submissions
| Death Cab for Cutie – Transatlanticism Lyrics
| 13 years ago
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He's just whining about his girlfriend being in Europe while he's back in the states. Probably some kind of study-abroad, long-distance relationship sob story. Kick her to the curb, bro. Let Jean-Michel comfort her. They've probably been sleeping together for months anyway. |
submissions
| Toad the Wet Sprocket – Whatever I Fear Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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This song is about using self-recrimination as a defense mechanism against taking responsibility for your own life. I don't see it as being about substance abuse, but the psychology of addiction definitely comes into play. |
submissions
| The Jesus and Mary Chain – April Skies Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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This one's written from the perspective of Mary Magdalene, who's upset that Jesus "broke up" with her. Either that or taking crystal meth. Knowing these guys, probably both. |
submissions
| Wilco – Pot Kettle Black Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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My theory is that this is about the breakdown of the relationship between Wilco lead singer Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett, his former songwriting partner in the band who quit (or was fired) during the recording of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Both were very difficult personalities fighting for creative control in the band, In this song, Tweedy, despite his anger at Bennett, is acknowledging how difficult he was to work with himself. |
submissions
| Aimee Mann – Red Vines Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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This song is about being in love with someone who doesn't love themselves and compensates for it by trying to be everybody's best friend. On one hand, the narrator is simultaneously captivated by the fact that this person is charismatic and admired by everyone around them. On the other, the speaker is frustrated about the fact that this person is so miserable, self-critical and difficult to deal with in private. Ultimately, the narrator is helpless to do anything about the situation. |
submissions
| R.E.M. – Radio Free Europe Lyrics
| 17 years ago
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Following on ratanx's point...Michael Stipe has often used striking phrases in his lyrics (or as the titles of songs) that have little connection to the meaning of the song in which they appear. What's the Frequency Kenneth, for example. It's an interesting technique, which is often effective, but one could argue that it's an attempt to add the impression of gravitas to a song that's not really "about" anything, but I don't think Stipe is that cynical. |
submissions
| Death Cab for Cutie – The Sound of Settling Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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It's about committing yourself to a person about whom you don't have strong feelings, and then pondering how unhappy and reduced your life will be with that person, growing bitter, thinking of what might have been, never feeling satisfied, etc. Settling for a C+ life. The voice of self-doubt in the narrator's head: the sound of settling.
By the way, the video for this song furthers the theme: everything gets smaller, boxed in, the smiles more forced, etc. as the song goes along. |
submissions
| Death Cab for Cutie – Crooked Teeth Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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This song is about looking back on a relationship and realizing that you were never really happy with the other person, although there were points in time when it superficially appeared to be OK. |
submissions
| Van Morrison – Sweet Thing Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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This one is about the excitement of falling in love with someone after being alone for a long time following a particularly bad breakup. The narrator is feeling optimistic about life for the first time in a while, and promising himself that he won't go back to the unhappiness he had felt before. |
submissions
| U2 – Running To Stand Still Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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This one's about drugs. When they perform it live, he mimes the act of shooting up. Plus there's all the biographical stuff mentioned above about the housing projects in Dublin, heroin in the city, etc. etc. etc. The metaphor for quitting drugs could apply to extricating yourself from any unhealthy situation in your life and making a new start. But in the strictest sense, this is a song about heroin addiction. |
submissions
| Afghan Whigs – Summer's Kiss Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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This song is about going through a failing relationship and feeling like you've never experienced love. The white light that the narrator stares into is fear of dying without feeling love. |
submissions
| The Clash – Lost in the Supermarket Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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The comment by by Aerion on 04-07-2004 @ 09:09:18 PM gets to the core of what's going on here. It's about reaching a point in your life where you're objectively "OK", but still have all kinds of unaddressed issues with your childhood, who you were, who you want to be, etc. Once your animal/material needs have been met, you start to look inward. Joe Strummer was using Mick Jones' impoverished childhood as a metaphor for this, imagining that once Mick reached a certain level of success in life, he'd still have to sort out all of the issues from his childhood. Brilliant song, really. |
submissions
| The Smiths – There Is a Light That Never Goes Out Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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ShakespearesSister is correct...it's about the complex, intense relationship between Morrissey and Marr. It's not romantic or sexual. The whole business with "my chance has come at last" is about wanting to be in a band, not about wanting to sleep with Johnny Marr. If you read anything about Morrissey's childhood, you'll find that pop music was the most important thing in his life, and that it's just about the only thing he's ever been romantic about.
Often, homoeroticism, gay imagery, etc. are just literary devices in Moz/Smiths lyrics. While some of them may or not be personal, that's not really what's going on most of the time. Mostly Morrissey uses gay culture as a metaphor for outsider culture in a general sense. |
submissions
| U2 – Lemon Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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It's about Bono seeing his deceased mom on video; this is well-documented.
The video is based on the work of Edward Muybridge.
As with the rest of U2's ZooTV/Zooropa stuff, the whole idea of media, virtual realities, etc. comes into play here. In most cases, seeing video footage is a pale stand-in for actual experience, but in the case of this song, it's the closest Bono can get to actually seeing his mother again...It's "Even Better than the Real Thing", get it? This sense of ambiguity and moral uncertainty is part of what made this stuff so impactful at the time of its release, right at the end of the Cold War, etc., etc. |
submissions
| U2 – Numb Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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It's about mind-control and social control via television, a very prominent theme of U2's ZooTV period. The whole thing is an exercise in marxist cultural criticism, which is what the whole ZooTV thing was about...government, business, televangelists, etc. using the media to manipulate public opinion...footage of the Gulf War interspersed with MTV, sports highlights, televangelists, etc...calling the White House every night of the tour, demanding to speak to the President, but never getting through...you get the idea. TV as a layer of virtualization between the viewer and reality. Hence The Edge singing the song instead of Bono.
The song is not about drugs...although you can see Bono and Adam Clayton smoking pot in the background at one point during the video. |
submissions
| U2 – Babyface Lyrics
| 18 years ago
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1) It was Adam Clayton who went out with Naomi Campbell.
2) This song is about pornography.
3) Zooropa is a criminally underappreciated record. |
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