In regards to the meaning of this song:
Before a live performance on the EP Five Stories Falling, Geoff states “It’s about the last time I went to visit my grandmother in Columbus, and I saw that she was dying and it was the last time I was going to see her. It is about realizing how young you are, but how quickly you can go.”
That’s the thing about Geoff and his sublime poetry, you think it’s about one thing, but really it’s about something entirely different. But the lyrics are still universal and omnipresent, ubiquitous, even. So relatable. That’s one thing I love about this band. I also love their live performances, raw energy and Geoff’s beautiful, imperfectly perfect vocals. His voice soothes my aching soul.
Gotta tell you what I heard
From agent orange
Mister suntan
Mister happy man
Mister I know the girls on all the world tours
Mister agent, yeah
He's my favorite
And they don't understand
He's got palm oil pants
Yes, he's down and there and everywhere
He's getting in too deep in this
Underwater city where she swims and swims
From agent orange
Mister suntan
Mister happy man
Mister I know the girls on all the world tours
Mister agent, yeah
He's my favorite
And they don't understand
He's got palm oil pants
Yes, he's down and there and everywhere
He's getting in too deep in this
Underwater city where she swims and swims
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Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman
"Fast car" is kind of a continuation of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run." It has all the clawing your way to a better life, but in this case the protagonist never makes it with her love; in fact she is dragged back down by him.
There is still an amazing amount of hope and will in the lyrics; and the lyrics themselve rank and easy five. If only music was stronger it would be one of those great radio songs that you hear once a week 20 years after it was released. The imagery is almost tear-jerking ("City lights lay out before us", "Speeds so fast felt like I was drunk"), and the idea of starting from nothing and just driving and working and denigrating yourself for a chance at being just above poverty, then losing in the end is just painful and inspiring at the same time.
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Lord Huron
Lord Huron
This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
Gentle Hour
Yo La Tengo
Yo La Tengo
This song was originally written by a guy called Peter Gutteridge. He was one of the founders of the "Dunedin Sound" a musical scene in the south of New Zealand in the early 80s. From there it was covered by "The Clean" one of the early bands of that scene (he had originally been a member of in it's early days, writing a couple of their best early songs). The Dunedin sound, and the Clean became popular on american college radio in the mid to late 80s. I guess Yo La Tengo heard that version.
Great version of a great song,
Magical
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
How would you describe the feeling of being in love? For Ed Sheeran, the word is “Magical.” in HIS three-minute album opener, he makes an attempt to capture the beauty and delicacy of true love with words. He describes the magic of it all over a bright Pop song produced by Aaron Dessner.
"There’s one called Agent Orange. Naturally, if we're talking about the boy/girl matrix, there's going to be a war zone at some point in our story...and we go into Agent Orange. If we're gonna have a war, we have to bring warfare in. I decided to make him a bodybuilder because that memory has to transmute also - the skin. To become like tango, the idea of tang, or the idea or orangina, an orange muscle secret agent who we long...that song, Agent Orange is the one o'clock cabaret moment, where you're had a couple of amarettos on the rock, and there's just a sadness. But you know that sadness when you know your relationship is over and you're still alive? You know you're not dead. You've got all your body parts. You're all there. You've got a date. He's got a new love...(long dreamy pause)..and you go on with it." -- Tori; Musician, May 1996
"There's certain times when I wanted the listener to just lay there. With Agent Orange, I was hoping you could see this orange-bodied muscle man, and give yourself a giggle so that we'd transform this being from a mutilated skin person to Orangina. It's the idea of becoming Tang - transmuting the chemical effect. You can't forget that happened - you can't forget the warfare. So, of course there's that level. I just had to bring it in. I decided to bring it in as a muscle man." -- Tori; Aquarian Weekly, 02/21/96
Sorry, this song HAS to be about her bodyguard Joel. Especially the "Mister I know the girls on all the world tours" plus the physical description comes pretty close too :)
Agent Orange is the code name for a powerful herbicide and defoliant used by the U.S. military in its Herbicidal Warfare program during the Vietnam War. Agent Orange was used from 1961 to 1971, and was by far the most used of the so-called "rainbow herbicides" used during the program. Agent Orange (as well as Agents Purple, Pink and Green) contained dioxins which have caused serious harm to the health of exposed Vietnamese, Australians, Canadians and Americans, as well as their children and grandchildren.
does the "palm oil" hands refer to napalm then? to carry on the bio/chem weapons theme?
I met Tori Amos when she had her bodyguard Joel with her and introduced him to me and the other fans waiting to meet her before her gig in Sheffield when From The Choirgirl Hotel came out. She dragged him over and said, 'THIS is Agent Orange' and they openly joked about his fake orange tan. It definitely makes sense she is talking about him.