submissions
| Swans – I Crawled Lyrics
| 8 months ago
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@[owennnnnnnnnn:48230]
"“I remember reading Wilhelm Reich’s The Mass Psychology Of Fascism in ’83-’84 and it had a particular influence on the song ‘I Crawled’ from the Young God EP. In that book, if I can summarise it in a very plebeian manner, he draws the parallel between the typical model of the family with a strong father as a microcosm of the state. He talks about how that shapes behaviour and identity and helps to inculcate a kind of obeisance to authority very early on. It was written pre-World War Two, and he talks about the parallels between Hitler and Stalin, which was pretty prescient of him: he notes how both men reached back to this mythic atavistic past when everything was great in the country and their goal was to bring it back — they were like avuncular, paternal figures for the nation.
At that time, Ronald Reagan was being re-elected and I thought the parallels — though less overtly deadly and destructive — were very apposite. I wrote that song — “you’re my father, my father, I obey you,” and took it a step further. I had read this essay by J.G. Ballard Why I Want To Fuck Ronald Reagan and thought the image of Reagan fucking and choking me was an apt image for the times.
I had been obsessed with the media’s — not that the media is one entity or one conspiracy — colonisation of our consciousness, particularly in the west and capitalist corporate countries, its shaping of our identities and its formulation of the anxieties that compel one to consume: a recent phenomenon that didn’t begin until the end of the Second World War when advertising and production amped up and corporations had to create need. It had a lot to do with having all these factories after the war that needed to do something, so they began manufacturing anxiety in people so they would consume products. Nowadays that equation is rampantly out of control, culminating in the probable destruction of the planet and the species — all the horrible social effects from mass media on our consciousness and our sense of who we are on the planet.
I felt this whole process, along with working as a low-level wage slave for most of my life, was akin to being raped: being invaded against your will by stimuli over which you have no control and where you’re helpless as it impinges on your consciousness. That’s another reason I used the word ‘rape’, I felt it was what modern existence was. I carried that sort of imagery on for some time and then grew weary of it because it became a cliché in its own right to harp on such things. That was the kind of thing that I was obsessed with in those early days. The song ‘Your Property’ from Cop was probably another way in which I dealt with it, and Time is Money (Bastard), of course… that way of thinking about media, mind control, work as slavery, and consumerism was very much on my mind in those days."
-Swans: “I Crawled” – Beneath the Lyrics of the Song, from nirvana-legacy dot com |
submissions
| Rush – Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres Lyrics
| 4 years ago
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@[CharlieFreak:33152] It's fascinating to me that a song that is very explicitly about achieving BALANCE between reason and emotion could be misconstrued as a song about how feelings and emotions are right and thinking and reason are wrong. |
submissions
| Oneida – Sheets of Easter Lyrics
| 4 years ago
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@[zhimbo:30734] The link to the blog post:
https://thesweetestparsnips.wordpress.com/2015/10/06/oneida-sheets-of-easter-each-one-teach-one/ |
submissions
| Oneida – Sheets of Easter Lyrics
| 4 years ago
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First section it's "Light", then it's "Night", then "Sight", then "Right". (Which sounds right to me when I listen, and is what is reported in a blog post I've read which says it was confirmed by Fat Bobby of Oneida). |
submissions
| Polvo – Feathers Of Forgiveness Lyrics
| 5 years ago
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On the whole this is fairly straightforward - the first-person narrator has been betrayed (via spreading confidential information) by the someone they trusted as a friend. Taken at face value, the verses talk about the betrayal, while the chorus talk about the desire to forgive.
The twist comes mostly in the jarring, relentless, deliberate music - full of unresolved tension - and a single line of the chorus ("I want to put you in a light that will hurt your eyes") accompanied by a chord change, that shows the anger bleeding through the otherwise "forgive and move on" sentiment the narrator is apparently struggling mightily to maintain. The closing lines about washing/wrapping/covering the betrayer in "forgiveness" sound suspiciously ominous in this context. |
submissions
| Genesis – Illegal Alien Lyrics
| 5 years ago
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@[sadmachine:30567] Musically it's a better pop song than many of their other pop hits. The lyrics and their delivery, though...ugh. |
submissions
| Arcade Fire – Peter Pan Lyrics
| 6 years ago
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" Both of my grandfathers were 96 when they passed away, so we got a lot of really good time with our grandparents. And I have a son now. You start to realize that your parents are getting older, and the realization that they're not always going to be there: It's a different way of facing mortality.
I think [the character of] Peter Pan, in a lot of ways, is emblematic of the modern man: He's kind of the dream of being young forever, always dressing like a teenager and always feeling young. But [this song] was trying to get a more direct, less ironic take on the desire to not have the people you love die."
-Win Butler, interview on 'All Things Considered', Aug 4, 2017 |
submissions
| Tom Waits – What's He Building in There? Lyrics
| 7 years ago
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@[zhimbo:15654] Link is cut off/corrupted. But the webpage "tomwaitsfan.com" collects a bunch of information if you poke around it. I'll try pasting it again below...
http://www.tomwaitsfan.com/tom%20waits%20library/www.tomwaitslibrary.com/lyrics/mulevariations/whatshebuilding.html |
submissions
| Tom Waits – What's He Building in There? Lyrics
| 7 years ago
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Waits has talked about this song *a lot*. Here's one example:
We're all, to a degree, curious about our neighbors, and we all have four or five things that we know about them. And with those things, we usually create some kind of portrait of their life. He drives that Valiant. . . Did you notice? That dog has no hair in the back. . .His wife must be sixteen. . . Look at that garage. Looks like it caught fire and he never even repainted it. . .And then you add to it, as other things unfold: I saw him last night. You ever see him wearing those lime green pants? Where's he from, St. Louis? That's the only place I've ever seen lime green pants. But he said he's from Tampa. . .And you never, ever introduce yourself. But he continues to develop like a film for you. Then you report to your wife new things every day that you've observed. His dog gets loose and comes into your yard, and has no license. We all do that, don't we? I was thinking that he's the guy. He's talking about himself. He's delusional. We've all become overly curious about our neighbors, and we all do believe, in the end, that we have a right to know what all of us are doing." (Source: A Q&A about Mule Variations. MSO: Rip Rense, early 1999)
Here's a page of examples:
http://www.tomwaitsfan.com/tom%20waits%20library/www.tomwaitslibrary.com/lyrics/mulevariations/whatshebuilding.html |
submissions
| Prince – It Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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@[cmp744:11015] Yeah, this seems to have more in common with something like NIN's "Closer" than the usual sex jam. |
submissions
| Shellac – Shoe Song Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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The lines about "jokes" and "kisses" are sound like a weirdly alienated pre-break up state to me. |
submissions
| Shellac – Shoe Song Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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Albini was a huge supporter of Slint and produced some of their stuff, and gave a famously enthusiastic review to Spiderland. |
submissions
| Sonic Youth – Cinderella's Big Score Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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"Keller, who is four years older, was handsome and bright but given to outbursts of animosity, often directed at her. He took LSD, briefly dropped out of college, and dated a woman who disappeared during the Tate-LaBianca murders. On the day he graduated from a master’s program at Berkeley, with a classics degree, he suffered a psychotic episode, and soon received a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. He shuttled between halfway houses, psychiatric wards, and jail. For a time, he lived in a trailer parked in his parents’ driveway; eventually, they had him declared a ward of the state, and today he lives in a psychiatric facility in Los Angeles. " - Article from The New Yorker, June 3 2013 |
submissions
| Sonic Youth – Cinderella's Big Score Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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"My brother was a genius poet who belonged to another century and became schizophrenic." - Interview w/Rush Magazine. The video definitely shows a picture of Kim's brother. |
submissions
| Thao & The Get Down Stay Down – We the Common (For Valerie Bolden) Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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From Thao's website: 'As many of you know, our latest record We the Common is greatly inspired by my time with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners. My first meeting with Valerie Bolden was the foundation of the record’s lead single. Valerie Bolden has been incarcerated for 17 years. She is serving a life sentence without chance of parole as “a direct result of domestic violence.” '
http://thaoandthegetdownstaydown.com/post/52724873074/who-is-valerie-bolden |
submissions
| Sonic Youth – Master-Dik Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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It isn't really a song on "Sister"; it's merely a bonus track added to CD versions of Sister. It's on the Ciccone Youth album 'Master-Dik' in a slightly different version. |
submissions
| Kate Nash – Dickhead Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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This is one of the few songs that no one on Songmeanings is going to say is about sex and/or drugs and/or Jesus. |
submissions
| Guided by Voices – My Valuable Hunting Knife Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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I certainly hope that's not it. If it's a metaphor for a girl, it's a boring, banal song; the rest of the song instantly becomes familiar from any of another thousand random love songs. If it isn't a metaphor, it's awesome - going away with only a valued object to start a new life and relating to it like a person is a far more interesting song. This is a case where "reading into" a song makes it shallower, not deeper. |
submissions
| Lou Reed – The Blue Mask Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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God, I hope you're wrong about this being a reaction to music critics. It turns a magnificent song into a bunch of trivial whining. |
submissions
| Sufjan Stevens – Enchanting Ghost Lyrics
| 12 years ago
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What's your source for that? It certainly doesn't sound like that to me at all, and it would be a big change from "am I a pest to feed"? |
submissions
| Lindsey Buckingham – Cast Away Dreams Lyrics
| 12 years ago
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Agreed: This is clearly about giving up and moving on, but I think it's safe to assume that after 30+ years, he's not so fixated on Ms. Nicks as many fans want to believe. Based on some somewhat ambiguous chatter by Buckingham when I saw him play live, I suspect this has more to do with settling in to a satisfying but low-profile solo career rather than being a major solo star, and finding it makes a better life. It's probably best left ambiguous.
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submissions
| Lindsey Buckingham – Gift Of Screws Lyrics
| 12 years ago
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Inspired by the Emily Dickinson poem:
Essential Oils -- are wrung --
The Attar from the Rose
Be not expressed by Suns -- alone --
It is the gift of Screws --
The General Rose -- decay --
But this -- in Lady's Drawer
Make Summer -- When the Lady lie
In Ceaseless Rosemary --
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