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I saw her, yeah I saw her with her black tongue tied
Round the roses
Fist pounding on a vending machine
Toy diamond ring stuck on her finger
With a noose she can hang from the sun
And put it out with her dark sunglasses
Walking crooked down the beach
She spits on the sand where their bones are bleaching
And I know I'm gonna steal her eye
She doesn't even know what's wrong
And I know I'm gonna make her die
Take her where her soul belongs
And I know I'm gonna steal her eye
Nothing that I wouldn't try
My sun-eyed girl
My sun-eyed girl
I saw her, yeah I saw her with her hands tied back
And her rags were burning
Crawling out from a land filled life
Scrawlin' her name upon the ceiling
Throw a coin in a fountain of dust
White noise, her ears are ringing
Got a ticket for a midnight hanging
Throw a bullet from a freight train leaving
And I know I'm gonna steal her eye
She doesn't even know what's wrong
And I know I'm gonna make her die
Take her where her soul belongs
And I know I'm gonna steal her eye
Nothing that I would not try
My sun-eyed girl
Round the roses
Fist pounding on a vending machine
Toy diamond ring stuck on her finger
With a noose she can hang from the sun
And put it out with her dark sunglasses
Walking crooked down the beach
She spits on the sand where their bones are bleaching
And I know I'm gonna steal her eye
She doesn't even know what's wrong
And I know I'm gonna make her die
Take her where her soul belongs
And I know I'm gonna steal her eye
Nothing that I wouldn't try
My sun-eyed girl
My sun-eyed girl
I saw her, yeah I saw her with her hands tied back
And her rags were burning
Crawling out from a land filled life
Scrawlin' her name upon the ceiling
Throw a coin in a fountain of dust
White noise, her ears are ringing
Got a ticket for a midnight hanging
Throw a bullet from a freight train leaving
And I know I'm gonna steal her eye
She doesn't even know what's wrong
And I know I'm gonna make her die
Take her where her soul belongs
And I know I'm gonna steal her eye
Nothing that I would not try
My sun-eyed girl
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First verse -- giving the listener a portrait of the girl in first impressions.
"Black tongue tied round the roses" -- not sure what this means literally but it's consistent with the developing motif of opposite forces bound together. A black tongue could relate to spite and anger while roses are usually indicative of love and romance.
"Fists pounding on a vending machine" -- feelings of frustration, futility, yearning for something something that you can see and almost touch but can't quite reach.
"Toy diamond ring" - a symbol of love and commitment, but it's fake. This might represent some kind of token compliance to societal ideas about relationships.
"With a noose she could hang from the sun / And put it out with her dark sunglasses" -- whose point of view are we seeing here? Is this the girl's thoughts, contemplating suicide, or does this represent the speaker's vision of the girl as a symbol of self-destructive greatness? A noose might symbolize self-harm, or it might symbolize group violence - it's not usually a murder weapon except for institutionalized killing (e.g. execution, lynching). This might represent how by dying at the hands of society the girl could become a powerful, destructive symbol. Hanging from the sun implies having a grasp on things that are normally out of reach -- the sun is normally regarded as belonging to the inaccessible realm of the gods.
"Walking crooked down the beach / She spits in the sand where the bones are bleaching" -- the image of bleaching bones conveys a powerful sense of death and time. Perhaps this act of spitting is defying time and the inevitability of death.
Chorus -- introducing the relationship between the narrator and the girl
"And I know I'm gonna steal her eye" - The narrator hopes to catch the attention of this girl. The use of "steal" rather than the more common "catch" implies something stronger, though, as though the narrator is deliberately framing this as wrongdoing on his part. It also suggests that the narrator is more in control of the situation than the girl, more aware of what he is doing.
"She doesn't even know what's wrong" - despite the symbols of chaos and destruction in the previous verse, the girl is unable to fully understand the forces at work in her own life. In some ways she is portrayed as a kind of elemental force, blindly powerful, something natural and largely unconstrained by society.
"I know I'm gonna make her die / Take her where her soul belongs" - This is probably where the stalker/killer hypothesis comes from, but that's too obvious and it doesn't really fit. What does this mean, then? Perhaps the narrator is aware that a relationship between him and the girl is doomed to end in tragedy, and somehow feels that this is ultimately the right thing to do.
"Nothing that I wouldn't try" - in the context of the other lines, the narrator is saying that even though he knows that "stealing" the girl's love will send her further down the path of self-destruction, he's still willing to do it. Note that the narrator takes a kind of detached view throughout the song. We hear a lot about the girl but not much about the narrator. In the same way, he's taking a detached attitude to their relationship, knowing it will end badly but initiating it anyway.
Second verse -- more about the girl's life
"With her hands tied back, her rags were burning / Crawling out from a landfilled life" - the girl has experienced hardships in the past. The beginning image is of a survivor of some disaster - tied hands, burning clothing. The phrase "landfilled life" indicates a past buried beneath garbage. Through these lines we get a sense of the girl's past, full of captivity (tied hands), destruction (burning rags), and collapse (landfilled life). This might specifically refer to past relationships or other features of the girl's past. We get the sense that while the girl has survived all of this, she has not escaped entirely unharmed.
"Scrawling her name upon the ceiling" - leaving her mark on the world. Names and identities are closely related - this shows that the girl is still asserting her identity despite the harshness of her environment.
"Throw a coin in a fountain of dust" - the analogy is to a wishing well, but instead of a well which provides life-giving water, the fountain is full of dust, conveying a sense of dryness, sterility, and eventual oblivion (like the phrase "dust to dust" -- this harkens back to the spitting on bones in the first verse)
"White noise, her ears are ringing" - a sense of chaos and frenetic action, also of being partially unaware of the outside world due to excessive experience. Another interesting combination of opposites where hearing too loud a sound results in temporarily not being able to hear at all.
"Got a ticket for a midnight hanging" - not sure what this means
"Throw a bullet from a freight train leaving" - a sense of one final act of revenge before abandoning a bad situation. Again we get the sense of the girl as a wild, unpredictable, potentially dangerous force. She has just escaped from one bad situation and is heading straight for the next one (e.g. her relationship with the narrator of the song)
Repeated chorus - again, the narrator is aware of the girl's troubled past yet still decides to pursue her, probably for selfish reasons.
I'm pretty sure the repeated phrase is "My cyanide girl" although it's possible that Beck intended it to be ambiguous. "Sun-eyed" would fit with the overall theme of the song in that the girl is portrayed as fiercely alive and perhaps half-blinded by the chaos in her life. "Cyanide" could indicate a suicide which the narrator seems to indicate is what will ultimately happen to the girl. Even "summer" could fit in, indicating that the narrator wants to enter a relationship with the girl yet still remain detached and aloof as he (I assume the narrator is male) has throughout the song.
To conclude, the song seems to be about a girl who has a troubled history. The narrator expresses his intention to begin a relationship with the girl even though this will probably eventually cause the girl to commit suicide.
my...girl
just like that: dot dot dot. it would appear: he wanted us to be forced to guess.
I confess to being shocked when I first paid attention to the lyrics. not that I've never heard anything dark before...but when you're listening to Swans does the music t sound like sunshine lollipops and lemonade? so yeah. the contrast (tone of lyrics vs. melody/arrangement) is uh...there.
I believe than this song mean about a guy who stalks a girl in a obssesive way.
But, anyway, good song.