| Sufjan Stevens – John My Beloved Lyrics | 3 years ago |
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“Beloved, My John” is the story of how Sufjan Stevens coped with the aftermath of his mother’s death. In an interview with Pitchfork (“True Myth: A Conversation with Sufjan Stevens”), Stevens revealed his distant relationship with his absentee mother, Carrie. Suffering from mental illness, Carrie believed herself to be an unfit mother, and left Stevens when he was an infant. Stevens corroborates: “She left when I was 1... She felt that she wasn't equipped to raise us...she suffered from schizophrenia and depression [and] was an alcoholic. She did drugs, had substance abuse problems. She really suffered…” Despite this, Stevens describes her as a good mother when she was present, and deeply desired to be closer to her. “...when we were with her and when she was most stable, she was really loving and caring, and very creative and funny.” Unfortunately, Carrie was mostly absent throughout Stevens’s life, and contact with her was sporadic until her death. When she was diagnosed with stomach cancer, Stevens met her at the ICU, and was distraught to find how the distance impacted their relationship: “It was so terrifying to encounter death and have to reconcile that, and express love, for someone so unfamiliar. Her death was so devastating to me because of the vacancy within me. I was trying to gather as much as I could of her, in my mind, my memory, my recollections, but I have nothing.” In the aftermath of her passing, Stevens was devastated by the emptiness he felt during their final moments, and the loss of a relationship he could no longer pursue. As a result, he turned to the same destructive behaviors of his mother in an effort to be closer to her: “I was so emotionally lost and desperate for what I could no longer pursue in regard to my mother, so I was looking for that in other places… In lieu of her death, I felt a desire to be with her, so I felt like abusing drugs and alcohol and fucking around a lot and becoming reckless and hazardous was my way of being intimate with her.” However, Stevens quickly learned – or perhaps knew – that this was futile, and was more of a means of “rebelling” or coping with loss. “I quickly learned that you don't have to be incarcerated by suffering… I came to realize that I wasn't possessed by her, or incarcerated by her mental illness. We blame our parents for a lot of shit... but it's symbiotic. Parenthood is a profound sacrifice.” “Beloved My John” walks us through Stevens’s struggle to cope with loss. Speaking to his deceased mother, Stevens divulges how he is destroying himself – through drinking and the misery of reliving the past – in an attempt to get closer to her. In the first verse, Stevens wonders if he will find his mother through his drinking, or by reflecting on the “fossils” of their shared past. He details his actions, his drunkenness (“stumbling words”), his frequency of drinking (“first day of the week”), and the way he reflects on the memory of Carrie (“I read you for some kind of poem”). However, in the chorus, Stevens shows self-awareness and answers his own question with another: “...can we pretend sweetly before the mystery ends?” The “mystery” – of whether he will find her or not at the bottom of the glass or in obsessing over memories – isn’t exactly a mystery. He is tormenting himself, pretending that his self-destruction is a means of getting closer to her, and – as a result – is a shadow of his former self. In a manner of speaking, he is “already dead,” a figurative death being the closest he can ever get to his mother. The following verses are more up to interpretation, and contain cryptic imagery. The second verse could be a message for his mother’s soul to depart peacefully (“follow your gem...”). The allusion to Icarus could also be a message to himself: to follow the path of self-destruction and fly too close to the sun. The following images of “baby teeth” and “blue and red” hills are ambiguous, but could be interpreted as reflections on Stevens's youth, his travels to see Carrie, or just a way of lamenting his suffering (“I’ve wasted my throes...”). Less ambiguous, though, is the motherly imagery of the third verse. The “tongue on your chest” is an allusion to breastfeeding, while “the kiss on my cheek where there remains but a mark” is a fragment from his childhood. The question, “What can be said of my heart?” could be interpreted as Stevens reflecting on his reasoning for wanting to be close to Carrie. Does he desire her simply out of an unconditional, motherly love? Or – if childhood fragments like a kiss on the cheek fade away – is it out of a desire to suffer? There are several ways to read these verses, but it ultimately implies that Stevens is reflecting on his grief, his relationship with his mother, and extracting his own meaning from them. The choruses leave less to mystery. The second chorus states his unconditional love for his mother (“I love you more than the world can contain”). The third chorus closes with the acceptance that his few memories of his mother will continue to torment him (“fossils that fall on my head”). In the end, Stevens resigns himself to the suffering that comes with grief, and ultimately, the state it has left him in. |
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| Radiohead – Codex Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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@nobrainpain, in "Bloom", it's the beginning of a new cycle (hence the title), and the references to water. He has found new life in water. "And while the ocean blooms It's what keeps me alive So why does it still hurt? Don't blow your mind with why." I'd say the last two lines are most explicit in referencing rebirth from a previous cycle. The entire idea of letting go or dwelling on an idea until it is finished makes its real first appearance in the lyrics there. Like any process of mourning or recovery, it ends when it has been dwelt upon to the point that although there are remnants of pain, it no longer deserves reflection. "I'm moving out of orbit Turning in somersaults A giant turtle's eyes Jellyfish swim by" This entire verse is about newfound fascination with life associated with rebirth, and the final reference to water before "Codex". I think life really starts in "Good Morning Mr. Magpie" when he confronts his past with his new perspective. |
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| Radiohead – Codex Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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The more and more I listen to this album, the more parallels I find with the Buddhist spiritual cycle of life, death, and rebirth. I believe this song is about the cleansing rebirth in spiritual death, in that exploring the unfamiliar within ourselves and abandoning our previous shells. If anyone has ever read Siddhartha, after a traumatic event that seems to have scarred the titular character, water usually symbolizes some form of cleansing and rebirth, paralleling baptism - hence "the water is clear and innocent". In that, by "jumping off the end into a clear lake", we shed our previous skin and the burdens of our soul brought about by our mistakes ("you've done nothing wrong"). "No one around" reminds us that this entire process is a personal, spiritual experience, and is wholesome within ourselves. Immediately after, you have "Give Up The Ghost", which is a song about how despite cleansing, it is our previous mistakes that define who we are as people, and how reflecting and dwelling on it is the only way to truly "move on" (which parallels the entire concept of the album in that each song has a short repetitive rhythmic/harmonic idea that evolves over time, staying the same, but different in the end now that it is given new perspective in the end). Then in "Seperator", you have the acknowledgment of this cycle of spiritual life, turmoil, death, and rebirth; even though looking back on the journey makes it feel "like a long and weary dream", the cycle is never-ending, and that "if you think this is over, then you're wrong". Really a fantastic album. Perhaps I'm making these connections because it's associated with my personal perspective on life, but with the title of "The Lotus Flower" being one of the most significant symbols of Buddhism, along with a tracks hinting at cyclical nature of reincarnation: "Bloom" (birth), "Feral" (turmoil), "Give Up The Ghost" (death/rebirth), "Separator" (reflection); I honestly feel like the theme and the message of all of Radiohead's albums has never been so focused. |
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| Radiohead – Give Up the Ghost Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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This song is the pinnacle of the message in this album. The entire span of the album, each song has a repeating rhythmic/harmonic figure that is consistent throughout the song, but evolves over time. This idea of repetition is "haunting" in itself, and relates to the idea of experiences and thoughts. What is "lost and sold" are the pieces of ourselves we have forgotten or chosen to forget, the "pitiful" our regrets, and the "impossible" our personal limits that define us. Even though we dislike characteristics or events in our lives, everything that happens to us becomes apart of us, and as we evaluate ourselves and reflect on our lives, we realize that the things we want to expel or to give up make us who we are. How then can we possibly "give up the ghost", or move on from these thoughts and experiences we'd rather forget, when they become apart of who we are? It is the ultimate irony and truth: we dwell on things and "have our fill" in order to move on, and although we are the same person we were when we endured these events, we have evolved through our experiences and reflections. |
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| Interpol – PDA Lyrics | 14 years ago |
| Dead on. Hitting the head right on the mark. | |
| Interpol – PDA Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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As for the title, "PDA" (Public Display of Affection) is sarcastic in itself. The relationship has gone so far south that the arguments or back-talking between them are their most common forms of expressing their feelings for one other. Kind of like the "nothing fights" that Dane Cook talks about in one of his routines. |
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| Interpol – PDA Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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The song is about a broken relationship with the lyrics directed at the ex-girlfriend/wife, but doesn't deliver it as straight forward as most other songs do. He places a lot of emphasis on the tension between different perspectives, and the cycles most couples fall into whenever it comes to a break up. "Yours is the only version of my desertion that I could ever subscribe to" - The story that the ex tells to everyone, which lays the blame on the singer, has become so elaborate and changes so much that it's like receiving a new magazine about their relationship every month. "That is all that I can do" - The singer can't stop her from talking, or argue anything against her conviction. "You are a past dinner, the last winner I'm raping all around me" - The "past dinner" is a euphemism for an occasion for when the singer did something wrong. The "last winner" is the supposedly truthful and right ex being done wrong by the singer in every possible way ("raping all around me"). "Until the last drop is behind you" - Her story and words about how faulted the singer and relationship is, is like venom that can't be exhausted. It's constantly flowing. "You're so cute when you're frustrated, dear You're so cute when you're sedated, dear I missed you" - This stanza is basically an biting comeback to her true nature. He gives a sarcastic remark about how she's always angry, followed by a not-so-sarcastic remark about how much more pleasant life would be if she would shut up. "I missed you" is basically a sarcastic equivalent of "shut up / way to prove me right / this relationship was destined to fail at the rate you're going at". "Sleep tight, grim rite, we have two hundred couches where you can sleep tonight" - The "grim rite" is when someone is told to sleep on the couch rather than in the bed, which is the biggest flag that something is wrong in a relationship. "You are the only person who's completely certain there's nothing here to be into That is all that you can do" - An explicit fault this time around that points out the ex's constant problem with everything, which is "all she can do" because it's in her nature. "You are a past sinner, the last winner and everything we've come to Makes you you" - After all the arguing and discussion of what went wrong in the relationship, it's boiled down to everything that makes her her: things that she can't change when she is blamed. It's more of a statement about how unwilling she is to change herself for the better, but is completely fine with telling the singer how he needs to change himself. Hypocrisy at its finest. "But you cannot safely say while I will be away That you will not consider sadly how you helped me to stray" - It takes two people to fail a relationship. She can make up all the stories in the world about how the singer was the enemy and the reason for everything to go wrong, but she can't drown out the voice in the back of her head telling her that she drove him away. She didn't do any more to fix the situation than she did to burn their friendship to the ground with her backtalk while the singer has moved on. "You will not reach me I am resenting a position that is past resentment And now I can't consider and now there is this distance, so..." - The singer is tired of hating her, and has figured it's not a fight worth fighting for. The break up has spiraled so far out of control that there's nothing left to save. "Something to say Something to do Nothing to say When there's nothing to do" - Arguing over a broken friendship/marriage gives everyone something to talk about, but when it has turned so for the worst that there's nothing left, there's nothing to talk about anymore. It's just done. I've fallen in love with this song so much that I couldn't help dissect it. I'd say that it's the most true to how life works out sometimes. |
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| Radiohead – Faust Arp Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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For those confused about the lyrics, it's a lot easier to hear from the acoustic "Scotch Mist" version on Youtube. I marked lyrics with a * where people tend to get confused, but they're a lot clearer when heard acoustic. I'd say that this is as close to being correct as I've seen so far. Wakey, wakey, rise and shine, It's on again, off again, on again. Watch me fall like dominoes in pretty patterns. Fingers in the black bird pie, I'm tingling, tingling, tingling. It's what you feel now, what you ought to, what you ought to. Reasonable and sensible. Dead from the neck up, I guess I'm stuffed, stuffed, stuffed. We thought you had it in you but not, not, not, * For no real reason. Squeeze the tubes and empty bottles, I take a bow, take a bow, take up hours. * It's what you feel now, what you ought to, what you ought to. The elephant that's in the room is tumbling, tumbling, tumbling, In duplicate, and triplicate, and plastic bags in * duplicate and triplicate. Dead from the neck up, I guess I'm stuffed, stuffed, stuffed. We thought you had it in you, but not, not, not. Exactly where do you get off, is enough, is enough. I love you but enough is enough, enough of that stuff. * There's no real reason. You got a head full of feathers. You're gonna melt into butter. * |
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* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.