Lyrics for Holland, 1945 as interpreted by PLANES

Holland, 1945 Lyrics
The only girl I've ever loved
Was born with roses in her eyes
But then they buried her alive
One evening, 1945
With just her sister at her side
And only weeks before the guns
All came and rained on everyone
Now she's a little boy in Spain
Playing pianos filled with flames
On empty rings around the sun
All sing to say my dream has come

But now we must pick up every piece
Of the life we used to love
Just to keep ourselves
At least enough to carry on

And now we ride the circus wheel
With your dark brother wrapped in white
Says it was good to be alive
But now he rides a comet's flame
And won't be coming back again
The Earth looks better from a star
That's right above from where you are
He didn't mean to make you cry
With sparks that ring and bullets fly
On empty rings around your heart
The world just screams and falls apart

But now we must pick up every piece
Of the life we used to love
Just to keep ourselves
At least enough to carry on

And here's where your mother sleeps
And here is the room where your brothers were born
Indentions in the sheets
Where their bodies once moved but don't move anymore
And it's so sad to see the world agree
That they'd rather see their faces fill with flies
All when I'd want to keep white roses in their eyes

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gleebs
12-08-2001

Rated 0 
this song is about anne frank, i'm pretty sure. this whole album sort of has her as a theme...i don't know, it's kind of confusing. it's probably the best album i've ever heard in my life, though. everyone needs to hear it all the way through at some point. it's indescribible.

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FayeValentine
04-30-2002

Rated 0 
Interesting analysis. I'd always placed a narrative on the entire album...a man looking back on his life before his death ("And one day we will die and our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea"...and the album's title is "The Aeroplane Over the Sea") but I had never associated it with any actual historical figures. Very interesting. Regardless, the song is great, the album is great, the band is great...it's just a masterpiece.

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queenofcups
06-30-2002

Rated 0 
this song for the most part is about, inspired by?, anne frank- jeff mangum has a kind of fascination with her, or so i've read. he is one of the most talented musicians i've ever heard... AWESOME cd, its a necessity to everyone's collection. anytime a friend asks me to recommend a band, its always neutral milk hotel first.

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lefttheretodrown
09-17-2002

Rated 0 
i didn't know what this song was about until i went to amsterdam, holland this summer and visited the anne frank house.. then it hit me like a subway train: anne frank.. good song..

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theradiatorhums
03-03-2003

Rated 0 
yes, anne frank.

neutral milk hotel's lyrics never make much sense to me, but I still adore reading them.
beautiful.

in the aeroplane over the sea is one of the best albums I've ever heard.

"And only weeks before the guns
All came and rained on everyone
Now she's a little boy in Spain
Playing pianos filled with flames"

...gives me chills. every fucking time.

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weezerific:cutlery
03-09-2003

Rated 0 
i love to sing along while listening to this song. it's just that great.

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Anopheles
03-11-2003

Rated 0 
I also think this song is about Anne Frank, but also kind of war in general.

"It's so sad to see the world agree that they'd rather see their faces fill with flies when I want to keep white roses in their eyes"
-seems kind of like people choose death killing and war instead of choosing peace and innocence or 'white roses in their eyes'.

My friend thought the little boy in Spain playing pianos filled with flames might be a reference to someone specific.
Anyone know who?

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dansr
04-27-2003

Rated 0 
is anyone else terribly afraid of being burried alive, with someone else by your side? that part give me the chills. but overall i think its a great song, cant stop singing it!

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vespa
04-27-2003

Rated 0 
very true dansr. i hadnt thought about that. disturbing...but besides that this song is amazing. jeff mangum is pure genius! i love it! WOW!

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vespa
04-27-2003

Rated 0 
very true dansr. i hadnt thought about that. disturbing...but besides that this song is amazing. jeff mangum is pure genius! i love it! WOW!

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ataraxia37
06-24-2003

Rated 0 
I'M the little boy in spain. no, i wish. not a clue. but anne frank wasn't a little boy in spain at any point in her life... maybe after she died. reincarnation?

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DirtyPoonani
04-07-2004

Rated 0 
Interesting. Good song.

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sporkit
05-18-2004

Rated 0 
wow. this is one powerfull song.

i thought it might be written from the perspective of the boy she fell in love with. "The only girl I've ever loved Was born with roses in her eyes But then they buried her alive" didnt he survive the war? Its been years since they made me read the book. i might be wrong.

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HelenaTroy
05-25-2004

Rated 0 
being buried alive is not literal here - I think what he's saying is that taking a 13 year old girl, full of life, and confining her to 2 or 3 rooms is equivalent to being buried alive. Also, the bit about "And it's so sad to see the world agree
That they'd rather see their faces fill with flies " is about anti-semitism. If you've ever seen films of the uncovery of the concentration camps - there were piles and piles of jewish corpses. really horrifying to see. And don't be mistaken, the powers that be knew what was going on in the concentration camps, but they did nothing about it. They could have bombed the train tracks that were taking the jews to the camps. they could have bombed the camps but they (we...) did nothing about it. And jeff is really nailing something. A lot of people hate jews - even people who have never seen a jew. Wierd. Good in yer, jeff.
(my parents are european and they lived thru that war. I heard about it pretty vividly._

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archit84
09-19-2004

Rated 0 
Being buried alive refers to a slow waiting death. A death that you know is coming yet can not do anything about it, this song is dark and sad and true.

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hidispenser
10-24-2004

Rated 0 
One of the most powerful songs of all time. The line "Now she's a little boy in Spain, playing pianos filled with flames" is the line that always moves me. Infact, when playing the song the first time, I wasn't really paying much attention AND THEN I heard that line out of nowhere and decided I had better start listening closer. I always took the song to be about WWII and anti-semitism, but I hadn't put two and two together that it was about ANNE FRANK. Thank you to everyone that pointed this out.

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distopiandreamguy
11-07-2004

Rated 0 
I really do not think this song is specifically about anti-semitism, especially considering the second track on this album. It is merely a coincidence that Anne Frank was Jewish. This could have been written about a little girl in the Sudan. I think the point is that terrible things happen all the time, and to a greater or lesser extent, everyone in the world agrees to letting it happen.

I also think this song is about human resilience. After 9/11, the verse about "picking up the pieces of the life we used to love" was constantly playing in my head. We gotta do what we gotta do "just to keep ourselves at least enough to carry on".

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CrankHeart
12-02-2004

Rated 0 
One of the most powerful, beautiful songs I've ever heard. Nearly brings me to tears every time I hear it.

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pigoinkwhere
01-18-2005

Rated +1 
the 'little boy in spain, playing pianos filled with flames' is Pepito Arriola.

Not alot is known about the life of the musical prodigy. It is suggested that his his history has been obscured or "covered up" for reasons relating to the alleged murder of his female cousin by his aunt. He is often cited as proof of reincarnation:

"At the International Congress of Psychology in Paris, 1900, Professor Charles Richet presented a Spanish child three and a half years old, named Pepito Arriola, who improvised upon the piano rich and varied airs. At the age of four and a half years he played six compositions of his own at the Royal Palace of Madrid before the King and Queen. His harmony was remarkable and his expression marvelous. The young artist has since become and incomparable violinist. The law of rebirth alone can explain many of these cases; their gifts are the results of immense labors which have familiarized their spirits with the arts and sciences."

Also:
"To tell the truth, there is in him a narcotic, it is neither the touch, neither the harmony, nor the agility, but the expression. It has a richness of astonishing expression. That it is about a sad or merry piece, or martial, or energetic, the expression is seizing . Often even this expression is so strong, so tragic, in certain airs melancholic persons or funeral, which one has the feeling that Pepito cannot, with his imperfect touch, to express all the musical ideas which quiver in him: so that I would almost dare to say that he is a much larger musician than he does not appear to be it ..."

Sound familiar?

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lucy3391
01-30-2005

Rated 0 
i really like the intro to this song...

two... one-two-three-four!

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jacky4290
01-30-2005

Rated 0 
I think this song is about anti-semitism, to a point. But he mostly concentrates on Anne Frank. It's even historically correct, as her sister died with her in the concentration camp,
"But then they buried her alive
One evening 1945
With just her sister at her side " ANd she almost got out, but died of typhiod.
This entire album hits me pretty hard and makes me cry sometimes, being Jewish and losing some family in the holocaust. I'm just so glad that someone wrote songs about this.

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whereisjeff
02-22-2005

Rated 0 
being buried alive is absolutely literal. that's how she died... the franks and the van pels began living in the attic before 1945...and "then they buried her alive/ one evening 1945"...see, a few weeks after she died the allied armies freed the prison camp that she was at. "And only weeks before the guns
All came and rained on everyone"

"And it's so sad to see the world agree
That they'd rather see their faces fill with flies "
I think that this image is one of the saddest on the cd. I picture the Nazis heaping the bodies of the jews into a pile and pushing them into a grave. Faces filled with flies....terrible.

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AppleSauceMcgee
02-27-2005

Rated 0 
im still confused about the little boy in spain...

how does it fit in with the theme of the song?

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72telecaster
03-30-2005

Rated 0 
Spanish classical players who were children in 1945 were Jorge Morel and Villa-Lobos. I doubt he is talking about them though.

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candysays
04-17-2005

Rated 0 
He is gotta be talking about Pepito Arrilo. Really interesting post pigoinkwhere! :D Been trying to find facts about Arrilo all evening. Difficult.

Mangum is fuckin brilliant. word can't describe his music!

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