submissions
| David Wilcox – Rusty Old American Dream Lyrics
| 2 months ago
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Ever since my parents got traded in their 1963 Valiant, I've cried when we've gotten rid of car. My wife joined me when we gave her Chevy Lumina to a repair shop for parts.
"Rusty Old American Dream" makes me cry too, especially the last verse..and I've gotten old enough that I sympathize even more with the car. How long till I meet the same sad fate? |
submissions
| XTC – Dear God Lyrics
| 11 months ago
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@[ortzman:47432] The Christian God is described as omniscient and omnipotent. According to the Torah/Old Testament, God created the universe. Being omniscient, He presumably knew and knows how everything would/will come out. Being omnipotent, He could do anything needed to get whatever outcome He wanted. Setting things up knowing what the outcome would be is what most folks would call responsiblity. There can't be free will if there's an omnipotent and omniscient God. |
submissions
| Lana Del Rey – Born to Die Lyrics
| 1 year ago
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@[jpaige:47072] There are definitely religious references: "Was blind but now I see" from "Amazing Grace", and maybe "When I was a child, I thought as a child..." from the Bible. |
submissions
| Weird Al Yankovic – Mission Statement Lyrics
| 1 year ago
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"Mission Statement", as the title suggests, is a send-up of jargon-laden corporate mission statements. Ironically, it does it in the musical style of CSN[Y], who are about as far from corporate as it gets.
I may not recognize all the CSN[Y} songs referenced, but "Carry On", "Deja Vu" (the section starting "At the end of the day..."), and "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" certainly are. |
submissions
| The Association – Cherish Lyrics
| 1 year ago
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@[mentally:44497] Yes... and just seeing the lyrics in print doesn't show the great vocal harmony. I especially like the last verse, where someone's singing a descending G scale of just the sort that you'd expect to be played on tubular bells. (Actually, the bell motif goes clear through it--notice the backing vocals "bong bong" on F and C at the very start.) |
submissions
| The Association – Cherish Lyrics
| 1 year ago
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@[mentally:44496] Yes... and just seeing the lyrics in print doesn't show the great vocal harmony. I especially like the last verse, where someone's singing a descending G scale of just the sort that you'd expect to be played on tubular bells. (Actually, the bell motif goes clear through it--notice the backing vocals "bong bong" on F and C at the very start.) |
submissions
| The Association – Cherish Lyrics
| 1 year ago
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@[mentally:44495] Yes... and just seeing the lyrics in print doesn't show the great vocal harmony. I especially like the last verse, where someone's singing a descending G scale of just the sort that you'd expect to be played on tubular bells. |
submissions
| Kate Bush – Delius (Song of Summer) Lyrics
| 1 year ago
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"Fenby" is Eric Fenby, a musician and composer who served as Delius's amanuensis (an assistant, often one who transcribes things--Leonhard Euler, the great mathematician, had one so he could keep setting down the theorems in his head when he went blind). The "ta, ta-ta" is Delius trying to get across a part to Fenby. It took a while for them to settle in on a way to do the job, which perhaps is why the "In B, Fenby!" sounds rather irritated. The Wikipedia page on Delius says "The [third] violin sonata incorporates the first, incomprehensible, melody that Delius had attempted to dictate to Fenby before their modus operandi had been worked out." |
submissions
| October Project – Take Me As I Am Lyrics
| 2 years ago
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It was only recently that I found out this song was inspired by Anne Rice's vampire novels... and then the light came on, you should pardon the expression.
"Even if you shine a light into the mirror
You won't see me any clearer..."
I slapped my forehead. What don't vampires have? Reflections! |
submissions
| Vienna Teng – The Hymn of Acxiom Lyrics
| 2 years ago
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@[vhk:40674] I\'m not sure about the endlessly upward world. What\'s endlessly going upward is the amount you spend to satisfy that newborn need. What\'s in your pocket? Your wallet, where your money, credit cards, and identification is, the target of a pickpocket. A con artist takes a mark for all he or she is worth, i.e. absconds with all the mark\'s money. |
submissions
| The Klezmatics – Come When I Call You Lyrics
| 2 years ago
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This is a beautiful but very disturbing song. It turns out that it, and the other Woody Guthrie lyrics on the Klezmatics\' Wonder Wheel album, weren\'t recorded during Guthrie\'s lifetime, so I guess we\'ll never know what melody Guthrie may have thought of for the song.\n\nIf it sounds familiar, it\'s because it has a familiar structure. It\'s a cumulative song, one where each verse after the first has one more line or phrase than its predecessor. Think "Twelve Days of Christmas", "The Rattling Bog", or for prose, "The House That Jack Built" or "I Knew an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly".\n\n(I have to admit that being a big SCTV fan, I thought it was "Seven for the continents blowed up", but with closer listening I think it\'s "blown".)\n\nThe Klezmatics give these lyrics a sinuous Middle Eastern beat. I dearly wish some belly dance troupe would do a video dancing to it, but global thermonuclear war just isn\'t what people dance to. Like the fifth day of "The Twelve Days of Christmas", the 5:30 line stands out from the rest melodically. |
submissions
| Zager and Evans – In the Year 2525 (Exordium and Terminus) Lyrics
| 2 years ago
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Call me a techie, but even in 69, I could not stand this self-righteous neo-Luddite song. When I came across _Dave Barry\'s Book of Bad Songs_, I was pleased to read that a group that made a point of playing bad songs to get a rise out of the audience reported that the most extreme negative reaction always came with "In the Year 2525." |
submissions
| Art Garfunkel – Mary Was an Only Child Lyrics
| 2 years ago
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A gorgeous song. I guess I lean towards either early music or music that\'s more ambivalent than the usual modern Christmas music, sort of the musical equivalent of Eliot\'s "Journey of the Magi".\n\nAbout the lyrics--does anyone know the lyrics to the countermelody for the last verse? |
submissions
| The Association – Six Man Band Lyrics
| 2 years ago
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The "seventeen jewels that dictate the rules" are the jewels of a mechanical watch movement. What fraction of today\'s population recognize the reference? </get_off_my_lawn> |
submissions
| Bad Lip Reading – La Fway Lyrics
| 2 years ago
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This is a hilarious send-up of all the horrible renditions of the National Anthem that are more an ego-trip for the singer than a performance in honor of the nation. I say these singers suffer from "acute melismatosis". Since the lyrics don't matter to them, it might as well be the lyrics we hear here. |
submissions
| King Harvest – Dancin' in the Moonlight Lyrics
| 2 years ago
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There's a video (with Dutch subtitles) of an interview with Sherman Kelly, the composer, about the song. Turns out he wrote it after a terrible night on an island where he and a woman were attacked--a way to turn it into something positive. The URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFVUU3R1aSQ |
submissions
| Fleetwood Mac – Oh Well (Part 1) Lyrics
| 3 years ago
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A really great song that wouldn't go over well in this age of "safe spaces" and the like. That kind of honesty, from a person or even more so from God (like the Total Perspective Vortex on major steroids), isn't appreciated--so I'm glad it was written when it was. |
submissions
| Steely Dan – Everyone's Gone to the Movies Lyrics
| 3 years ago
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@[makebusy7:35929] Back in the day, the high end movies were on 35 mm film (35 mm still cameras took advantage of that size of film); the next level down was 16 mm; I expect that the films they'd show us in school were 16 mm). The real cheap stuff used for, among other things, the material Mr. LaPage showed, was 8 mm. Smaller film, lower effective resolution.
So if you watched better quality films, you'd be used to "16 or more", i.e. 16 mm or larger film. |
submissions
| Stephen Bishop – On and On Lyrics
| 3 years ago
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@[comesailaway:35679] Of course you can't literally steal the stars from the sky atop a ladder. I don't know whether he's doing it so everybody else will be as sad as him or whether he'd like to put them on his ceiling like those glow-in-the-dark stars you can get to put on your ceiling... but if you aren't too familiar with Sinatra, he sang some seriously melancholy songs that you could listen to and cry. I'm no Sinatra expert, but "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)" leaps to mind. From a little research, _In the Wee, Small Hours_ is a full album of the songs Jimmy might be listening to. |
submissions
| Joni Mitchell – Dancin' Clown Lyrics
| 3 years ago
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This is a song that doesn't need a video; it almost is one. Joni *cast* Billy Idol and Tom Petty as Rowdy Yates and Jessie, and the result is wonderful. |
submissions
| Dead Can Dance – Sanvean Lyrics
| 3 years ago
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Actually, it's not an instrumental; Lisa Gerrard sings lyrics in a idioglossia that she's developed over a long time. |
submissions
| 3 Blind Mice – Watchstar Lyrics
| 5 years ago
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I'm an atheist, but I like a lot of religious music.
I'm a sucker for just about all early music, including religious. When it comes to modern religious music, I'm less a fan of over the top praise and more into songs that recognize that we still have problems, sort of a musical equivalent of T.S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi". Art Garfunkel's "Mary Was an Only Child" is a good example (and the segue into "Woyaya" is a brilliant choice). I also like love songs that leave the question open: are they singing about eros or about agape? Foreigner's "I Want To Know What Love Is" is a good example of that.
All that said, I think 3 Blind Mice's "Watchstar" is my very favorite modern religious song. It's beautiful, it doesn't proselytize, and still suggests that perhaps there is some reprieve. The turning of "O Come All Ye Faithful" on its head is well done, and reminiscent of The Bobs' "Yule Man vs. The Anti-Claus" with "Leon the Last"
(as opposed to the first Noel) plotting at the South Pole on June 25th. |
submissions
| Godley & Creme – Get Well Soon Lyrics
| 6 years ago
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This song is written from the POV of someone who's ill, ill enough to have to go to the hospital (or as G&C would say, go to hospital). His main companion is an AM radio, which he listens to Radio Luxembourg on. Radio Luxembourg was an AM station based in Luxembourg that targeted the UK--and being outside the UK, it could bypass UK laws giving the BBC a monopoly on radio and forbidding advertising. It broadcast on a wavelength of 208 meters (hence "Fabulous 208", a magazine associated with RL), or for us Americans, 1440 KHz. Radio Luxembourg inspired the pirate stations that broadcast to the UK in international waters. One such station was Radio Caroline, which the song mentions.
Speaking of 208--there are a lot of RL jingles on YouTube, but a VERY cursory scan of just a few doesn't turn up anything resembling G&C's "Fabulous 208" in the bridge that morphs into "contagious flu cold faint". Anyone out there know whether they were inspired by a particular jingle?
The character is not feeling well at all--he can't even turn the radio off. All he can manage to do is glug down his Lucozade, a Japanese Gatorade-like beverage marketed as an energy drink for the sick in the UK that this poor guy doesn't even like. He calls it "hospital champagne", something that one might drink for a toast, hence "Charge your glasses, Radio Luxembourg" (to charge one's glass is to fill it or have it filled so one can drink a toast).
AM is a lot better for DXing (hearing distant stations) at night, and the European peninsula is pretty small by US standards. 800 miles east as the crow flies takes you from England to Belarus and Ukraine, and 1000 miles would take you at least to Moscow. If you do much AM listening at night in the US, you know that it's trivial to hear stations that far away or further at night (especially the "clear channel" 50 kW stations)--hence the "lousy words and bad percussion/fading in and out of Russian" as stations go on and off the air, ionospheric conditions change, and radio component values drift with temperature changes.
It's a battery-powered radio--we know because of the possible coincidence of its "Ever Ready heart" (the batteries, presumably from Eveready) stopping when the character the singer represents gets well. |
submissions
| Jerry Jeff Walker – London Homesick Blues Lyrics
| 7 years ago
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Gary P. Nunn is country's Noel Coward when it comes to witty songwriting, as you can see from this song.
Either he does his research or he's been to England, as you can tell from the second verse:
"...and where in the world is that English girl
I promised that I'd meet on the third floor?"
is exactly what would happen to an average American guy in England, because the English call what we call the "first floor" the "ground floor", what we call the "second floor" the "first floor", and so on, so that English girl is probably right over his head wondering the same thing about him.
A gem of a song. Well done, sir! |
submissions
| Hem – Half Acre Lyrics
| 8 years ago
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@[dackycat:7457] I can sort of see that--maybe "Paprika Plains" is a little like it in style and subject matter--but I'd say the overwhelming musical influence is Aaron Copland, who wrote music that people recognize and claim as essentially American. This song is American in the same way "Appalachian Spring" is. |
submissions
| Billy Joel – She's Always A Woman Lyrics
| 10 years ago
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"That's the kind of love I think all women dream about finding." That's scary. All women want men that they can be cruel to with impunity? I hope not. Toggle the genders and you have the stereotypical abusive husband and rationalizing wife. |
submissions
| Pearls Before Swine – The Jeweler Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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The religious allusions are beautiful: "blood flows from his hands" (stigmata?), the use of ashes to make coins shine (suggesting Ash Wednesday, perhaps? No spit involved, but the ashes are mixed with olive oil so they stay on one's forehead). |
submissions
| Judy Collins – Since You've Asked Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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I would bet that this song has been sung at at least as many weddings as Noel Paul Stookey's "Wedding Song". It's a bride's vow to her husband-to-be (and what she expects in return--vide the next to last line). |
submissions
| Deep Purple – Smoke on the Water Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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Richie Blackmore points out something interesting in view of his current work in the early music-inspired Blackmore's Night: the famous riff from this song is in strict organum--parallel fifths, a staple of early polyphony but to be avoided under the rules of harmony that came to be in the West after the Renaissance. |
submissions
| Melanie Safka – Lay Down (Candles in the Rain) Lyrics
| 14 years ago
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The inspiration for the song was what she saw when she performed at Woodstock: it rained, and afterward people lit candles. The imagery is vivid throughout--and I can certainly understand how the images of sharing blood and catching the same disease would, these days, make one think of AIDS, though given the song's time and the context, I think the "disease" is the desire or the motivation to work for peace.
I can't think of this song without the spoken intro that was the B-side of the single; the FM stations I listened to at the time never played the song by itself.
"Little sisters of the sun
Lit candles in the rain
Fed the world on oats and raisins
Candles in the rain
Lit the fire to the soul
That never knew its friend
To be there is to remember
Candles in the rain
So lay it down, lay it down,
Lay it down again
Meher Baba lives again
Candles in the rain
Men can live as brothers
Candles in the rain" |
submissions
| Laura Nyro – Map to the Treasure Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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Remember that ST:TNG episode, "Hide and Q", in which Riker is given the power of the Q. At one point he materializes a Klingon woman before Worf as a potential mate? Worf declines, and the woman is taken away. Someone asks Worf "is this your idea of sex?" and he replies "This IS sex, but I have no place for it in my life now."
This song IS sex. The structure of the song is that of sexual intercourse (a venerable tactic; recall side two of Steppenwolf's _Second_, Ravel's _Bolero_, Bob Cook's "Love is a Verb", and probably many others I don't know about--maybe even _Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis_?!), and the lyrics match the music; lazily erotic at first, then increasingly insistent until the climactic cry of "love...", and a recapitulation afterwards (the refractory period?). |
submissions
| The Association – Requiem For The Masses Lyrics
| 15 years ago
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The Schaumburg, IL High School Choir web site has a page, http://www.shs.d211.org/music/choir/terrykirkman.htm, about a concert they did in 2003, in which RftM was one of the songs. Terry Kirkman, the composer, wrote them about the song's inspiration and history.
The immediate inspiration was a harrowing flight to Milwaukee during a snowstorm the group took.
he antiwar overtones of the song led radio stations to start to put it in serious rotation (it was the "B" side of "Never My Love"), but, Kirkman says, the Nixon White House called Warner Brothers Records asking that they not promote the song, and they complied... and this fine song faded from sight. |
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