| The National – Fireproof Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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Matt Berninger focuses on conveying certain feelings, emotions or moods with his lyrics; not worrying about coherence or meaning. I think this is what makes them so intriguing, genius, subjective, and hard to talk about. Still, I'll give it a shot... The music and the lyrics harmoniously lead the song's mixed emotions that involve love, loss, longing, envy, desire, disappointment, acceptance, anger, etc. through a gentle roller-coaster ride in this song, in my opinion. While the chorus keeps bringing everything back to the same rational level, the verses in-between express the raw, strong emotions. [Also, Matt B. writes the lyrics FOR the music, getting cues from the music, so musical progression usually tells half the story.] Those lines you ask about have a cathartic, confrontational and climactic power built upon the sentiment expressed in the previous lines: "You´re a million miles away; it doesn't matter anymore..." Shrugging and giving up, on a rational level, while burning on the inside... So, he strikes back with: "Jennifer, you are not the only reason; my head is boiling and my hands are freezing," in order to claim his life back, diminishing whatever role she has had in causing the emotional turmoil. "You do not have that much power over me," is what he uses to complement "it doesn't matter anymore." Of course it does matter, but he takes a stand: Baby steps in getting that fireproof hard shell... |
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| Crystal Castles – Transgender Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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Nihilism and a bleak, morbid world view inspire the lyrics through gloomy, mysterious and cathartic whispers, mumbles and screams: Here is the harsh truth; do you dare face it and keep on? "Will you watch petals shed from flowers in bloom?" is the cruelly crucial question: Can you accept the alive and the dead, life and death together? Does the awareness that in the end there is nothing but death affect or change the way you look at things in front of you right now? Once you know that everything you are and will ever be is doomed to end, "you'll never be pure again". Merciless, concise, and true... |
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| The National – Graceless Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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This song for me is about facing one's own mortality, contrasted with the complications of being alive here and now. It takes a bold and conscious change in perspective, i.e. "walking though the windows", to see the big picture of life and death. Going through daily life is a graceless endeavor by definition, and Matt Berninger expresses his frustration and sentiments related to the nagging urge to change this, as well as the unpleasantness of having to accept certain things. "I'm trying, but I'm graceless Don't have the sunny side to face this I am invisible and weightless You can't imagine how I hate this" The trick to set oneself free is a bold change of perspective, going off the beaten track, "through the glass" and not the door, and perhaps a little madness: "I'm trying, but I'm gone Through the glass again Just come and find me God loves everybody, don't remind me I took the medicine and I went missing" Wherever he is in life, mentally and emotionally, he knows God still loves him, and sounds happy and confident, with a deeper understanding of life. "Now I know what dying means", he utters as he reaches an epiphany about his own mortality. "It's the side effects that save us" is yet another insight about life, about how the unintended or the negative sometimes end up being essential and miraculous. "Put the flowers you find in a vase" is a plea to value and savor the beauty of being alive, to seize and enjoy the moment. Yet, he emphasizes that to be able to truly reach that understanding one has to let go of worldly concerns, by uttering: "If you're dead in the mind it will brighten the place". However no matter how enlightened one might feel after reaching an epiphany about life and death, it doesn't come that naturally, nor is it easy. "There's a science to walking through windows", he repeats, referring to breaking free and choosing one's own path, in this case the windows. This is especially hard to achieve all alone, hence he adds "...without you" in the final line. A sincere confession that bares his soul as just another lonely human being who ultimately needs someone to share this insight to be able to truly feel and enjoy it... |
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| The National – Fireproof Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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Matt Berninger yearns for a hard-shell that would shield and protect him from strong, at times painful feelings and nagging thoughts associated with caring about someone special... He openly envies the tough, resilient, 'fireproof' nature of the woman who caused him pain and left him with a broken heart. He regrets opening up as much as he did, as he verbalizes with the remorseful "You keep a lot of secrets and I keep none. Wish I could go back and keep some." "You tell me you’re waiting to find someone who isn’t so hopeless", he utters calmly in an attempt to face the harsh cold truth himself. "There’s no one", he continues, in a sincere disbelief that it can be humanly possible to be immune to the emotional consequences of opening up and letting someone in. "How’d you get so far?", he asks in a partly rhetorical manner. It might be his belief that possessing that hard-shell and being 'fireproof'' comes naturally with one's emotional evolution. He tries to rationally get over his still-alive feelings for the one he cannot let go, by affirming and reminding to himself that "You’re a million miles away; it doesn’t matter anymore..." Self-aware and with his heart on his sleeve, he can see things as they are, but his feelings do not always cooperate. "Jennifer, you are not the only one to sit awake until the wild feelings leave you", he cries out softly at a climatic point. It is a confident moment of reassurance that he is not alone, and she too must have suffered from feelings, which he tries to relate to... "I wish I was that way", a sincere wish to be immune to certain feelings is right on point and ends the song on a high note, which the ongoing music carries on until the very end... |
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| Tame Impala – Why Won't They Talk to Me? Lyrics | 10 years ago |
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Raw, confessional and candid demonstration of the train of thought and the roller-coaster emotions that accompany rejection and a wounded sense of self... How to make sense of it all and deal with that nagging feeling of knowing you are not wanted anymore, or at all? Kevin Parker smoothly leads us through the lonely inner process of trying to make sense of the world and the self once again with a bruised ego and shattered hopes that unsettle one's coherent look on life... Through its extended, musically and lyrically progressive opening, the song carries us along from the initial confessional "I'm so alone" to the dismissive "I don't need them, and they don't need me", towards more practical "I guess I'll go home, try to be sane; try to pretend none of it happened", to self-pitying "Lonely old me" in one breath. It escalates up to cathartic outbursts of hurt feelings and a demand for answers in the heartfelt and repeated "Why won't they talk to me?" This catharsis runs its course, calms down and leads to the climatic "But I don't really care about it anyway..." The truth is that he does care, and no matter how much he tries to be dismissive of the significance of what he has been denied, we know it is untrue -- so does he... Hence, the seamless transition to the raw cries of: "Why won't they talk to me?", encore... The song is an honest, unpretentious exercise on the oscillation of feelings associated with being cast out and left alone with an aching ego... Hurting, disappointment and pain lie underneath the surface, pronounced especially with the repeated yet subtly confessional "I thought I was happy..." Even though the superego takes over to 'win' it for him in spite of everything, with the best-revenge-is-living-well idealization that is "One day I'll be a star and they'll be sorry", the overwhelming emotions that accompany rejection and the nagging question of "why" end up taking the center stage 'till the end. He runs, but cannot hide from a hurting, bruised ego, and his threatened sense of self and the world, so he cries out... |
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| Beach House – Lazuli Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| This song is a "mood piece", conveying a mood and certain feelings through music and not so much with the words. The sight of Lapis Lazuli, a beautiful, rare, blue-colored stone has inspired this song, as the band openly stated. The starting point was a feeling evoked by sight, with the intention of passing it on through music. And Lazuli pulls it off... | |
| Beach House – Zebra Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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I feel that the song conveys a strong feeling of safety and reassurance... The nature and progression of the music adds meaning to the words, by painting the lyrics with affection and optimism. A soft, soothing, almost lullaby-like, simultaneously energizing and relaxing beat is established in the first seconds, and is maintained until the very end. When the drums finally kick in, softly, and in perfect harmony with the guitar, the established beat improves without changing. The music tells us that there's no rush, no pressure, and no uncertainty, through its calm, yet firm and steady beats that exude joy and a sense of safety. These unchanging, yet progressively improving beats act as grounding stimuli, such as the tic-tac of a clock. The music escalates, and gets richer without compromising its original nature; it surrounds and wraps, yet does not overshadow the vocals. Ongoing harmony, paired with the upbeat, optimistic mood, simultaneously comforts, captivates, and leads to an atypical catharsis, in which the music winds down and ends, but its contagious optimism remains in the air... |
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| The National – Apartment Story Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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This song is extremely alluring and seductive, but plays it cool, calm and steady... For keen listeners, it does create an alternate reality, a scene to complete the music and the lyrics. Memories of own comfort-seeking behavior fills in the blanks, and builds the apartment... A blissful but lethargic couple hibernating under blankets, finding solace in music and each other. The window allows a peek at windy and snowy NYC streets. The stereo, TV, and the couch are all they need, have and care about. Happy times... Isolation and ignorance (i.e. rosy-minded fuzz) lead to bliss, which calls for more isolation and comfort-seeking. A vicious circle of deliberate hibernation... How did they get there? "Be still for a second while I try and try to pin your flowers on Can you carry my drink I have everything else I can tie my tie all by myself" "I’m getting tired, I’m forgetting why" Relentless routine, life itself, slowly but eventually wore them down... And they came to accept it as it is... "Tired and wired we ruin too easy sleep in our clothes and wait for winter to leave" They used to know better than to "do whatever the TV tells" them; but have lost faith in everything, and chose to keep living the easy way, on their own... Since everything they ever worked for, aspired for, loved and desired have dived off the balcony... "Oh we’re so disarming darling, everything we did believe is diving diving diving diving off the balcony" So why not? A stereo, TV, a couch, and a companion to wait out the cold winter, in the cozy apartment. Sounds like a story... |
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| The National – I Need My Girl Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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Homesickness and the longing for the love and the life left behind, as painful as it is, combined with solitude, does open occasional doors to soul-searching and self-discovery... All the doubts, worries, thoughts get tangled up in his mind -- all the verses seem to be written down as small notes on different, unrelated occasions. Fleeting thoughts, moments, observations, memories... So the yearning for home, nostalgia, where everything is familiar and simple, is what keeps him sane when everything around him, including himself, are at the verge of falling apart... |
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