| Josh Ritter – The Temptation Of Adam Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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This song is about the constant battle between ideals and reality. What we wish and what we want against what inevitably will happen. This constant struggle is one of the few things that attaches itself as much to war as much as it does to love, and this song deals with both. I think in the song he represents reality and that Marie represents ideality. He says things like, “I never had to learn to love her/Like I had learned to love the bomb.” Meaning, he used to have these ideals–that war was bad and something we could avoid–but as time raged on, he realized that some things are necessary evils. If he controls the bomb, he has a hand in controlling reality. On the other hand, she “would keep the warhead missile silo good as new.” Even though she’s wrapped up in the war, she still is possessed by ideals and hopes, that idea that we can resolve things without hurting or killing people. And he loves her for that, because she’s different because ideal is more innocent than reality. Reality is harsh, ideals are peaceful. The tense as the song continues changes. Instead of here-and-now present tense, it switches to the conditional tense. He says things like “would” and “could” because he knows the inevitability of reality. That this war is going to end them and end everything. When she goes to sleep he “holds her closer just because” and he thinks about the war and its outcome: “Would we ever really care if the world had ended?/You could hold me here forever/Like you’re holding me tonight.” His temptation is ending the world because right now he feels safe and warm and loved and he knows–like the realist always does–that dying from this is inevitable. And he would rather control when he dies and how he dies. And even though love and war have some of the same issues and problems, in the end it’s better to die in love than in war, and his temptation is choosing that. Choosing his fate and her fate, so in the timeline of forever, for their eternity, they will always be together. If he doesn’t push the button now, their “love with live a half-life on the surface” because they would get ripped apart and probably die separated or worse–alone. It’s the same temptation of Adam and Eve: What’s idyllic versus what’s real. |
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| Owl City – Hello Seattle Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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this might sound beyond strange, but i think that this song is only supposed to seem happy on the surface, something to keep us smiling in listening. i think it's more about the hopsital aspect. he says, "i am a sleeping pill" like something a doctor might use to get a patient to sleep. and how the lighthouse is "red in the morning, blue in the evening son"; lighthouses aren't red and blue, but ambulance lights are. maybe he knew someone who was in the hospital at the time he wrote this. and all of the "hello seattle, i am..." are what they dreamed about beyond life in the hospital. and then it goes, "Take me above your light/Carry me through the night/Hold me secure in flight/Sing me to sleep tonight" which, depending on the context, isn't necessarily happy. maybe they were dying. you know? |
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