| Animal Collective – Cuckoo Cuckoo Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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Alright guys, I'm going to tell you exactly what this song means, because I feel like I'm going through the exact same thing that Avey was going through when he wrote this. Somebody below mentioned death and mortality, it is about death but in a psychological sense, i.e. a psychological death or a feeling of not "being there". "How I lost my boy" This sets up the theme for the song. His "boy" is his inner child, which also represents his curiosity and enthusiasm about life, which he feels he has lost. This theme is present throughout the song, and Strawberry Jam as a whole is very much about the transition between childhood and adulthood. "The king in I died He kept floating past my eyes and singing his songs Life was good now death's all wrong" Avey is once again referring to his inner child here, except he uses the word "king" instead of "boy". He used to be able to feel a connection with his inner child when it would "float past his eyes" and "sing songs", which basically is just a poetic way of saying he used to feel his inner child's presence in his head. "Life" refers to the period of time that he felt a connection with his inner child, and "death" refers to the psychological death he has experienced where he can no longer feel that connection. "Cause you can't feel a thing No heart flutters in late spring You just drift and pray for sun-kissed golden days" He can't feel a thing, because his inner child (which represents his enthusiasm and feelings) is gone. "No heart flutters in late spring" basically reiterates his lack of feeling, and I imagine it was the period of the year that he was going through this psychological episode. "You just drift and pray for sun kissed-golden days" refers to the feeling of "drifting" or not feeling connected, and just wishing that he could go back to the days that he had true feelings. "And I can't hold what's in my hand Don't do any good to say this isn't what I planned And little kids sliding down the steel park slide Little kids can't play with things that died" He "can't hold what's in his hand" because he is psychologically "dead" and does not feel connected to the outside world. It doesn't do any good to say that it's not what he's planned is pretty self-explanatory, it doesn't matter if it wasn't what he planned because he's already stuck in the "dead" mindset. "Little kids slide down the steel water slide" is just an observational statement about something he sees, and that sight brings about the thought that's represented in the next line "little kids can't play with things that died." This once again represents his lack of connection to his inner child, he is psychologically "dead" so his inner child can't "play" with or interact with him. "Sometimes all I want is one favorite song And two to three minutes don't seem so long And where's my mom I want to hold her tight She's so far away from crowded nights" These lines represent things that might help him feel connected again. His "one favorite song" makes him have those feelings again, but it "don't seem so long" and the feelings fade away afterwards. He then longs for his mother, but she is "so far away from crowded nights" or in other words, she lives far away from the city where Avey lives, which I believe was NYC. "I'm going cuckoo cuckoo We're all going cuckoo cuckoo We're all going" Pretty simple, because he is psychologically "dead" he feels as if he is going crazy. He looks at the world around him and feels equally that "we're all going cuckoo cuckoo". "We're all going" could be subtle change that indicates that we are all becoming psychologically "dead" or unfeeling, or "going"/leaving, but it also could just be a line to end the chorus. "I said please stay You can see me, don't go away I can't see the landscape Please describe its amaranthine haze" These lines could relate to the theme of the song in two different ways. He could be asking his inner child to "please stay", because he knows that his inner child is still inside of him, or in other words his inner child can "see" him, but once again he's not longer connected to his. He asks his inner child to describe the "landscape" and it's "haze" which means his inner world or subconscious which he no longer feels connected to. These lines could also be him asking an external person to "please stay" and to describe the "landscape" or the external world around him because he doesn't feel it anymore either. "It's odd where I am They're people you're not like them They just look away for rain-quenched golden days" It's odd in his current "dead" state, where he is. When he sees "they're people" or "they are people" he refers to the people outside who still have identities. When he says "you're not like them" he's talking to himself and describing his current state of being "inhuman"; this state is also mentioned in "For Reverend Green". The people are always longing for their "golden days" like he is however. "And my tears quench five feet along And I can scream but cannot yawn And people gonna come and people gonna cry We just hope it's worth the age we die" His "tears" or his emotions "quench five feet along", or in other words they are short-lived and he keeps returning to his feeling of being "dead". People are going to come and cry, or in other words, people are going to exist and suffer, and they just hope it's "worth it" when they finally die, or they hope that they feel fulfilled when they die. This is pretty much a nihilistic observation that he's making from his disconnected state. Don't try to erase what you have done Put your fingers in a mouth and kiss it if it wants And where's my friend, I want to hold him tight he's so far away from mountain light When he says "you" he's talking to himself again. He's saying don't try to "erase" or pretend that he didn't bring himself to this current state. He then sort of talks down to himself and tells himself to basically kiss his boo-boo and feel better, "put your fingers in your mouth and kiss it if it wants". The next lines re-express the feelings of longing for his mother, except the feeling of longing is directed at a "friend". who he feels is "so far away from mountain light"; basically, Avey feels that his head is sort of up in the clouds and he feels distant from his friend on a psychological level. So that's what this song really expresses, the psychological feeling of "death", and not feeling connected to anything, whether it be the external world, his inner child or his inner world. These themes can be traced throughout Strawberry Jam, like in Fireworks when he longs for the curiosity that the babies feel when they are watching the fireworks explode overhead. |
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| Animal Collective – Fireworks Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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This part is brilliantly written: "A sacred night, where we'll watch the fireworks The frightened babies poo They've got two flashing eyes and they're colored why They make me feel that I'm only all I see sometimes." What he's noting is how the babies are so easily moved by simple things, and their eyes "are colored why" because of their curiosity with the world, this causes him to feel as if he's all that he sees sometimes because he has lost that special curiosity that they have. There's a big theme on Strawberry Jam of moving from one place in time to the next, maybe more specifically moving from childhood to adulthood, another example in this song of this theme would be "Man it passes right by me, it's behind me, now it's gone." |
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