| David Bowie – Ziggy Stardust Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| Bowie was transcending your silly labels 20 years before you were born. You should have felt dumb asking that, so good. | |
| Sam The Sham And The Pharaohs – Wooly Bully Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| Fast Times at Ridgemont High | |
| Sam The Sham And The Pharaohs – Wooly Bully Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| Fast Times at Ridgemont High | |
| Cake – Guitar Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I like your interpretation quite a lot, but not so much the way you reassure yourself that everyone agrees with it (sort of like your description is simply the "correct" one). I agree that the guitar is a self-referential metaphor, but it is common to anyone who would be performing a song written for guitar -- not to people with high-rise recording contracts in particular. Antidecontstructionalist arguments aside, I think any work of art deserves to be interpreted beyond the confines of the artist's personal contexts. As I say though, I like your interpretation a lot, and I think your narrative really fits the poem well. |
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| Cake – Guitar Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I find these lyrics exquisite. There are no traditional end-of-the-line rhymes, but the patterns of internal vowel sounds and "R" sounds are complex and beautiful. I always heard it as "like the only." I think it's more open-ended that way, and that it fits better in the structure of the rest of the lyrics. However I agree, either way, that the line is profound. |
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| Cake – Guitar Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I always imagined this song being about a girlfriend, but I really like the idea of the record agent, too (although I'm not sure why he's in his agent's apartment"). In either case, on a deeper level, I think it is a song about attachment. The high-rise window emphasizes the songwriter's attachment to the world around him, by separating him from it. Even though he lives his life on the street, among the garbage trucks and jackhammers, these things are not an integral part of him. They are only things that attach him to his day-to-day life. It is easier to feel this way, when you're separated by thick glass and 32 stories. Earthly attachments are the source of all pleasure and pain. The guitar is the songwriter's ultimate attachment -- he uses it to write and play, the things that define him as a songwriter. Nevertheless, the guitar is an object. It is not really a part of him, even though he uses it to connect himself to the world. If he threw it out the window, he would lose this attachment, but would he really lose himself? Would he regret losing the object that was so important to the way he defines himself, or would he feel liberated for being free from the attachment that had bound him most tightly to this world? The girlfriend (or record agent) represents a similar attachment. Just like the songwriter's relationship to his guitar, he uses his relationship with the other person as a means to experience the pleasure and pain of his earthly existence, but she is not actually a part of his true, naked self. When someone loves you more than you love them -- or treats you like they do -- it can bring an uneasy sense of guilt. This guilt can make you want to separate yourself from the attachment. Maybe the "treat me like the only" line is about an attachment that another person (girlfriend or agent) has to the songwriter. It "brings him down" because it is someone else's earthly attachment to him, and one does he not really share. |
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