This is almost helping with my homework, but not fully…i dont think, anyway for my art course I am researching metaphors used in song lyrics - and i was wondering if anyone knew of any that they could tell me, like that one in the sterephonics song ‘if i had myself a flying giraffe, you’d have one in a box with a window’.
Any thoughts?
Thanks.
Sure. Well, is a simile ok? Actually, I can give you both in one song.
The U2 song “Tryin’ to Throw Your Arms Around the World” (off of Achtung Baby) contains this simile in the lyrics: “a woman needs a man/like a fish needs a bicycle”.
Also, the title (which is repeated in the song numerous times) is a metaphor. They didn’t actually mean people were trying to reach around the globe, but rather that they’re trying to come to grips with reality/life/whatever.
Tea in the Sahara - Police
Metaphor for sex, you find that there are lots of metaphors for sex in music.
A trip to the fair - Rennaisence (the 70’s art rock group) Mixes images of a drug trip with a fairground visit.
Invisible sun - Police, about the troubles in Northern Ireland, takes some working out.
Love Train - O’Jays
Long Train Running - Doobie Brothers
Weather with you - Crowded House (metaphor weather and mood)
Games without frontiers - Peter Gabriel (Using a gameshow - Jeux sans frontiers - name to illustrate international politics at the UN)
I Know What I Like - Genesis ( so many metaphors here its hard to know where to start)
Summer Breeze - Isley Brothers (metaphor for certain months of the year and his girl)
Castles in the air - Don Mclean (singer is taking stock of his life among the cocktail society and decides its all dreams and falseness)
American Pie - Don Mclean (the all time metaphor song real persons and events in the music industry - lots of poeple try to work out from the clues who the singer is referring to)
You turn ne on(I’m a radio) - Joni Mitchell (treats a little mid west radio station as a person)
Priests of the golden bull - Buffy Saint Marie (uses religion as a metaphor for captialism “they preach from the pulpit of the bottom line”)
You can call me Al - Paul Simon (the whole of the first verse is a metaphor, several metphors, the singer starts off in foreign(to him) circumstances and finds that he does not have any “currency” ie is not streetwise in the ways of that environments)
Some artists you might look out for, since they use metaphor more than most.
Sting also as part of The Police, Paul Simon, Crosby Still Nash and Young(note the suite Judy Blue Eyes), Steely Dan, Donald Fagan, Bob Dillon, Joni Mitchell, Led Zepellin.
Moving this to Cafe Society.
Pink Floyd - The Wall. It’s entire concept is a metaphore. The walls we build around ourselves to feel safe and secure.
Some lines:
Comfortably Numb - There is no pain you are receding, a distant ship’s smoke on the horizon.
Another Brick in the Wall Pt 2 - All in all you’re just another brick in the wall.
Good bye blue sky - Good bye blue sky
Hey You - Can you help me to carry the stone.
The Thin Ice - If you should go skating on the thin ice of modern life.
Every second line in the album is a metaphore for something.
I don’t know about you, but I’m a little teapot.
Chestnut Mare by the Byrds is one long extended sexual metaphor: