| Ray LaMontagne – All the Wild Horses Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| On a more personal note, I didn't know this song until it came up on a mix disc my fiancee had made some time ago. We have both been struggling with our feelings lately and this song definitely touches on whether to tame them or set them free. | |
| Ray LaMontagne – All the Wild Horses Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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I think these comments prove this seemingly simple song operates on a lot of levels. The music itself is achingly elegiac - something is being lost - which supports both the literal idea of wild horses gone from the land and also the metaphorical one of a spirit or emotions that do not want to be tamed. I think it applies equally well to men or women who are under pressure to sublimate their feelings - I can certainly empathize. There's also an element of resignation in letting the clouds rolling away - don't hold on; let it be; this too shall pass - that suggests either letting go of dark feelings or accepting the fact that these things can't be changed. |
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| Leonard Cohen – One of Us Cannot Be Wrong Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Hee hee — I love this one too. It's so mean and bitter, but also heartbroken, longing, and surprisingly funny. He has broken up with this woman he once lived with or loved intensely and jealously. And it was some time in coming too — she flirted or slept around, and he tried to make her jealous, which she didn't fall for, and then took it out on her wardrobe, which is why it sounds to me like they lived together. I think that dress was an actual sheer dress that she wore to attract attention and he hated that she did that, and he ruined it. The dust from a long sleepless night in the shoe could be metaphoric — it always makes me think of all-night arguments I've had with some lovers, and using things dredged up in a fight as weapons to irritate your lover later. Or, it could have been Cohen's long sleepless night, and what he put in her actual shoe was something, um, unsavory left over after trying to relieve his sleeplessness. (Eww. Personally, I'd rather not think that, but hey, we were all young once.) The three next lovers sound like characters in a play, illustrating what a bitch (old school use) this woman must have been in his eyes. She unhinges a man of medicine, she destroys a holy man's spirit, and she freezes an Eskimo. Bitter, bitter, bitter. This is like a hate letter to a girlfriend who just doesn't care. But, even so, he wants her still. Thank god most of us grow out of this kind of frustrated passion, but Cohen has caught the anger and jealousy and longing perfectly, and with a grim sense of humor, too. |
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| Leonard Cohen – Famous Blue Raincoat Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Like several other posters here, I am truly impressed with the intelligent, thoughtful, and articulate observations here — puts 99.9% of the Internet to shame ;-) It is almost impossible to imagine a world without Leonard Cohen, whom I discovered in my early 20s, over 20 years ago, and almost impossible to imagine Cohen without this song, "flaws" and all. My wife (like the song, not legally but emotionally) chokes up whenever I sing the lines about taking the trouble from her eyes, and "I thought it was there for good, so I never tried." What a naked admission of failure, and what generosity of spirit, to thank another man for giving "his woman" such a gift. Being in a long-term triangle myself, I recognize some of the dualities and ambiguities of emotions at play. There is some anger toward the Brother — Cohen faintly disparages what sounds like his spiritual journey ("your little house deep in the desert") and his rather obvious attempts at romance ("one more thin gypsy thief") and maudlin search for love ("been to the station to meet every train, and you came home without Lili Marlene," which is a symbolic character of steadfast love and also always makes me think of Dietrich) — but at the same time he does grudgingly forgive him, does miss him, and realizes there are things he genuinely owes his rival. I think he realizes the good done when the Brother "liberated" Jane with his erratic passion and also touched some part of her Cohen could not reach. He has forgiven Jane entirely, though knowing she is less his now than she was. He is elegiac, but also aware of the necessity of loss; New York is a cold place to live, after all, but there's that beautiful street music. More inner conflict: Cohen the ascetic versus Cohen the sensualist; the free lover versus the possessive one. Thanks for mentioning the Burberry raincoat Cohen always wore — I pictured that as the "famous blue raincoat" as well. And it was a very interesting question brought up about whether Cohen was speaking to himself, as this is always a possibility whenever poets are concerned ;-), though I do perceive the song as a bit more literal than that, if not by much. Generally, I think, Cohen is far less reliant on symbolism than on metaphor, so I don't take the drug references from flakes and trains as some do. Interesting also that to "go clear" is a Scientology term; I took it to mean any spiritual enlightenment, or letting go of whatever has been holding one back. The Brother, pitiably and to some extent ridiculously, is waiting for the thunderclap which, Cohen thinks, will never come to his stunted spirit. Bipolar? Yes, I can certainly see that in the Brother. Anyway, enough of my take. Well done, everyone. |
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| Leonard Cohen – Story of Isaac Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Oy. This is the song, on a scratchy old second-hand LP, that got me hooked on Cohen. The whole album is absolutely brilliant but SO dry that it doesn't work for everybody. If you imagine it to be songs from a desert, more than a room, it begins to make more sense. Anyway, this song in particular touches on so much of what his work was about, except for the fact that there's no sex in it. It mines his deep-seated spirituality and also brilliantly reimagines an ancient parable from the point of view of the one who suffers the impact of the teaching; the boy was moments from death at his father's hand, stayed by an act of profound mercy. Cohen evokes the innocence and vulnerability of the boy to show how important it is that we, as a race, aspire to some of that same merciful quality. The last lines are wrong up there: "Have mercy on our uniform, man of peace or man of war, the peacock spreads his fan." It's a final prayer. Cohen takes the unusual stand of singling out neither the warrior nor the pacifist for blame -- all men are trying to make their mark on the world, and deserving of and hungry for mercy. It's those who act in an unholy way -- those in power who answer to no one but themselves -- that he wants to correct. It's the early work of a poet, to be sure, but it's usually young poets who look at such big-picture stuff. |
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| Jeff Buckley – So Real Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Ever had that isolated moment that leaps out at you from the normal stream of existence because it's so perfectly crystalized? That's the feeling I get from this song and the repeated phrase "so real." Buckley always seems like he's on something of a different plane, but isolated moments bring him into sharp contact with the world around him. Love -- the kind of really connecting, belonging-to-another-soul love -- was, I think, kind of scary for Jeff, because it would have impacted the fragile beauty of the world in his head. Decades from now, people are going to be listening to every single note and shading of Buckley's music, like they do with Charlie Parker or Django Reinhardt, trying to hear all the nuances of music and emotion he packed in there. |
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| Jeff Buckley – Grace Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| Brilliant song and his performances bring out so much only hinted at in the words themselves. Don't forget, Buckley's similarly gifted dad Tim died young also, and I have always heard a certain hauntedness in Jeff's voice -- he seemed to be always, at least in part, saying goodbye. Have you noticed, he never seems to try to "own" anything -- even what he held, he held loosely, as if it might leave at any time. I think death was such a part of life for him that he had long since made his peace with it. He remains one of the most intensely spiritual musicians I've ever heard. | |
| Elvis Costello – Watching the Detectives Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I have always thought this brilliant song is less narrative and more montage -- glimpses of imagery meant to evoke a mood and a set of dynamics between women and men. I first saw it on Saturday Night Live in 78 and it's probably what made me an Elvis fan. The filmic clues are obvious, with stock noir camera shots and everything. Hearing it as a teenage boy i clearly understood the frustration of watching perfect, irresistible females, hoping to appeal, but feeling outclassed and hopeless -- laughed at. I think the narrator is a bit older now but just as frustrated -- hence "illegal" -- and has been manipulated by a woman he's depicted as a femme fatale, whose calousness is evoked in "filing her nails..." This is a woman who, Sharon Stone-like, can command the attention of any "detective" she wishes, and feels utterly invulnerable. There is a fairly large amount of transferrence between reality and the film metaphor in the narrator's mind -- he's seeing his life like an old movie. It carries a lot of resentment and some sarcasm, but the longing remains despite all of it. Oh, and I don't think there's a danger of it being "white rap," since he wrote it in, what, '77?, and it has a tune! ;-) In the original studio version you can hear he recorded alternating lines in at least two takes, the breath of one line not done before he starts speaking the next, like in "Beyond Belief." |
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