| Marianne Faithfull – The Ballad of Lucy Jordan Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| @orngrimm. How could Faithfull reference the "meaning she meant to put across"? She didn't write the song. It was written by Shel Silverstein. And also recorded by Dr. Hook before Faithfull did her version. | |
| Don Henley – Dirty Laundry Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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At an obvious level this song is about tabloid journalism and TV news anchors (more accurately called "newsreaders" in the UK). At an only slightly less obvious level the song/rant expresses Henley's frustration with music critics, most of whom were very in favor of punk and underground music in the early 80's and viewed Henley, and everybody else from the dinosaur 70's bands, as washed up has-beens. Well Don showed them, didn't he? You know, all those mopey hits he scored in the 80's and the 90's -- the Boys of Summer, The Heart of the Matter, The End of the Innocence. Henley certainly showed endurance as a songwriter both with the Eagles and on his own. Any critic who wrote off Henley after the Long Run, well, they just needed to sit back, wait, and see who was going to make it ...... in the long run. |
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| The Gun Club – Sex Beat Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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This is so funny to read these lyrics now on songmeanings. I know this album really well but my brain mondegreened the fuck out of a lot of these lyrics. Like, it says here it's: and every day I agree you throw me down by the Christmas Tree. I always thought it was: "every day at three...." Wouldn't that be nice? Maybe a cash of wishful thinking influencing one's preceptions. |
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| The Gun Club – For The Love of Ivy Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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BnSwiss, sounds like you know of where you speak. damnrealb, thanks for posting these Gun Club songs. Fire of Love is an amazing record, branded on my psyche like the scar left from a pitbull bite. This has probably been said before, but I don't think the use of "niggers" is racist here because Pierce is creating a character in the song. Just because he sings these lyrics doesn't mean he's the first-person protagonist of every story. But then again, maybe Pierce was a giant racist. Look at Jack on Fire: the creole boy was a-lying dead/I used his blood to paint my costume red........ |
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| The Stooges – I Wanna Be Your Dog Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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Iggy is a demanding bottom. He's trying to stay in the moment. NOW I wanna be your dog! Right NOW. In five minutes, I may no longer take an interest in being your dog. But right NOW, right NOW I wanna be your dog. The song effectively expresses sexual tension and lust. The fuzzy guitar riff snaps, crackles, and pops. The song gets across a feeling of abandon, of being so caught up in the sexual moment that one gives up their typical male-female sex roles and is prepared to get lost in the burning sands of this stormy sexual desert. |
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| Elvis Costello – Radio Radio Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| Lorne Michaels said in an interview, I think in Rolling Stone, that when Costello suddenly changed the planned song it freaked Michaels who said he had no idea what Costello might do next and, for all he knew, Costello might have shouted out "Kill the niggers and the Jews!" | |
| Nick Lowe – So It Goes Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| It's not "snaky persian." It's "snakebit persian." How come I'm the first person to leave a comment on this song? You people have no kultur. You have no civilisation. | |
| The Pussycat Dolls – I Hate This Part Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| This song is about the songwriter combing his hair in a different way. He used to comb it on the left. But now he combs it on the right. But hez rly nt hpy cmbing awn thu rit. Seeew he sez ..... | |
| 50 Cent – Ghetto Qu'ran (Forgive Me Pt. 1) Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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It doesn't make 50 Cent a "dumbass" because he has used Quran in a way different from the word's original, literal meaning. In my very humble opinion, the rapper has made excellent and imaginative use of the word Muslims use for the title of their liturgical text. What I want to know is, who transcribes these lyrics? It's not uncommon to see one or two mistakes in these songmeanings lyrics, but this set of lyrics is brimming with errors. Most recently (closest to the end and read last), we have Benny Hiners in place of what 50 is actually saying, which is Benihana, as in the Japanese restaurant chain. This is an amazing song. Yes, it no doubt reveals more than McGriff would like. That would probably explain why McGriff is alleged to have conspired in the murder of Jam Master Jay (who ignored McGriff's blacklisting of 50 Cent; the blacklisting came about as a result of 50 revealing too much about the operation in this very same song) and the shootings, yes, plural, of 50 Cent. If I was 50 I'd just be glad the walls of the SuperMax prison in Colorado (McGriff's current home) are nice and thick. |
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| Peter Gabriel – Games Without Frontiers Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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If Chiang Ching is Chiang kai-Shek's son, as Crazymanmichael suggests, then I wonder if there's some significance to Ching's flag being blue; perhaps blue in contrast to the Communist red. And then speaking of red, who is Andre and why is Andre linked with the Red flag? Or maybe we're trying to pump a little too much significance into the lines. Lin Tai Yu is an alternate phoneticization of the name Lin Daiyu who is, as Sparky has already mentioned, "one of the principal characters" in the "classic Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber" (quotes from Wikipedia). Interesting that it's Jeux Sans Frontieres. Once you see it spelled out, it's obvious but, perhaps because I don't speak French, I'd always heard it as "she's so funkular." I know, FUNKULAR is not a real word. "Adolph builds a bonfire" would appear to be a reference to Hitler, but if that's the case then what about Enrico? I think DexX and dougquaid may have the best guesses in thinking that this refers to Enrico Fermi. However, the more obvious meaning of Adolph building a bonfire would be the book burnings in which the Nazis participated. Gabriel is a good songwriter with fairly intricate wordplay, but I have a feeling that, in some cases, we may be injecting more meaning into the words than they were originally designed to carry. In any case, the more specific meanings one can find here are secondary to the overall thrust of the song which is to create an eerie soundscape that allows Gabriel to express the notion of a cold, alienating world wherein we all waste little time in stabbing one another in the back. Well thanks for the cheerful ditty, Pete! |
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| The Velvet Underground – Heroin Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| Sounds to me more like "all the dead bodies piled up in mounds." | |
| The Velvet Underground – Heroin Lyrics | 15 years ago |
| The book is called "Christiane F. -- Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo." The title does mean "We Children of Railway Station Zoo." It's based on a series of taped interviews by teenage heroin addict and prostitute Christiane F. with two journalists from Stern. It was made into a movie with the same name and a soundtrack of Bowie songs including Heroes/Helden, Boys Keep Swinging, and Don't Look Back in Anger. The movie itself is fairly dark, depicting cold turkey heroin withdrawal and Christiane's loss of her boyfriend Detlef to Detlef's wealthy client. | |
| Steely Dan – Daddy Don't Live In That New York City No More Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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Steely Dan songs create a series of mental images. Both the literal meaning of the words and the feeling of the music combine to create these images and impressions. In a literal sense, the song comments on the general trend for immigrants, perhaps especially Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, to arrive in the Lower East Side neighborhood of New York City and then to move on to the suburbs. Steely Dan covered similar themes, but from a Puerto Rican perspective, on the title track from their next album, The Royal Scam. More obviously, the song is about a pimp who is now passed on, either to another neighborhood, to the suburbs, or, perhaps (as suggested by ProfessorKnowItAll) to the next life. The song's midtempo jazz swing sets the stage for the narrator who delivers the lyrics from the hip, insiderish, world-weary perspective we find so often in Steely Dan songs in general and on the album containing this song, Katy Lied, in particular. In fact, it's easy to imagine this song being recorded live during a performance in a smoky cellar bar somewhere in Loisaida (the Spanish slang name for the Lower East Side). The line "he can't celebrate Sunday on a Saturday night no more" may allude to the Jewish sabbath day. As this is the only line that seems to specifically reference Jews, the case is not that strong to argue that the song's protagonist is a Jew. Many other lines seem to imply a Cuban or Puerto Rican "Daddy." But I have always gotten a strong sense of a reference to the Jewish sabbath from this line. The lines "daddy don't need no lock and key, for the peace/piece he keeps out on Avenue D" is typical Steely Dan word play. Both meanings appear to refer to a pimp. Whether it's "piece," as in "piece of ass" (i.e., a prostitue in his employ) or "peace" as in, "keeping the peace" (i.e., keeping everything going on an even keel with the woman out working for him on the street), there is an overall sense of the songwriter having a good time with the multiple meanings of words and phrases. More specifically, Avenue D is considered the most dangerous of all the Avenues of the New York City neighborhood known as Alphabet City (the other Avenues are A, B, and C), the most eastern part of either the Lower East Side or the East Village, depending on which name you use. This adds, very literally, to the edgy feel of the song (the only thing after Avenue D is the East River). The next stanza gives a sense of a pimp who has moved on to tamer pastures: driving an Eldorado (do I have to say it?; Cadillac Eldorade, a fancy Cadillac and fancy Cadillacs are associated with pimping). It also has a sad nostalgia to it: daddy misses his neighborhood with its short walk to the liquor store; Lucy misses Daddy and their times spent together sipping rum and cokes. She sits alone waiting for him to return. The mention of cigars and the cocktail also known as the Cuba Libra (a rum and coke, when served with a lime), specifically hints at our pimp being of Cuban descent. Neither New York City as a whole, nor the Lower East Side specifically, are known as Cuban neighborhoods. At the time Steely Dan wrote this song, the neighborhood's hispanic population was almost totally Puerto Rican. Well, this is Misters Becker and Fagen, not the United States Census. Fine cigars and Cuba Libres are way more evocative than pollo con arroz. I have never heard the last line, "we know you're smoking wherever you are," as anything other than a fairly lame shout-out to the band's listeners. I like the interpretation that Daddy is in fact burning in hell but, to me, the last line has just come across as a salute to the many many Dan fans who enjoy lighting up the occasional doobie (or even Doobie). |
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