genuine his feelings are and how much he feels he can offer - and that it'll take a lot for him to give up on those feelings. until then, he'll carry on with life as usual, alone, getting by, but feeling empty and unfulfilled without her. thematically serves as a nice introduction to Simeon's Dilemma which kind of seems along the same lines. |
submissions
| Why? – Berkeley by Hearseback Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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I'm wondering what the final part about the book of numbers is about. Something to do with being remembered after death in some manner? |
submissions
| Why? – Berkeley by Hearseback Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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I think it's a reference to self-harm and suicidal tendencies. I think he's trying to rationalise his fear of death here - if he's tried and/or wanted to kill or hurt himself in the past, he's telling himself that he shouldn't be afraid of death coming to him. He muses on mortality a lot on this new record. |
submissions
| Why? – These Hands Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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I like that second verse. It's like if he exposes all his dirty secrets through his music, maybe he'll find some sort of catharsis and he'll be clean. Speaking of which, I wonder if this has any link to what he's singing about in "Into the Shadows of my Embrace"? |
submissions
| Chad Vangaalen – 1000 Pound Eyelids Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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yeah, on the one hand you could take this literally to be about a car crash and the final thoughts running through someone's mind, because vangaalen has the tendency to write about theoretical situations like this.
on the other hand, you could take it to be about a breakup - one that is either so bad that it makes him feel totally numb ("I can't feel anything at all") or it was a perfectly clean getaway - no bitter taste in the mouth, "the last thing I remember is your smile".
either way, this song is beautiful. |
submissions
| The Drones – Luck In Odd Numbers Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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about a relationship that is constantly uncertain as to where it's going. i can relate a lot. he describes his first encounters with her, when he fell in love with her, in a really nostalgic, longing way. since then, though, chances to get close to her haven't been so successful and he's left wondering "Which way does my good luck lie" - whether he'll have better luck in the future and how long he will have to wait until that happens - and "Which way if my luck deserts" - pretty straightforward really, he's anxious about whether the opportunity of establishing a more stable relationship with this girl will fizzle out entirely at any given point, and what he'll be left with if that happens ("Dig deeper in that frozen dirt" being a reference to sinking into depression). i'm guessing the joe byrne references are him using the story of the kelly gang lieutenant as a metaphor for relationship issues. the "I hear a knock on my door" / "To be nailed to a door" part is about expectation and disappointment respectively. brilliant. |
submissions
| Converge – The Saddest Day Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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can people please stop talking bullcrap here and actually discuss the lyrics, which is the reason this site was made in the first place?
anyhow. i was listening to Red House Painter's s/t [Rollercoaster] and noticed that The Saddest Day has a lot of paraphrased lines from the song Things Mean a Lot in the lyrics. check it out:
http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/45085/
it wouldn't surprise me if Jake was a fan of Kozelek's work. so yeah, this makes a lot of sense, this is about people you love growing away from you and how people grow distant - how things "mean a lot at the time", but "don't mean nothing later". |
submissions
| Ampere – My Favorite Movie Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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a breakup based on the fact that there is no excitement in the relationship? the speaker has become so familiar to their other half that their other half begins to dismiss them as having "fallen into place", there's no mystery and nothing to learn anymore and this bores them. the speaker, quite understandably, doesn't get it. why would you leave give up someone you love just because of their familiarity to you? |
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| Ampere – Woodlawn Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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i'm fairly convinced this is about a traumatic loss, but yeah, it's cool that i guess there might be that little bit of ambiguity. check out my comment on 'Wormwood, Radiation', i'm pretty sure there is a strong link between this song and that song, 'Wormwood, Radiation' being about the trauma that the loss here causes. thoughts? |
submissions
| Ampere – Wormwood, Radiation Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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it reads like a continuation of Woodlawn to me. Woodlawn is about the loss of someone close to them. "radiation" kind of suggests that this is the consequences of the same event. "woodlawn is a place of abandoned hopes & dreams, of always wilting flowers & letters never read"... the "woodlawn" is seemingly a personal image that they connect with the loss of this person, this suggests unreciprocated communication i.e. they desperately want to speak to this person again, but they're gone forever. they are "three years removed" from the loss, and life goes on, and they have managed to at very least regain composure and carry on with their life (the engine still hums), but they still haven't recovered from the trauma of the loss. the last three lines say it all really.
"i've had this dream before, i know just how it ends" - recurring dream of the incident in the line "It replays everyday and every time I yell the warning, 'please turn back!' " possibly? |
submissions
| The One Up Downstairs – Champagne Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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are you sure it's "tensing"? it sounds like "tipsy" to me, which would make sense.
this is beautiful, it just meanders along gently in its flow of ideas like your mind does in those odd calm, content reflective moments that you get now and then. |
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| Isis – Wrists of Kings Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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i think it's about the way that historical events become mythologised over time. a person's legacy can become exaggerated, embellished upon, until "we cannot read the lies between the lines" - we cannot know for sure what is the truth. |
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| At the Drive-In – Lopsided Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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yeah, you hit the nail on the head, at least in terms of what the song means to me. the last two lines say it all, more than the rest of the song. when life gets rough, sometimes you're not going to have a map or a compass to show you a clear path to get you to where you want to go, and sometimes you just have to give it your best shot and navigate your own way through it all.
i've been thinking of incorporating the "if your compass broke, navigate" line into a tattoo for a while now. maybe i should stop pussyfooting and do it. |
submissions
| Off Minor – Cadaveric Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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To me it's about identity. It sounds like when he says "i've searched and searched from crown to toe but there's no trace of you" the speaker is addressing a past version of himself. We, as people, are constantly in flux, our personalities changing faster than we realise, to the point where sometimes, if we look back five or ten years at our former selves, it's very difficult to believe that we were once like that. The history/histology and biography/biology wordplay is particularly significant, because both comparisons deal with the contrast of the story of a person's life with their cellular/biological formation. In the end, although it's difficult to stomach, "we're just a sum of parts". |
submissions
| Off Minor – In SL Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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the aftermath of a meaningless fling: the deed has been done, but nothing is gained. the speaker is exactly where they were before it happened. the most it serves to do is temporarily buoy their spirits, but in the end, they have nothing to show for it and it does not represent any real progression in their life. life trudges on as usual. that's how i interpret it anyway. |
submissions
| Off Minor – This Is A Hostage Situation Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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on the contrary, it's a criticism of the clingy attitude many people have in a relationship. it's about that feeling of being held hostage by somebody: the relationship is a sinking ship, but the other party believes that they are nothing without the speaker - perhaps displaying self-destructive tendencies when threatened with a breakup. which is, of course, a fucked up sentiment. the speaker, thus, feels trapped inside this broken shell of a relationship. it's fine to love, but you should never get to the stage where you feel that you are totally dependent on someone else. |
submissions
| Ampere – Woodlawn Lyrics
| 16 years ago
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voiceontape's view on it is interesting and works on many levels, but it could also be just a hopeless statement about someone who is literally dead, and, like Wait! says, the like "you're not breathing" does kind of suggest this. it's that phase of denial, that overwhelming feeling after a loss of wanting to bring that person back from the dead even though it's never going to happen. in a sense that's what the whole song is about, it's the person's death haunting the speaker and the speaker constantly wishing that they could have somehow stopped the events leading up to that person's death. beautiful song. |
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