submissions
| Warpaint – Go In Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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"Go In is written by Stella. And Stella wrote the entire song, including the lyrics and she recorded it when everybody had gone back to LA one weekend in Joshua Tree. Stella stayed and she recorded that whole song, every instrument, everything, and I sang. I replaced Stella because she didn’t want to have a Ringo Starr moment. So that song is amazing to me for that reason and it was really special when we all got back to Joshua Tree and Stella had made a song and sang it and the lyrics are so beautiful and as deep as anything anyone’s ever written in our band and she really nailed it. It’s got such a jazzy quality to it and it reminds me of Alice and John Coltrane and Tony Allen and it just has a classic vibe; it kind of showcases the kind of musician Stella is, not just the kind of drummer." -Emily Kokal |
submissions
| Warpaint – Hi Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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“There was a fan, a fan of ours. She was 16 and she had leukaemia, and her friend reached out to us and asked if we would go to the hospital and sing her a song, so we did … we went there.
It was a really beautiful experience but really intense. Her family was there in the room with us as well, in this really intimate space. It felt like, one, we were walking into this world that we didn’t know, and two, it was tragic because she was dying and it felt like we didn’t belong there. It felt like we were intruding upon the family’s really personal, last moments with their daughter, and we were all really awkward, but then we had been asked to be there, and we were her favourite band, so we went and sung her a song.
She was kind of in a coma and she wasn’t awake, but she woke up while we were there and I remember sitting on the bed with her and she didn’t really have … her central nervous system was shutting down and she didn’t really have the motor skills … but she was definitely moving around like she knew that we were there, and she was excited — or as excited as she could be in that state — and we just kept waving to her, saying ‘Hi, hi!’
Her name was Haley, Haley Butcher, and we were waving to her, trying to get her to notice that we were there. Theresa went home that day and wrote a song about that experience and it’s called Hi.”
-Jenny Lee Lindberg (Rip It Up interview, 2014) |
submissions
| Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – I Had a Dream, Joe Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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Why is there always this one reliably omnipresent commenter on Cave songs (and elsewhere) that assume this exaggeratedly astonished tone in their "general comment" simply because they're the first to comment? Is it really that unrealistic that no SongMeanings user had yet taken the time to type out their fleeting thoughts on one of the more underrated or underappreciated Bad Seeds' tracks, of which there are dozens? Or was it that these "first" commenters wanted to emphasize their supposed ingenuity or exceptional spiritual depth for deflowering a specific song page's comment section? As a cynical prick, I'm guessing the latter. I shouldn't get pissed off at internet ghosts, but fuck that. I've seen the same sort of comment across scores of lyrics pages today and I'm sort of sure Cave couldn't give a fuck who comments on these pages, when they do, and in which order. I'm all for music lovers showing outwardly direct support for the music they love, but I hate when it becomes some strange pseudo-popularity contest or race to say something all Cave listeners already know; when these first comments consist of statements of the artist in question's genius, and they usually do, I can't help but cringe at the ironically cliched emptiness. I'm clearly a monstrously insecure, sexually repressed, and pitifully friendless human being for typing all this, but it's nice to know your words exist somewhere in the universe. I guess I have more in common with these first commenters than I thought.
um... but this is an awesome song. I'm using it rather shamelessly in a playlist based on the film Nymphomaniac. |
submissions
| Electric Light Orchestra – Is It Alright Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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ELO is brilliant. Just watched Nymphomaniac Vol. 1 and definitely adding this to my playlist of the movie, even though the beats and rhythm seem a bit anachronistic/unsuitable to the film and its moods. Hoping it'll work in an ironic sense. |
submissions
| Soley – The Sun Is Going Down II Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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I love this idea she presents of opposites attracting, although it doesn't seem so original when I put it that way. "The summer loves the winter"--that line expresses so much about the nature of things, of human drives for pain and pleasure both, that make her truly stand out in my eyes among other songwriters. Summer seems to love winter for allowing it some uniqueness and distinction, some opposite feeling separate from the self and blind narcissism. I think people can represent things like that for each other regardless of sexual intentions or genetics. The metaphors are ample and aesthetically pleasing in a musical and poetic sense. Beautiful. |
submissions
| sóley – we will put her in two graves Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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Are the lines meant to suggest some sort of duplicity or dual personality on the part of the song's subject? Perhaps some abstract sense of belonging to another person, some romantic sentiment of dying alongside a lover? I think it's a widely accepted psychological notion that humans have an unconscious ideal or separate version of themselves, uninhibited in dreamscapes, that may not conform to how they would normally or socially present themselves. While Soley doesn't give much meaning to work with and I'm probably overthinking just because, the lyrical simplicity and beautiful instrumentation are more than enough to convey some much needed poetic spirit in modern music, especially with the fascinatingly morbid imagery of graves. |
submissions
| Kate Bush – Running Up That Hill Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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I always wished she would have changed the God pronoun to "she" for some reason, even if it constituted some small or perhaps naive instance of sociopolitical and/or religious rebellion. I really dig your interpretation. |
submissions
| Charlotte Gainsbourg – Heaven Can Wait Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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I personally think it's "down to the dregs of the world" in the first line. Also, I think the last line in the bridge goes "going to a desert unknown." Such a fantastically depressive song. |
submissions
| Warpaint – Son Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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Effortlessly dirge-esque. It's like some somber anthem to life and the pursuit of meaning in an icily meaningless universe, although I hate to mention too many cliches when speaking of such a unique song and album. It's an instant tearjerker for me for some reason. Theresa's low, angelic, humming vocals stir some not-so-subconscious sadness. To me, the last "leave the son alone" lines partially represent some psychic plea to ward away misery, in a profoundly maternal/protective sense and otherwise. There are also painfully apparent themes of abandonment vs affection/intimacy which sort of parallel with the guilt and shame of "beetles," which I believe Wayman wrote about her son Sirius as well. I like to merge "son" with "sun" in my mind when listening, for all that that similarity might symbolize; whether that was a purposeful gesture of Wayman's, I'm not sure, probably not. There's also, to me, a palpable struggle of staying put vs. moving on, and the downsides or negative connotations of both, which doesn't have to exist in a purely familial setting. |
submissions
| David Bowie – Young Americans Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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Along with the apparent themes of the mythic status of the American dream, the allusions to slavery and general minority oppression are crushingly brilliant ("Do you remember, the bills you have to pay f/or even yesterday?"--seems an inquiry specifically directed at the white majority or historic patriarchal American government). The stark exploitative slideshows of indigent immigrants and blacks at the end of the first two films in Lars von Trier's USA trilogy really cement this song, in my mind, as one of the most ingeniously lyrical satires of American intolerance. It eludes me why this song is on so many pseudo-patriotic bullshit American pride compilations; makes me want to laugh and cry and vomit somehow simultaneously. We're all ultimately in the same situation though, as he points out. There's this bitterly shared equality to the failure of so-called "American" concepts and products. In my opinion, the widespread disillusionment and destruction that this type of ideology has proven more than capable of perpetuating, has yet to be satisfactorily recognized on a political level. |
submissions
| Mandalay – Flowers Bloom Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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The fragility and implicit vulnerability of her voice lends itself especially well to the romance of this track. Darkly beautiful. |
submissions
| Port St. Willow – Consumed Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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this means nothing, but this is one of my favorite songs. the lyrics seem entrenched in such agony while the music is all billowing elegance. it's wholly dark and lovely. |
submissions
| CHVRCHES – Tether Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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You're so right... I actually think I prefer this line's meaning much more than the alternative's. |
submissions
| Blue Hawaii – Blue Gowns Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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Songs like this reaffirm the fierce power and the interesting contrast of gritty pop throughout the album. Fairly simple subject, but still as poetic and sonically intriguing as any of their other tracks. My new favorite band. |
submissions
| Slow Club – Horses Jumping Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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I love long, deep songs like this. Recent-ish examples off the top of my head are the 9-minute version of "The Turnaround" by The Joy Formidable, "Nothin But Time" by Cat Power, "You Say To Me, You Never Have To Ask" by Case Studies, and one of my all-time favorites to wallow in-- "A Cup of Tea and Your Insights" by Mark Mulcahy. |
submissions
| Insides – Skykicking Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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somehow scorchingly cold and genuine. quite a genius album of sex and inner turmoil that overachieves with this last piece of beauty and decay. |
submissions
| Earlimart – Happy Alone Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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"But even the stopped clock on the wall is right two times a day"
one of my favorite lines ever. |
submissions
| Austra – Painful Like Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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so damn beautiful. such ominously dark romance. she sounds like some caustic mix of florence welch and... herself. "olympia" is a treasure. |
submissions
| Mark Hollis – The Gift Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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Scares the hell out of me. Themes of obsolescence, shame, and fear; everyone knows what that's like to a certain extent, but in Hollis's slow minimalist build there's a frightening sense of inevitability. |
submissions
| Dido – Love To Blame Lyrics
| 11 years ago
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The chorus immediately made me think of Gilbert O'Sullivan's "Nothing Rhymed". Perhaps it's a purely illusory connection. |
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