I was listening to this song today and I realized…this is one weird-ass fucking song. What on earth is it supposed to be about? If you listen to the lyrics carefully, it describes a somewhat disturbing situation:
OK, so “Lump” is a woman. Why a woman would have this name, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because she’s a motionless lump, lying there? She’s lying in a “boggy marsh,” and apparently she is…what? Asleep? In a coma?
Might be dead? Maybe that would explain why she’s lying motionless in a swamp.
OK, so this woman is…dumb? Mentally ill? Her brains are apparently somewhat below the standard. Is she brain-dead? What does that third line mean: what small thing? What is the small thing? Is the idea that she’s so motionless that birds could land on her without being scared away?
OK, so she spent her twenties “between the sheets.” In other words, she was very promiscuous, sexually. And extremely dim-witted or possibly mentally retarded. Was she taken advantage of by a lot of men? Was she sexually abused to the point where she’s catatonic, depressed or otherwise in some abnormal mental state?
Wikipedia offers a similar interpretation:
So…this is pretty fucked-up, isn’t it? For such an upbeat, popular song, it’s some really fucked up shit to be singing about. What’s your take on this tune?
the Presidents of the United States of America is one of the greatest bands in history. Wait till I tell you my “workers revolution” theory for Peaches…
As for Lump, I always figured it was about that hippy girl at the concert whose kind of mindlessly rocking out. She’s always there, but when you talk to her you realize she’s not really all that smart and just doesn’t seem very present.
She ends up sleeping with plenty of people, and that kind of becomes her thing- bouncing from house to house. Always just kind of hanging around. But she never seems to do much with her life, and eventually things just kind of of start repeating themselves.
And yeah, I think the author of the song just can’t stop thinking about her for some reason. I always interpreted “she might be dead” as he hadn’t seen her for a while, and given her lifestyle she could well be dead. Who knows, right?
You almost made me spit out this ridiculous acai berry juice and whiskey cocktail I’m drinking! The '90s put out more shit pop music than any decade except maybe the current one and POTUSA was right there on top of the steaming heap. I turned down an invite to go see them for free a couple months ago.
(OK, Lump and Peaches are kind of catchy now but goddamn I hated them and the birkenstock-wearing dickheads who loved them when I was in high school. I cannot think of one person I knew who liked them that did not wear a hemp necklace or have at least one dreadlock.)
Yeah, I feel kinda bitchy saying this, but I hang out with a lot of hippies, and this song doesn’t sound inscrutable to me in the slightest. I think your analysis is right on.
(Not that the song specifies that Lump is a hippie chick, but it sure seems like the hippie community has more than our fair share of Lumps.)
I always thought the line was “Totally emotionless except for her heart”. Learn something new everyday, although I liked my wrong-lyrics line better! Also “between the sheets” (although commonly used to talk about sex) in this context could mean that she’s in a prolonged coma… just a thought.
I have opened a time capsule from 2008. It is odd that the posters didn’t predict the UN declaring Lump to be the greatest song of all time and that it has replaced the national anthems of no less than four countries.
Perhaps earlier commentators missed the revelation c 1996 that POTUSA formed more or less on a dare. Originally formed as an impromptu party band, there was a wager that they couldn’t come up with an album-length of material in an impossibly short period of time. The band won and we have been beneficiaries ever since.* What this tells me: sometimes a catchy silly song is just a catchy silly song, even if it was inspired by a mindless slutty girl who finally settled down.
As for Peaches and Kitty, they have solved the global warming and congressional ineptitude crises respectively. Long live POTUSA.
*There may be a wiki post somewhere that says something different but I am sticking with what I heard on the radio 18 years ago.
I’ve never heard anyone describe workers revolution meaning behind the song. It would be interesting to hear. The lyrics do describe someone else doing the work while someone else eats the peaches, so I guess I could see there being a class message in the song.
I love Lump as a more or less nonsensical pop song - I like the alliteration of the lyrics, but don’t really give them much thought.
My bit of POTUSA is that the guitarist played a 3 string guitar and the bassist played a two-string bass. Less is more - either the song works, or it doesn’t! To me, Lump worked.
We meet our protagonist as he is embarking to his new home outside of the city, presumably on a collective farm. He looks forward to the paradise that awaits, as illustrated in the fanciful image of peaches available to him in unlimited quantities, at no cost. Rather than being sold in distant markets, the literal fruits of his labor are made available to him as a worker. And this is no slave camp. In this farm workers are have the freedom to relax as needed, filled with the bounty of nature and labor.
With that in mind, he takes a moment to contemplate the dignity of the labor that produces this abundance. From his own collective farm to the industrialized factories in urban areas, the humble peach has been turned into a product with great value, in pies or otherwise.
He then thinks of an unspecified woman, who he perhaps left behind as he serves his country. With some lingering emotion, he exceeds power over the peach (and perhaps nature itself), crushing it. Returning to the theme of nature, he then turns the peach into a shelter for ants. This echoes the them of collective labor (like so many busy ants) producing a safe space out of nature’s bounty.
That is an interesting take I haven’t heard before.
My impression is the song was about the nature of parasitic living. Someone else picks and cans the peaches, then the singer eats them for free. The ‘look out’ was about how that system is unsustainable.
