| Steely Dan – Glamour Profession Lyrics | 9 years ago |
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A lot of people miss the "thing" about this song. There's a perfection here. Each word is ideal. It's not just a word that works, or rhymes... it's perfect. Jive Miguel isn't in from Columbia, he's in from Bogota. Say that out loud. Bogota. Great word. He didn't drive the car, or the Chevy, or even the New Yorker... he drove the Chrysler. They didn't have Chow Mein Noodles. They had Szechuan dumplings. Over and over again. The whole song. Each word is the only possible word that could be used. And the way the music builds and builds, but never resolves. When I play this loud on my stereo (Which is amazing. No, seriously amazing.) I get a chill, then a chill on the chill. Literally a shiver down my spine that doesn't stop. Layer after layer of perfection. God that's a great song. Maybe the best Steely Dan song of all, and that's saying something. |
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| Soundgarden – The Day I Tried to Live Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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Maybe I've always heard it wrong. I thought near the end it said "I learned that I was alive" soon followed by "on the day I tried to live just like you". In other words, one day I tried to live like you, thinking I had been missing something. But what I discovered was that I wasn't missing anything after all. And it's a cooler way to put the song together if you think about it. It seems to make no sense - the day I tried to live all kinds of terrible things happened. But at the end we discover that we've haven't been given the whole line. Dunno. I like mine better. |
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| M.I.A. – Paper Planes Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| So, it's a catchy song. Really. I like it. But can we stop pretending it's some commentary on modern day immmigrant woman power blah blah blah. It doesn't take a lot of digging to figure it out. All she wants to do, you see, is shoot people and rob them. Not particularly deep. Give me a break with all this nonsense. It's a gangster song. About as insightful as N.W.A.'s F tha Police. | |
| Soundgarden – Pretty Noose Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I like Soundgarden, but am not an expert on the band. Listening to how much different this album is, it's clear there was something going on that was pulling them in another direction. As I understand it, Chris and Kim had different ideas. I think Kim wanted to contiune down the path that had brought them more fame while Chis wanted to scale it back and do some more straight ahead rock. This album is the result of Chris' idea. Again, I could have that wrong, people who know the band better should chime in. That's what this soung sounds like it's about to me. That's what I always assumed, anyway. The pretty noose is the seductive sheen of pop music that made them big stars. Chris wants to move away from it. I'll spare you a line by line. If you look at it that way, I think it works. Of course, it's a rock song, so it's always analagous to a sexual relationship. |
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| Delerium – Stopwatch Hearts Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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Yeah, the prostitution bit is pretty clear, but it's not *about* prostitution. It's about the business men who solicit prostitution and their hears that tick, not beat. As in, they're mechanical, not emotional. It's a derisive statement about those people and their lives. The song is cast in the voice of a prostitue who loves to see the "party starved" business men come in because she knows they're good for some money, yet, she clearly doesn't approve of their live decisions. The judgment being made by someone of "questionable morals" is all the more stunning. |
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| R.E.M. – Fireplace Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| This is a fantastic song. One of my favorites from REM. I believe it's about acceptance and letting go. Accept all as it is and throw your construction into the fireplace. Really great song and well crafted. | |
| Pixies – Monkey Gone to Heaven Lyrics | 13 years ago |
| Yeah, this makes sense. But I don't think the "underwater guy who controlled the sea" is some kind of worker. I believe he's referring to Neptune. If Neptune is the “spirit of the sea” who was killed by the sludge from New York and New Jersey it fits perfectly with your interpretation of the song. I’m a go with that. | |
| Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – The Mercy Seat Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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I don't know how this one could have gotten past me, but I just discovered this song. I guess everyone else already knew this, but clearly one of the master works of the era, and the amazing cover by Cash will likely seal it as an all-time classic. I want to share some of my thoughts about this song, but I don’t have time to write this as well as I’d like. Please forgive its excessive length. First, a note on the music. It's very unusual for a song from the rock tradition. No verse course arrangement, just a building repetition, interrupted early in the song by narration in the same voice. Clearly a product of its time, the studio version is produced as an “alternative” cut with a pretty typical post-punk sound. It’s almost like no one quite knew what to do with this song, including, one assumes, Cave himself. It takes a few listens for it to sink in that there is something much deeper going on here than the style initially suggests. In later, live versions, Cave seems to have come to grips with exactly what he has here and performs it in a more fitting way. That’s not to take anything away from the studio version. The kind of weird juxtaposition of substance and style make it something that you have to discover and lets you go deeper into the song with repeated listens. The work it takes to pick through the pop veneer makes you appreciate your discovery that much more. The construction of the song has a great trick that is remarkably effective. The chord progression itself is wonderful, but it’s eight measures long, and seven of them build a tension that is only briefly resolved by the eighth before it immediately returns to uneasiness. It makes the whole song feel incredibly intense and unrelenting, which is analogues to the subject: a man on death row awaiting the electric char. Which brings us to the lyric. There have been great song writers whose lyrics stand alone as poetic statement, but this has to be one of the best bits of poetry in its own right released on a rock record. It’s possible that I want it to be even better than it obviously is, but I read a little more into it than some. In the beginning monologue he proclaims his innocence, or at least sort of. “Of which I am nearly wholly innocent, you know”. Later he talks about his hands and fingers, one evil and one good, of which he observes “That filthy five! They did nothing to challenge or resist”. As if to proclaim his innocence, blaming the whole incident on these filthy five fingers. Tellingly, it is the “kill-hand” that “Wears a wedding band that's G.O.O.D.” He calls the ring “a long-suffering shackle collaring all that rebel blood”. I read all of that to give an ambiguous meaning to guilt or innocence. A man, maybe not cut out of the same cloth as everyone else, doing his best to live as society dictates but finding himself unable to live up to the expectations. It’s a cognitive dissonance that eventually plays out in murder, but a murder this complex man does not blame himself for. This is a character that lives uncomfortably in a world not of his making. And as such, death can almost be welcome, a sentiment repeated throughout the song. The middle verses about Jesus are the key to the whole thing, I think. He notes the irony that Christ was born and then, after making a life as a carpenter, he is crucified on a work of carpentry. He paints, quickly, a view of Jesus as another character who wasn’t able to live as others expected and ultimately met the same fate he himself awaits. He then goes on to further identify himself as a Christ figure by noting that He now sits on his heavenly throne, but down here it’s made of wood and wire, an obvious reference to the electric chair he will soon take his seat in. But what to make of that last line: “But I’m afraid I told a lie.” I don’t think this is a confession of guilt. That’s already happened, really. We know he did it, and we know he did it for no reason anyone else could call “motive”. So what’s the lie? I think there’s a clue in the verse structure. The line comes in the same resolve measure that’s repeatedly told us “I’m not afraid to die”. A man who has lived his life with conflicting thoughts once again has to face the fact that what he’s told himself to be true may not be. As he climbs into what he’s convinced himself is the mercy seat, he realizes that he actually is afraid. Weather he means it the way I hear it or not, it’s difficult to argue that this song is anything but brilliant. Clearly one of the best songs of the era, maybe one of the best rock songs ever. As an observation at the end of a review about a song that deals with death, I’d say this to Nick Cave. Walk through life confidant that, in a world of mortal men, you have made a mark that transcends mortality. A true masterpiece that will leave a strong legacy. |
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| XTC – Season Cycle Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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One of several song in which Andy explores religion and God. I think the key line is in the bridge. "I really get confused on who would make all this is there a God in Heaven Everybody says join our religion get to Heaven I say no thanks why bless my soul I'm already there!" I believe he's commenting on how hung up people are on God and Religion in hopes of an after life where they will be in Heaven, when all the while the miracle of life and the Universe is unfolding before them, yet they are too busy to notice. |
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