| Hozier – Take Me to Church Lyrics | 7 years ago |
| @[loore8251:16201] You must not have seen the YouTube official video. | |
| John Grant – Marz Lyrics | 7 years ago |
| @[hestebjeff:16179] Silliness and lack of subtlety really DO get a lot of up-votes. If you were just a LITTLE clever..... | |
| Pete Townshend – Rough Boys Lyrics | 8 years ago |
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to Flyersfan below:"He almost looks the part of early 80's gay men-very thin, shaven, short hair.". Say, we wouldn't be indulging in gay stereotyping, would we? If so, stop it! I find the comments on Rough Boys here and on YouTubes posted by straight people who go to impossible lengths to deny that their beloved Pete could, ugh, actually want to have sex with another man, to be very funny. There is something called Occam's Razor in philosophy which is basically, "Don't look for complicated explanations when simple ones are staring you in the face." To a gay man the meaning of this song is laughably obvious. And what I read about Townshend, he originally acknowledged that the song was about sex with men, but he got so harassed by the British tabloids who just would not let it go and move on that he took to denying it. But homophobia is all gone now, isn't it? Yeah, sure. |
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| Pete Townshend – Rough Boys Lyrics | 8 years ago |
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@[Flyersfan:11477] "He almost looks the part of early 80's gay men-very thin, shaven, short hair.". Say, we wouldn't be indulging in gay stereotyping, would we? If so, stop it! I find the comments on Rough Boys here and on YouTubes posted by straight people who go to impossible lengths to deny that their beloved Pete could, ugh, actually want to have sex with another man, to be very funny. There is something called Occam's Razor in philosophy which is basically, "Don't look for complicated explanations when simple ones are staring you in the face." To a gay man the meaning of this song is laughably obvious. And what I read about Townshend, he originally acknowledged that the song was about sex with men, but he got so harassed by the British tabloids who just would not let it go and move on that he took to denying it. But homophobia is all gone now, isn't it? Yeah, sure. |
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| Bruce Springsteen – My Father's House Lyrics | 8 years ago |
| @[myfriendbrenn:11471] I agree. For me this song is about loss of Faith. It reminds me of Matthew Arnold's poem "Dover Beach," and James Joyce's short story "Araby" from Dubliners. | |
| Mark Weigle – These Lips of Mine Lyrics | 8 years ago |
| These lyrics may strike some of you as extremely gross. When you actually hear Weigle sing the song, you understand. The music is unmistakably an evangelical southern US church hymn, and as such, makes the song extremely funny. It is, in short, an in-your-face, middle-finger-to-the-sky to those religious groups that devote themselves to attacks against the LGBTI community--like the Westboro Baptist Church and so many others. If you are a humourless homophobe you will hate the song. This song is from his album "SoulSex" and is available on iTunes. | |
| Townes Van Zandt – Pancho & Lefty Lyrics | 8 years ago |
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This is Van Zandt's rendering of Pancho and Lefty. Van Zandt wrote the song, and explains a little about this before he begins to sing. You all know the song very well. I am posting Van Zandt's version here because you may not have heard it, and, after all, he is the composer. If you look up this song on YouTube, I ask you not to be fooled by Van Zandt's pose as an awh-shucks simple Texas cowboy as he speaks a little before he sings.. The lyrics of P&L are not naive by any means. The song it comes close to, or surpasses, is Ode to Billy Joe by Jeannie C. Riley. (Billie Joe is basically an entire Carson McCuller novel in 3 and a half minutes.) Everybody and his brother has posted here about P&L. They all say the same thing—they notice the hopelessly obvious, and think that they were the first one to see it-- that Lefty turned Pancho into the Federales for money, went back to Cleveland where he now leads a desperate meaningless life because he was such a rat to turn in his friend for money. Hello? That is obviously the meaning of that part of the song. I suggest that is not the real question about the song. NOR do I wonder if Pancho and Lefty were more than friends. That is gay wishful thinking. Of course Pancho is good and noble, handsome and sexy and probably fantastic in bed, but that isn't the issue. So what is the issue? you ask. The song is in two parts. The actual Pancho/Lefty narrative is the second part. The first part is this: Living on the road my friend Was gonna keep you free and clean Now you wear your skin like iron Your breath's as hard as kerosene You weren't your mama's only boy But her favorite one it seems She began to cry when you said goodbye And sank into your dreams The Pancho/Lefty narrative is the dream. Notice that the singer does NOT say “She began to cry when you said goodbye/ and rode away into the West.” Instead, he moves inward—he “sank” into his dreams. And the song is sung to a third person, who the singer refers to as “my friend.” I offer 2 possibilities for the relationship between the 2 parts of the song. 1) The “friend” began life with optimism and his own Hollywood-style Western movie certainties about life being morally clear and easy to confront, only to realize how, at least for him, it ends up in compromise, uncertainty and emptiness. The P/L story is then an illustration of this—the “friend” started life out as Pancho and ended up as Lefty. This is the interpretation I think most of you will adopt. I am wondering about another possibility. When I first heard the song I was immediately reminded of Conrad Aitken's short story Silent Snow Secret Snow. In that story a boy, confined to bed, probably schizophrenic, each day listens for the footsteps outside of the postman approaching his house. At first he hears them from far away as the snow begins to fall. Then, as the snow gets deeper, gradually he only hears them as the postman is closer, each day closer, until at the end he cannot hear them at all, and he loses all connection with reality. With the song we have an analogous situation with the son gradually changing from a person open to the world to one losing touch with reality and slipping into a dream—the dream of what life should be like, where good guys wear white hats and bad guys wear black ones. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zprRZ2wFQD4 |
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| Matt Alber – Handsome Man Lyrics | 8 years ago |
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This is a comment I left on YouTube for someone who just didn't get the song or the official video connected to it: "HANDSOME MAN Response on YouTube Perhaps your problem is that you don't understand what Alber is trying to do with the song and the video. But first, the song is not “flat” nor, for most people, “annoying.” Alber is a conservatory-trained musician, a counter-tenor (an extremely dificult range to handle), and he does it well. On all his albums his professionalism and skill show through all the time—especially the sophistication of the orchestration. This song IS simple; what's wrong with simple? Complexity does not mean better. The real issue is what the song and video (they DO go together) are trying to say. The point is that there is a mismatch between what we hear and what we see—or is there? The lyrics are lush, gorgeous, very sweet and romantic—exactly the language you would expect to hear from, say, Romeo and Juliet: overdrawn, even excessive, because R&J are young teenagers involved in their first real love affair—you expect and want lush and excess. But what we see are 2 older men, Alber (the guy who stays in bed) and his lover. “We've both been loved, and we've both been kissed,” that is, they have both been around the block. They aren't so handsome, they aren't so young, and they know the world the way it really is, but they are so very much in love. Alber is not describing reality, he is telling us how much he loves his partner. If you knew Shakespeare, you could compare the language used in Romeo and Juliet between the lovers and that in Antony and Cleopatra: A&C are deeply in love too. But they are older, they know the world the way it is, yet still they use the gorgeous, lush, language more appropriate the naive teenage R&J. David, for those of us who have “...both been loved and ...been kissed” Alber reminds us that intense love and passion are still possible for us too. Perhaps when you get a little older, and hopefully, a little wiser, you will understand this, and you will not criticize us for wanting and having this same depth of passion, or at least recogizing and rejoicing in it when we see it in other, more lucky, men. |
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