| The Jam – Trans Global Express Lyrics | 2 months ago |
| Nice to know what the words are because the mix is so terrible in this song you'd never be able to make them out. The production on the whole album "The Gift" is terrible and desperately needs a remaster. With the overbearing bass and Weller's strong English accent you can't understand a word. The first few times I heard "Town Called Malice" I thought he was singing "Down at O'Malley's." | |
| Elvis Costello – White Knuckles Lyrics | 1 year ago |
| I agree it's clearly about domestic violence and head games and jealousy. But Costello loves clever wordplay, (e.g. "it doesn't matter if your face doesn't fit; there's no charge for changing it.")and he prioritizes that over any it's hard to see if there's a real narrative in it. | |
| Elvis Costello & the Attractions – Clean Money Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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Many of the lyrics on this song are the same as "Love For Tender" on "Get Happy". I consider that a better song. "Clean Money" was released on the "Taking Liberties" album, which was a collection of outtakes and demos, (even so, it was just about as good as the early EC studio albums). So I think "Clean Money" is probably an early version of a song that he reworked later. As for the meaning of the song, I think the lyrics were a bunch of lines with some clever wordplay about money. They don't really hang together well. But it has a good and fast aggressive beat of its own that got completely changed, so they are truly different songs. |
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| Belle & Sebastian – The Stars of Track and Field Lyrics | 1 year ago |
| @[maddpsyintyst:46300] I like the way you look at it. I just read "Brideshead Revisited" which has a lot about that pseudo-dating, going back to the 1920s in Oxford. If you like Belle and Sebastian, you'd probably like that novel too. | |
| Belle & Sebastian – The Stars of Track and Field Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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I'm taking a more fanciful and less literal approach to this song that I enjoy a lot. I think the song conjures a quirky little world. This world is DEFinitely like a high school, and in this high school the most popular people are, of course, the Stars of Track and Field! They have the status, the glory, the sex, the admissions to elite colleges, the cool photography projects, everything! They are certainly "Beautiful People". I'm setting aside sexual orientation too, and just assuming that anybody will have sex with anybody. And in this world the singer of the song is definitely not on the Track team, but the person to whom he is singing is an exemplar of that "in group". She's skipping English class to kiss girls in back of the stairs, and she's got all the innocent boys following her. Probably including the singer himself. Then in the second verse (my favorite) there's the boy the singer "never rated", who she took on as a subject for a photography project with another girl, probably also on the team. They dressed him up in silk and velour, "liberated him" (I'll let my imagination run wild on what that means!) and sure enough he then made the track team and went on to superstardom. In this world, throwing discus for Liverpool and Widnes is like being the 1st Baseman for the Chicago Cubs! The third verse is joyous and lustful. You can feel the exhilaration and freedom that comes from the feel of the city air against your body as you run so fast in terry underwear. It's totally worth the hard effort of training and conditioning. In the last verse though, he gets bitter - thinking that all of this success has gone to her head. Perhaps this lifestyle of Track and Field Stardom with its liberated sexual expression is what even killed her? At least that's what he'll say in the requiem he'll write for her after she dies. Who knows what it is that got her into college - probably not smarts (she's skipping English class after all). Perhaps it was sleeping with the right people, or it might just be an athletic scholarship. But as one of the beautiful people, she was able to get to exactly where she wanted. He sounds resentful. It's a wonderful song, and it's that much better because the lyrics are so fun to interpret. It makes me want to go running in terry underwear myself!! |
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| Squeeze – Mumbo Jumbo Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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This song is a great and overlooked gem on what I consider the best Squeeze album - East Side Story. I'd understand it better if I knew more British slang. The first two verses are about two very different women. The first one being attractive, popular, and style conscious. The second one being a lonely homebody. He's attracted to the first woman, is obsessed with her grooming, and wants to pick her up. She adds "tick to his tocker (slang for penis). He doesn't offer much about the second woman, except that it seems she is close to her rural family. There's a line listed in here that's not on the album version - are there other versions? It's the one about the Arab friend which seems a double entendre. The third verse is about a regular working class guy who feels excluded from the world of pretty women, as referred to in the first verse, and - I'd guess the boyish girls are like the woman in the second verse? In any case neither would have him. If he were rich he'd have an attractive woman, but as it is he has a 9-5:30 job, which he hates, while his wife or partner is cheating on him during the day with the milkman. It's got some cool lyrics and a great attitude, even if they don't all fit together coherently - it's a bit mumbo jumbo. So that brings us to the chorus. The song lyrics aren't perfect, (it's got a broken nose) but since it's a sunny day, we should come out to play and enjoy this quintessentially Squeeze song. It's a banger! |
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| The Jam – Thick As Thieves Lyrics | 1 year ago |
| @[thunderbats:45389] Great catch about the double meaning of the word "thick". I've been listening to the song for 40 years and now I get it! I guess I'm not as thick as I used to be. | |
| Tom Waits – Grapefruit Moon Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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It is a beautiful and powerful song. To answer Frogboys, what the lyrics mean is simple enough. The grapefruit-shaped moon, combined with the melody of a song he heard, makes him reminisce about a love he still misses. He reflects that the love inspired him, and losing the love and broken him. But the song works across multiple dimensions. The imagery from the lyrics, the intimate and rich piano playing, Tom Waits' uniquely scarred voice, and the old-fashioned beautiful melody of the song itself combine to provide exactly the mixture described in the lyrics, and evoke exactly the same sensations. That's the secret. It is genius. |
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| Levon Helm – Rag Mama Rag Lyrics | 2 years ago |
| I have always loved this song and enjoyed it greatly. I played it for my brother and I asked if he liked it. He pointed out immediately something I\'d never realized - it\'s a song about menstruation. I just thought he wanted his girl to dance to ragtime music with him. No! She won\'t sleep with him because she\'s "on the rag". How did I miss this???? | |
| Blondie – Parallel Lines Lyrics | 3 years ago |
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This was on the album's lyrics sheet, looking like a title track to Blondie's breakthrough album "Parallel Lines", but the song was not on the album. Haven't been able to track it down. What happened? Why was this included? I'm not the only one wondering either - http://vinyldistractions.com/blondie-parallel-lines/ |
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| England Dan & John Ford Coley – Nights are forever without you Lyrics | 3 years ago |
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I remember hearing this song with my older brother the year our older sister went away to college. I missed her terribly, and my brother asked me if this song made me think of how I felt with her gone, and it did. Looking at the lyrics it could be a breakup, but it's clearly a separation and the emotion is so strong that you can't sleep. It's written generally enough it could be about any of those situations. It is a great pop song. |
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| England Dan & John Ford Coley – I'd Really Love To See You Tonight Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| The song begins as one side of a conversation on the phone. He doesn't want to move in, or change her life (probably meaning get married). This is literally a Booty Call from the 1970's. But it's sweet, he clearly misses her. And I think it is "stars around", which has a nice poetic sound to it, and I interpret the two of them as being the stars getting warmly blown around toward each other. Also it's a nice straightforward arrangement, slickly produced with strings and soft rock guitars. | |
| Elvis Costello – Georgie and Her Rival Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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So what's this one about anyway? Georgie has dated some guy, but she doesn't really like him - she considers him a "tiny man". Anyway, there's another woman that guy's also into, that's her rival. That woman talks dirty with him, which Georgie won't do. In fact, Georgie's a bit of a homebody who talks to her mother on the phone a lot. Well, the guy is a drunk, and he's going through his address book to call the rival, but he calls Georgie by mistake and leaves a message on her answering machine (Early '90s technology there, answering machine and address book!) which is dirty. It makes her blush! So whenever she has company over she plays the guy's message to her friends and it's a laugh! Am I right about this? |
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| Squeeze – Separate Beds Lyrics | 4 years ago |
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That line can't be right - "With some cards and separate beds". The word isn't "cards". Could it be "caress", though that doesn't make sense either. Is there a Brit out there who has a better idea? Is there a lyric sheet in the record? The song's meaning is straightforward though. They sound like teenagers, obviously still living at home with both parents. But the parents wouldn't approve of them sharing a bed when taking a trip to the beach, and he's forced to book a room with separate beds. But then he gets the idea of going outside to sleep together on the beach. Romantic teen love |
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| Elvis Costello – The Loved Ones Lyrics | 6 years ago |
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It's definitely a song about what somebody else might say about him and his art (don't get sarcastic, spare us the verbal gymnastics). I once read that this song is about what his loved ones would say in the future looking back at where he was at the time he was writing the song. Now that's a "Through the looking glass" mind warp, isn't it? So that's why my favorite part of the song is the last line, which he repeats a few times. Nobody writes letters anymore, but "PPS" stands for post postcript, or something you add at the end of a letter even after you've added "PS". Then he spells out "I love you". I think he's adding a special message at the end of his song telling the people who love him, whenever in the future they should happen to listen to the song, that he loves them too. He loves them right here and now in this moment even if he's too sarcastic or too much of a tortured artist to say so. He's spelling it out, being coy, because he is too much of a complex case to say it outright. But he does love them. I actually think he's also saying he loves his fans, including me personally. I am touched. Later on Elvis will go through phases where he does sing beautiful sincere uncomplicated love songs (my favorite is "Still" off his album "North"). But that's the best he could do at the time he wrote "The Loved Ones". |
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| Big Star – September Gurls Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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December boy's got it bad! The key to the meaning of the song is the interpretation of the line "December boy's got it bad". I believe that the word needs to be "boy's", meaning a contraction of the words "boy has", and not the plural "boys." Grammatically this makes sense. If he was referring to December Boys in plural, the line would be either "December boys have got it bad", or "December Boys have it bad". It is clear to me that he's singing about a specific December boy who's got it bad, namely the late great Alex Chilton, born December 28th 1950. Once that's understood, we can get to the subtext of the song. The World is divided up into different types of people based on their gender and birthmonth. Each subtype has its own characteristics, and September gurls are unbelievably, heartbreakingly awesome. They do so much, yet they have the capacity to be deeply touched when they have a December boy for a butch, at least some of the time. Aptitude, Lucky Star, and Mindchild have also picked up on this, pointing out that September gurls are outgoing, full of activity, sunshine, new beginnings, etc. I would also add that December is the darkest month of the year, so that says something about December boys. Moving from the subtext to the text, I'm not exactly what "being your butch" means. I agree with Mindchild that it most likely means they hooked up once. But what exactly it means isn't so important in and of itself. What's much more important - and this is more than anything else in the whole wide world right now - is that a September gurl once felt something for him, she doesn't feel it anymore, and this December boy's got it bad. He loved her, but at this point there's nothing he can do, so nevermind, he will keep away. But he can't deny what's inside, and he will continue to cry all the time and console himself with late night fantasies of lovemaking with this super awesome September gurl, because when it comes to September gurls, "they we'll love all our days". All of this deep heartache is so beautifully expressed in two short verses and a bridge - 2:49 minutes of pop perfection. My counsel to young Alex is that it's necessary to feel these things for a while. In time you will discover that September is a long month, and quite a few more September gurls are out there. And just wait until you discover that July gurls truly and deeply appreciate their butches for the long haul. But he won't be able to absorb that, because December boy's got it bad! |
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