Deconstructing songs I don't understand.

[Biggirl]

After listening to Spandau Ballet’s True and Earth Wind and Fire’s Reasons many, many times, I find that I cannot make heads or tails of what these songs are trying to say.

Here is my attempt to take these songs apart and glean the True and deep Reasons.
True

*So true, funny how it seems
always in time but never in line for dreams
Head over heels and toe to toe
This is the sound of my soul
I bought a ticket to the world
but now I’ve come back again.
Why do I find it hard to write the next line
Oh, I want the truth to be said

After trying sanity and being dissapointed by it, the singer discovers he likes to fight and listen to Soul II Soul while writing lyrics. This distracts him.

*With a thrill in my head and a pill on my tongue
dissove the nerves that have just begun
Listen to Marvin all night long
This is the sound of my soul.

So he (the singer) turns to Marvin Gaye and drugs-- yet he still hears the club music.

*Always slipping from my hands,
sand’s of time on it’s own
Take your seaside arms and write the next line
Oh, I want the truth to be known

You (the listener) need to bathe and finish doing your homework because time is short.

My conclusion: People who listen to this song need to take a bath, listen to some R&B and do drugs.

Reasons

*Now, I’m craving your body: Is this real?
Temperature’s rising, I don’t wanna feel
I’m in the wrong place to be real.
I’m longing to love you just for a night
Kissing and hugging and holding you tight
Please let me love you with all of my might.

I want to have sex with you.

*Reasons, the reasons that we are here.
The reasons that we fear our feelings wont disappear

I’m afraid I’ll be horny forever.

*Oh, after the love game has been played.
All our illusions are just a parade.
And all our reasons start to fade.

After we have sex, let’s go down to 5th Ave and watch the St. Paddy’s day parade.

*And, in the morning when I rise
no longer feeling hypnotised.
I find my reasons, my reasons, my reasons
Have no pride.

Do you wake up with morning wood?

*After all the reasons why
All the reasons were a lie.
After all the reasons, love was pushed aside

Can’t we just have sex?

My conclusion: I want to have sex with you, then I want you to go away after we watch the parade.
I dunno. These songs seemed so much deeper before.

[KneadToKnow]

I think it’s “Head over heels when toe to toe,” and while I don’t understand the song any better for that information, I’ve always admired the courage of any writer, song or otherwise, to put down on paper the line, “Why do I find it hard to write the next line?”

I think it’s about a guy who’s in love but doesn’t want to say the words, even though he wants to tell the truth about how he feels.

[auntie_em]

Slight hijack:

I took my E W & F album for Show and Tell in kindergarten, and played Reasons for my class.

My teacher must not have understood it either, because she only played the first verse before she took the needle off the record, handed it back to me, and never let me Show and Tell again.

Now, with all due apologies for not being able to help you, Big Girl, I’d like to throw another song into the Deconstruction Mix for your consideration, one that’s been driving me crazy for years…

Waiting for the break of day
Searching for something to say
Flashing lights against the sky
Giving up I close my eyes
Sitting cross-legged on the floor
Twenty-five or six to four

Staring blindly into space
Getting up to splash my face
Wanting just to stay awake
Wond’ring how much I can take
Should I try to do some more
Twenty-five or six to four

Feeling like I ought to sleep
Spinning room is sinking deep
Waiting for the break of day
Searching for something to say
Twenty-five or six to four
Twenty-five or six to four

Never mind the sounds of a cat being tortured towards the end of the song… what the hell does it MEAN???

[Green_Bean]

*Originally posted by auntie em *
**
Never mind the sounds of a cat being tortured towards the end of the song… what the hell does it MEAN??? **

It’s a song about writing a song. Or rather, being up in the middle of the night but being unable to write a song. So, he’s trying to stay awake, trying to get the song down, and he’s really frustrated.

[auntie_em]

*Originally posted by Green Bean *
**It’s a song about writing a song. Or rather, being up in the middle of the night but being unable to write a song. So, he’s trying to stay awake, trying to get the song down, and he’s really frustrated. **

OK, I can get with that, but:

a) Sounds like he’s having a HELL of a time (sounds, in fact, more like a bad trip or the flu than like an attempt to write a song), AND

b) What does “25 or 6 to 4” mean?

[Tretiak]

*Originally posted by auntie em *
**
b) What does “25 or 6 to 4” mean? **

Doesn’tit refer to the time? 25 or 6 to 4 in the morning?

[KneadToKnow]

Yep. It’s easy to misunderstand because the rhythm of the song creates a false division. It sounds like he’s singing, “twenty-five … or … six-to-four,” but it is indeed “twenty-five or -six … to four,” as in 3:34 or 3:35. The same way you might say, “He was middle-aged, forty-five or -six.”

[auntie_em]

*Originally posted by Tretiak *
**

Doesn’tit refer to the time? 25 or 6 to 4 in the morning? **

I’m still a little lost. If 6 to 4 means that it’s currently 3:54 a.m., OK. If it means he’s been awake from 6 pm to 4 in the morning, OK. If it means he’s been awake from 6 am the previous day to 4 am today, poor sucker, but OK.

But the 25 fits nowhere in any of those equations.

Maybe I’m just bad at math.

Now I’m feeling guilty for hijacking this thread, so Big Girl…

I think the bit about illusions being a parade has something to do with an acid trip. When they start “coming down” from it, each suddenly realizes the other is butt-ugly, thus the reasons they had sex in the first place (because while they were hallucinating, each saw the other as a beautiful, magical princess) “start to fade”.

All the reasons were a lie, as it were.

[Biggirl]

Well, auntie em, what do you expect the teacher to do when the first verse asks her to have sex with you?
Twenty-five or Six to 4 are the odds that Mike Piazza will get hit in the head at any given moment.

(It is either twenty five minutes to 4 or twenty six minutes to 4. It’s late, his eyes are blurry, he can’t see the clock too well.)
Nights in White Satin, a Klan orgy?

*Breathe deep in the gathering gloom
Watch lights fade from every room
Bedsitter people look back and lament
Another day’s useless energy’s spent
Impassioned lovers wrestle as one
Lonely man cries for love and has none
New mother picks up and suckles her son
Senior citizens wish they were young
Cold-hearted orb that rules the night
Removes the colors from our sight
Red is grey and yellow white
And we decide which is right
And which is an illusion?

I think the lonley man, the senior citizen and the bedsitter are all the same guy, upset that he has to do the one-handed love lube all alone yet again.

[auntie_em]

*Originally posted by KneadToKnow *
**Yep. It’s easy to misunderstand because the rhythm of the song creates a false division. It sounds like he’s singing, “twenty-five … or … six-to-four,” but it is indeed “twenty-five or -six … to four,” as in 3:34 or 3:35. The same way you might say, “He was middle-aged, forty-five or -six.” **

OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH my God…

I get it now. I really GET it! Holy crap, I feel like a new woman! I have a new outlook on LIFE! My rebirth has begun in the blessed warmth of The Light!!!

Still, I would have been spared A LOT of wasted brain power had the motherfucker just sang,

“It’s a-bout quarter to foooo-OOOOO-OOOOOOOOOUR!”

It works rhythmically, and my life would be so different now.

[Gundy]

Regarding the Chicago song, the Master covered it here. It’s not any different than what’s been said here, though…but that’s the first time I’ve gotten to do that! Whee!

[Why_A_Duck]

First person to mention American Pie gets a visit from “Knuckles” if you know what I mean.

Wait a minute? I mentioned it!
Ow. Hey. Stop that. No, I didn’t mean me! Ow.

[Spoons]

“Nights in White Satin” a Klan orgy? Ummm…no.

First of all, you’ve listed the spoken-word outro from the Moody Blues’ Days of Future Past album. While “Nights” did appear on this album, and just before the spoken word outro, it is important to remember that there was a spoken intro to the album as well–remember such lines as, “Wake up your steeds. Bring the warmth the countryside needs”? The spoken intro and outro “bookend” the concept of the album.

Days of Future Past is a concept album–it is (to me, anyway), the Moody Blues’ rendering of an ordinary day, told musically. Other songs on the album include “Peak Hour” (morning rush hour), and if I recall correctly, "Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)), which is about the afternoon. In this context, “Nights” is about night.

What about night? Listen to the lyrics:

Nights in white satin, never meaning to end,
Letters I’ve written, never meaning to send…
And I love you…"

My take is simply that the songwriter is lamenting a lost love.

The spoken outro (again, this is my impression) lists things people do at the end of the day: feed the kids, make love, think and reflect on what might have been had the day (or one’s life) been used more wisely. Maybe some are doing the “one-handed love lube,” but this is not explicitly stated.

The word “bedsitter” does not refer to a person; rather, a bedsitter is a kind of apartment: a bed-sitting room, or more commonly in my neck of the woods, a bachelor apartment. Thus a bedsitter person is one who lives in a bedsitter, or more likely one who lives alone in a small apartment because they have nobody with whom to share their lives.

[Biggirl]

I’ll give 25 or 26 to 4 that someone will take my silly deconstructions seriously.

For a more recent song, what about Feel It, which contains this chorus:

*What’s she gonna look like with a chimney on her?
What’s she gonna look like with a chimney on her?
What’s she gonna look like with a chimney on her?
What’s she gonna look like with a chimney on her?

I think the singer is threatening to knock a chimney on the “other woman”. Or she’s inviting her to dance across the English rooftops with Dick Van Dyke. Either way, I don’t understand it.

[whitetho]

*Originally posted by Gundy *
**Regarding the Chicago song, the Master covered it here. It’s not any different than what’s been said here, though…but that’s the first time I’ve gotten to do that! Whee! **

I hate to be picky, but “mailbag” reports are not written by Uncle Cecil, but instead come from specially deputized assistants to The Master, in this particular case “SDSTAFF Songbird”.

[easy_e]

Well, last semester my roommates and I seemed obsessed with making fun of “Africa” by Toto. I dug up the lyrics and posted them by the phone, and we wrote our comments all over them. I’ll try to remember as much as possible:

I hear the drums echoing tonight
But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
She’s coming in, 12:30 flight who’s coming?
The moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation

I stopped an old man on the way
Hoping to find some long forgotten words or ancient melodies
He turned to me as if to say,
“Hurry boy, it’s waiting there for you” what’s waiting there for you?

(Chorus)

It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa we found other lyrics that say “miss” or “pass”. WTF is it?
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had, oooh

The wild dogs cry out in the night
As they grow restless longing for some solitary company
I know that I must do what’s right
As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like a Olympus above the Serangetti that takes the grand prize as the stupidest line from a song ever
I seek to cure what’s deep inside, frightened of this thing that I’ve become what have you become?

(Chorus)
It’s gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There’s nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa, I bless the rains down in Africa
I bless the rains down in Africa, I bless the rains down in Africa
I bless the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had, oooh why are you blessing the rains, because they seem to be delaying the 12:30 flight?

There was more too it, but I can’t remember. I guess we had a bit too much time on our hands.

[Gundy]

*Originally posted by whitetho *
**I hate to be picky, but “mailbag” reports are not written by Uncle Cecil, but instead come from specially deputized assistants to The Master, in this particular case “SDSTAFF Songbird”. **

Ah, the hell with it then.

Jeez, and I noticed the signature, too.

[ShibbOleth]

Biggirl wrote:

What’s she gonna look like with a chimney on her?
What’s she gonna look like with a chimney on her?
What’s she gonna look like with a chimney on her?
What’s she gonna look like with a chimney on her?

…I don’t understand it.

I’ve always taken this to mean that:

She’s a brick
house
She’s mighty mighty, lettin’ it all hang out

YMMV

[riserius1]

*Originally posted by auntie em *
**

OK, I can get with that, but:

a) Sounds like he’s having a HELL of a time (sounds, in fact, more like a bad trip or the flu than like an attempt to write a song), AND

b) What does “25 or 6 to 4” mean? **

Okay, here’s the scenario: A guy(the author/narrator) is tripping on acid. He has been grooving on said acid most of the night and is overwhelmed by the experience. He looks over at the clock; because his vision is askew because of the acid, he cannot tell if it says 3:35 or 3:34a.m. In other words, it’s 25 0r 6 to 4(if you read it as 25 or 6 'TIL 4 it makes more sense).
This is the explanation I read in an interview with Robert Lamm, the songs author.

Hope this helps

Chris W

[JohnBckWLD]

Originally posted by Spoons *
remember such lines as, “Wake up your steeds. Bring the warmth the countryside needs”? The spoken intro and outro “bookend” the concept of the album.*

No matter how you slice it, it’s not as (dare I say corny) as “In the Beginning”, from On the Theshold of a Dream…the intro to “Lovely to See Again”

First Man: I think, I think I am, therefore I am, I think.

Establishment: Of course you are my bright little star.
I’ve miles
And miles
Of files
Pretty files of your forefather’s fruit
And now to suit our
Great computer
You’re magnetic ink.

First Man: I’m more than that, I know I am, at least, I think I must be.

Inner Man: There you go, man, keep as cool as you can.
Face piles
Of trials
With smiles.
It riles them to believe
That you perceive
The web they weave
And keep on thinking free."

I have a hunch Chicago wasn’t the only band doing acid back then. Everytime I hear it, I’m reminded of some really bad dialouge from an off-off-off-Broadway play.