| Modest Mouse – Grey Ice Water Lyrics | 9 years ago |
|
@[owen1391:588] 5 years later... I've been going through a long distance relationship for the last year and a half, me and my girlfriend have no way that we can see to be together. Different countries, bureaucratic issues. Life is bitterly funny when you're in love, or even just think you are, and bureaucracy and the lines people draw in the dirt keep you apart. She's training for a cruise ship job that she'll be contracted to for 6 months. It's still scary. Anyway, i really just wanted to see if you respond. What happened, if you still regret it, if it worked out, if you ended up back together, if you're still standing by your grey ice water. |
|
| Modest Mouse – Broke Lyrics | 9 years ago |
|
10/10 on the cringe scale. Here's to hoping someone posted this when they were 13 and, if reminded of such post, would be considerately embarrassed. |
|
| Tool – Undertow Lyrics | 10 years ago |
|
This song means to me quite literally what it feels like to be in an undertow. As in wiping out on a huge wave. You're at the mercy of a vast force that will hold you down until it lets you go. This is symbolic of our place in the universe. it is cold and hostile place, indifferent to our wants and needs, it goes as it goes. To realize this i think is the euphoria. |
|
| Tool – 4 Degrees Lyrics | 10 years ago |
|
What i get from this song mainly is insistence. A real sense of urgency that is overflowing. It's about sodomy. You can say there is a deeper theme of self discovery and what not but i don't think that's meant to be expressed as explicitly as some people think. This is a man trying to talk someone into anal sex. While we can see the principles of the nobility of discarding your inhibitions to try something new, something new to be learned about yourself through experience, to me, it always comes back around to the narrator. His insistence is palpable. If you pay attention to not just the lyrics, but the cadence of how they are delivered, you can get the sense that what this man is saying could very well be, for lack of a better word, sweet talk. A snake oil salesman perhaps. Yearning for a tighter and warmer hole to put himself in. It becomes more and more apparent as the song goes on that he really just wants to get his rocks off, getting to the line of "knock me down and i'll just come back running" makes it pretty explicit. At this point we now his motivations are for himself, purely, and when this is ascertained about anyone in terms of anything, the content of their words and intentions must be called into question. In short, i think this is less a song about anal sex or anal sex as a metaphor for leaning about yourself, than it is a character study of the narrator, similar to sober, meant to portray (condemn?) the sexual insistence of the male psyche. |
|
| Tool – Prison Sex Lyrics | 10 years ago |
|
Oh yeah dude, don't get me wrong i'm not implying that he ever raped anyone, i wouldn't assume anything like that. What i was getting at was that he was abused by his stepfather and confused emotionally and physically to the point where HE wanted to sodomize HIM. A sick fuck like what his stepfather seemed to be would probably like this, allow it, making it consensual. This is a completely fucked up line of thinking and i'm not putting it forth as something i believe to be true, just conjecture based on the lyrics, which i don't claim to be word for word autobiographical, just the theme of the song in general. My personal opinion is that the first verse is what he actually experienced (maybe not necessarily sodomy, although i do think it to be the case, but sexual molestation) and the second verse is not necessarily something that happened, but the feelings bred up in him due to the abuse he received, the impulse to dish out what he was made to eat. Again, not necessarily that he did anything of the sort, just that he 'felt' it. |
|
| Puscifer – The Humbling River Lyrics | 10 years ago |
|
The meaning of the song is pretty straightforward and most people seem to grasp it but there's one aspect i haven't really seen mentioned on here that i wanted to add. So the song is collective humanity speaking from first person, proclaiming all that we've accomplished. Insanely hard, challenging things that take incredible strength and persistence. But there is something very simple, simple as crossing a river, that we haven't accomplished. And why? Because we are divided. The simple thing we haven't accomplished is this, to be united as a whole. It's so seemingly simple, yet apparently impossible for us thus far. The last bastion for us to transcend further into understanding ourselves and the reality we inhabit is to put aside ego and embrace everyone as we would our own selves. It's so easy to grasp the concept, but to put it into practice requires something we don't seem to have quite yet. It's just a river, and yet even after braving all elemental and political obstacles, we're helpless before it. That's why this song stands out to me, not because it asks for world peace, but because it so perfectly recognizes how such a benign task can be so baffling hard. |
|
| Modest Mouse – Wild Packs of Family Dogs Lyrics | 11 years ago |
|
This is about religious conversion. Evangelicals. Door to door Mormons. A 'wild' pack of "family" dogs. Family is the word in the title that seems odd. Religious missionaries are wild in the sense that their beliefs are archaic, and they defend them fervently, without rationale. But they are intensely loving of one another, so much so that they are a family. The song illustrates how religious fanatics systematically took away those close to the narrator, and after all this, when his life gets too hard, he just gives in, and becomes a part of the pack. This illustrates the ease and comfort religion brings us, finally giving in when you're at your weakest. I think it's safe to say Isaac is an atheist. It's a theme that runs through a lot of Modest Mouse's music. The ending of this song symbolizes how the wild pack of family dogs *gasp* were right! Now they go to heaven to receive their reward for their conversions. It's a twist ending, a tease of 'what if those psycho motherfuckers are right? The horror!' |
|
| Nine Inch Nails – Right Where It Belongs Lyrics | 11 years ago |
|
Very depressing song, but very existentially deep, definitely worthy of listening to, its actually become one of my favorite songs. The animal in the cage you have built is the person you chose to craft for yourself. A cage is safety. That is most likely not the first way you think of the word cage, you probably think imprisonment. Take the next words of the song, addressing the life you have built for yourself and the hollowness you feel inside. This is him explaining the animal in his cage to you. You trade in the possibilities of literally EVERYTHING you can do in life, in existence, for a boring, fucking monotone life, because of... Safety. Security. The hollowness a caged animal feels, is, fucked up as it is, right where it belongs. How could it feel anything but hollowness, it's been distanced from all but itself. The tragedy with us is we put ourselves in the cage, not only willingly, but happily, desperately. Too willing to trade everything for the safety of a useless, empty existence. You can't see the forest for the trees while all you're aware of is the tree you've locked yourself in. When you look at yourself in the mirror, is it all you want to be? Are you content to stop growing and learning and developing? Are you okay with being a two dimensional image? Not a competent sentient being, just a useless image of one. The spiritual parts of the song dealing with existence strikingly remind me of 'The Mysterious Stranger' by Mark Twain. His assertion in this short story is that really, the ultimate end to all that exists is your consciousness. Its not really just yours, as in, everybody you know is in your head, but rather, everyone that you know is also a piece of what you are a piece of. They are all you and you are all of them. Together you make up the universe, one total consciousness, experiencing itself subjectively through many different lenses. All of reality is just an elaborate dream, nothing exists save you, and empty space. The universe, and all else that might exist beside it, is your beautiful dream, and you can change it at anytime. All you have to do is wake up. |
|
| A Perfect Circle – Judith Lyrics | 11 years ago |
|
Judith is his mothers name. She was religious from the start but not too crazy, then she got hit with an aneurysm that left her 'broken down and paralyzed' for the rest of her life. Instead of making her question her views, it intensified her devotion. This song is about how baffled Maynard is that not only did this not make her question, but rather reinforced her faith. I think the true anger in this song is derived from the fact that when she had the aneurysm, she had to spend time in the hospital, leaving Maynard with his abusive stepfather. Her strengthened faith no doubt reinforced her willful ignorance on the subject. I cant imagine how it would feel to have 'the face of my own stability suddenly look away... leaving me with the dead and hopeless' life of being watched over by an abusive parental figure at such an age... |
|
| Tool – Prison Sex Lyrics | 11 years ago |
|
Prison Sex is about child molestation and cycles of abuse. The creaking at the beginning of the song is meant to emulate a door being gently pushed open, creaking loud among the silence. He hadn't picked up the name Maynard yet, that came later. He was James now. Probably was referred to as 'Jimmy' around this time. He was 11. His mom had her fateful aneurysm that left her broken down and paralyzed, forever changed, her faithful devotion intensified and led her to become more and more delusional and willfully ignorant. Jimmy's stepfather was caring for him at this time, he inspires the content for this song for about two years until Judith finally sends him to his fathers in Michigan. The part that gets me is that the child molestation is only the first verse, the rest of the song is about him, the victim, becoming the perpetrator. What fucks my mind is that i cant decide whether of not this is a metaphor for him getting into sodomy as a result (4 degrees, stinkfist) or if he for real raped a dude. Or both. In the live sessions of Prison Sex they add a set of lyrics right before the 'i have found some kind of temporary sanity..' climax, Here they are: "Show me something (4x) Thought I could make it end Thought I could wash the stains away Thought I could break the circle if I Slipped right into your skin So sweet was your surrender We have become one I have become my terror And you my precious lamb and martyr" I never quite understood the 'Lamb and Martyr' part until i heard/read this, and even so i hope its only just my interpretation. he's referring to a single person. If you can't see what im getting at maybe its best i don't spell it out.. Before playing 'Jimmy' live once, Maynard addressed the crowd, announcing it as the sequel to Prison sex. Jimmy being a very personal story, the announcement of it as a 'Sequel" to Prison Sex is kind of shocking. That gives it a light of being a personal story, just by that strong association. H is a sister piece to Prison sex, its about him struggling with the abuse he grew up with, in the face of having a child of his own. The snake hissing was his lamb and martyr. That's a beautiful song about him realizing he doesnt have to perpetuate. I have a deeper respect for Maynard than i ever have ever had for a singular artist, and the reason for that is songs like Prison sex, Jimmy, H, Judith, Passive, Orestes... he just completely opens himself up and turns his personal pain and sorrow into beautiful art as a means to move forward himself and as a tool for others to do so as well. "Turn these leaden grudges into gold" |
|
| Tool – Schism Lyrics | 11 years ago |
|
Schism is about a division between people. Particularly people that had a real connection. This song is a metaphor for the band's condition at that time. It had been 5 or 6 years since aenema and there was a little tension in the band, Maynard was off with apc and it was a shaky period for them. They then proceeded to drop lateralus, showing the world just how fucking sure they were that the pieces fit. |
|
| Tool – Sober Lyrics | 11 years ago |
|
Maynard creates a character that epitomizes self hatred. This song to me paints a picture of the loop this man gets caught in, where he hates himself, and absolutely wallows in it. Instead of looking for change, he persists in this stubborn cycle of nostalgia and depression. He just wants to start it over, but he's too fucked up by now to do it. This is one of the only Tool songs that i don't see the "light at the end of the tunnel" |
|
| Tool – H. Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| past and "future", sorry. | |
| Tool – H. Lyrics | 11 years ago |
|
Most say this song is about his son, name being Devo H. Keenan (initial only) "Maynard" is name James picked up at Westpoint, he was born James "H"erbert Keenan. He wrote this song while his girlfriend was pregnant with his child, and it is about the storm of emotion bred up inside him over conflicting feelings of perpetuating the abuse he suffered at the hands of his stepfather, and a desire to overcome these worries of "Do unto others, what they have don to you" (perpetuating the cycle of abuse) and raise his child with love. "H" is about Maynard struggling with his soon to collide past and present, and his realization in the face of it, that he can do it. |
|
| Tool – Vicarious Lyrics | 11 years ago |
|
This song is about why the news centers on what it does, combined with that feeling, you know, when someone does something wrong and then thats one thing, but then they have the AUDACITY to pretend the opposite. Everybody knows that feeling. Okay fine, violence is interesting, thats the way we're wired, so be it. But for fucks sake, don't act like you're above it. |
|
| Tool – Maynard's Dick Lyrics | 11 years ago |
|
This song DOES have a very serious meaning... a hilariously serious meaning. anyone familiar with the phrase "get off my dick"? If someone is on your dick, it means they're all up in your shit because they adore you so much. Maynard is making fun of YOU, the fans, all up on his shit, trying to decipher every fucking word because you worship him so much. The cherry on top? "Maynards dick"is the phrase he has you singing at the top of your lungs. and when i say you i mean us lol cause im listening to this song right now and IT FUCKING ROCKS |
|
| A Perfect Circle – Pet Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| This song is about smothering parenthood. | |
| A Perfect Circle – Passive Lyrics | 11 years ago |
|
I feel like this is pretty straightforward. His mother had a brain aneurysm when he was eleven, and was crippled for the rest of her life, a shell of what she was before. The doctor is literally just a doctor. He is straightforward telling him communication is out of her control, and this being his mom, of course he doesn't want to believe it. The part about being his perfect enemy is pretty well documented if you listen to either APC or tool, His mothers faith renewed through her aneurysm is the fire that forged his philosophical views on religion and humanity. The real emotion in this song is him just letting out all the frustration he feels toward her that she's plagued by this permanent disability, and his anger seeping out, despite the fact that this is his own mother, at her "high road" "passive aggressive bullshit" that she refuses to communicate these things with him. |
|
| Tool – Crawl Away Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| To me this is a song about unreciprocated love. Much like Pushit, but from the other angle. In Crawl Away, Maynard/the narrarator is the one madly in love, madly attached. He does his best to hold onto this person as they begin to decide to pull away, and he grows frustrated and looks at this person crawling away as cold and mechanical (hence the back pin turning remark). The, "this is my love for your" sequence is him coming to realize that this is how he is a selfish lover, he doesnt give a fuck about what the other person wants/needs. I see this as one of their more straightforward songs, also one of my favorite. | |
| Radiohead – Creep Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| This song is about something that happens to all of us just about everyday in our lives. Say your in a bookstore, you happen to glance next to you, and one of the most beautiful people you've ever seen in the world is standing there. Why do you not talk to this person? Your answer for that is the meaning of the song. | |
| Red Hot Chili Peppers – I Could Have Lied Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| I agree with those who think it is about him opening up to his girlfriend and telling her that he loves here, and scaring her away in the process. "showed her and i told her how she struck me, but i fucked up now" is the part that seals it. He's talking about how he told her how she made him feel, that monumental four letter word, and how she got scared and ran away. He could have lied, could have kept it to himself, waited until he could see that maybe she felt the same way, but he jumped the gun. His reasoning for it is that his face could never show what is not real, his eyes could never "keep their cool" he couldn't hide it. | |
| Red Hot Chili Peppers – Breaking the Girl Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| When Anthony was 12 he lost his virginity to his dad's 18 year old girlfriend, or so the rumor goes. This song isn't about a player referencing himself in the third person, its about his father and how he treated a young naive girl. | |
| Red Hot Chili Peppers – Breaking the Girl Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| When Anthony was 12 years old he lost his virginity to his fathers 18 year old girlfriend, or so the rumor goes. This song is not about a player referencing himself in the third person, its a song about his father and how he treated a young naive girl. | |
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.