| Sonic Youth – Tom Violence Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I don't think it's about heroin or television. I think it's a bit more simple than that, actually. I've been listening to this song repeatedly for the last little while, really getting into it, and I think that, more than anything, it's about domestic violence. In particular, intergenerational domestic violence. The name "Tom Violence" could be anyone, but the fact that "Violence" is apparently a last name links it to family inheritance. A child of violence, if you will---one of the "violence" family, someone whose connection to their parents is "violence." The song starts out with what sounds like a justification for violence with reference to several parallel metaphors. It's a dream, first of all, and then a "real dream"---later, a "thing in my memory holding on for dear life." Anyone who has been abused at an early age knows that it's often hard to remember whether it was real or just a "dream," as in memory everything gets a little hazy. It's also several obscure physical symbols, which also sound like bits and pieces of memories. A "skinny arm," a "sinking head nodding out to rising bliss" (which, in this context, sounds more like a drunken, passed-out parent than a heroin addict). The repeated lyrical references to the father/girl dichotomy reinforce this. "Find it in the father, find it in a girl," "I left home for experience," etc. The ending is very disturbing. "I'm sleeping nights awake"---living and acting out one's dreams, so to speak. "The dream coming out of the girl," is "the thing beating up under my flesh," the uncontrollable, inherited tendency towards violence. I consider this an extremely powerful song about domestic violence, simply because it treats it so personally, so much in the abstract, and with such a sense of horror. Also, call me crazy, but the guitar chords seem (to me at least) to simulate the "as above, so below" theme---at the end, the fast strumming of three higher notes, followed by three lower notes, in succession. |
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| Mr. Bungle – Quote Unquote Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Anyone who thinks this song is actually about John Travolta hasn't read the goddamn lyrics. The song is about some hypothetical gimp, with no arms and legs, who does drugs to escape his reality. In his drug-induced hallucinations he fantasizes about being a celebrity, that's why he's Hitler and Swayze and Trump AND Travolta. All the lyrics support this interpretation (contortions that he can't recall, etc) and the only reason anyone would assume it's about John Travolta is that his name appears in the lyrics and was once the title. |
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| My Dying Bride – She Is The Dark Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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The song is obviously about the black plague. In medieval times, it was a popular belief that there was someone (a witch) responsible for the plague, and that if she could be found and killed, the plague would be ended. I've always felt that this song is toying with that hypothetical possibility, of there being one person responsible for the entire black plague, wandering around and spreading ruin. The only problem with this interpretation is that the song is sympathetic of her. But the narration contradicts itself, saying that mankind will suffer "if she gets her way." It actually reminds me of a scene in Ingmar Bergman's movie "The Seventh Seal," in which the main character, a knight who has just returned from the crusades, sympathetically watches a witch being burned alive, and is powerless to help her. For this reason, I think the narrator is meant to have some irrational love of the woman who is "the dark." Perhaps he's in love with her? Either way, this song is fantastic. |
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| My Dying Bride – Catherine Blake Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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If it interests anyone to know, William Blake's wife was named Catherine. I'm not sure if there's any definite connection, but William Blake was something of a seer who would engrave his visions of angels and devils, accompanying his illustrations with long, complex poems. In his longer poems, he developed a complex mythology that described the creation of the world, not unlike the mythological portion of this song's lyrics about a great rift being born, etc. He even wrote a lot about the female abstract, motherhood, womanhood, et cetera. This song would make a lot more sense if it were about William Blake rather than Catherine, who I don't think was known to have had any such visions. Perhaps MDB thought the song would have more impact if it were a woman rather than a man having these visions? The song certainly benefits from the imagery of the woman tearing at her sheets and beholding terrible visions. The song was obviously inspired by William Blake's poetry, though. |
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| Ween – Buenas Tardes Amigo Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Some good words said about this song. In response to kaboutit's logic: "The line "The people of the village believed me" implies that he fooled them. Why state "they belived me" if its true?" The first time I heard this song, I figured he was referring to the fact that he claimed he would seek out and kill his brother's murderer. This isn't really a dead giveaway, for that reason. My favourite thing about this song is the subtleties in the way it's sung, which aren't easy to explain with direct citations from the text alone. Especially when he says "you, you LOOK like my brother," you can hear his voice tremble, and on the second or third listen you can imagine him pointing a gun the whole time that he's singing, which really works wonders. This song is a beautiful example of how Ween's genre experiments are both parodies and homages. |
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| Violent Femmes – Country Death Song Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I dig aczinke's take on the song. I'd like to add that, while his/her interpretation is sufficient, the greatest irony in this song is the theme of salvation and the afterlife. In the narration, he constantly reminds himself (and literally repeats to himself) that his daughter has nothing to fear from death, and that his killing her isn't so bad because he's only sending her to Heaven. However, when he actually does the dirty deed, we see the lines "I threw my child into a bottomless pit / She was screaming as she fell, but I never heard her hit." This means he was standing there, listening after he'd pushed her, but he couldn't hear her die---all he could hear was her screams fading out. To put it another way, he never heard her actually arrive in heaven, and was left hanging. Incidentally, catholic traditions believe that unbaptized children go not to heaven, but to a place called Limbo, which is neither hell nor paradise but kind of a dark holding-place for souls. This isn't necessarily relevant to my interpretation, but I think it's interesting to keep in mind, and adds a literal dimension to the narrator's wail of "I threw my child into a bottomless pit!" Anyways, the father does not hear his daughter die, only hears her screaming and falling. I think that, at that point, he begins doubting his justification for killing her (that she's going to heaven) and learns too late that there's nothing good about what he did. He kills himself, which according to most Christian traditions guarantees him "his own spot in hell," and is, for him, a "short trip." |
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