Damn, that explains half of the lyrics I sang along to, back in the 60s…
I love the line from Michael Stipe re: incomprehensibility of REM lyrics. He said something like “The voice is an instrument just like the others, so it really doesn’t matter what I sing. It’s a sound.”
Didn’t they do “Odor of Baloney Fart?” I always thought that was easy to understand.
The time between the notes relates the colour to the scenes
There’s actually a trick to getting them.
Sometimes it’s just words left out. “24 (hours) before (I get to London) my love and I’ll be there with you.”
Sometimes it’s words that don’t mean what you initially think they do. “And rearrange your liver” … not your liver as in the thing that gets messed up if you drink too much, but a thing that lives – like your heart. To complete the line “to the solid mental grace” … in other words it’s going to do you good for your mental health.
Sometimes it’s the most indeterminate words possible. “Faster moment spent spread tales of change within the sound.” A faster moment that has been spent – maybe something jumped into the water suddenly. Tales of change – how about ripples on the surface of the body of water? Within the sound – not sound that you hear but sound as in the body of water.
I’ve always found Jon Anderson’s lyrics to be like British crosswords, with the punning clues and all that. Those also don’t seem to make sense but they do once you know how to process them.
I thought it were about a bass guitar.