Song lyrics: clear yet incomprehensible?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

In Flames can be pretty cryptic at times.

I know this is about man being ‘centered’ on failure but it is pretty out there…

Gyroscope from the Whoracle album:

Geology is digging through my brain
a manta engulfing the world
to throw it up once again
to a guild of lifted daggers

Neo-wolf, but older again
than the Lupus itself
linked its fur to the gyroscope of time
a collection of failures

A diabolical sequence of stabs
written in cunning stones
from the fossilised den of thieves
our lives die

Neo-wolf, but older again
than the Lupus itself
linked its fur to the gyroscope of time
a collection of failures

I see the nursing all-mother
spitting out a trail of termites
in the mouth of her first-born hope
breasts ripe with smog-filled rebellion

Apathy dressed in violence
white insectoid legs
curse her lips and the mouth
receptive only to pain

Neo-wolf, but older again
than the Lupus itself
linked its fur to the gyroscope of time
a collection of failures

22

Counting Crows had a good one like this in “Round Here.”

Well, I walk in the air
Between the rain
Through myself and back again
Where, I don’t know
Um…what? ::confused::

23

Alanis Morissette has a song called “Not the Doctor” on her Jagged Little Pill album. Most of the song’s meaning is very clear: I am not responsible for your emotional or mental well being. But there’s one line in the chorus that has driven me batty ever since I took a liking to the song–I have no idea what the bolded line means:

“Visiting hours are nine to five,
But if I show up at half past six, well I
Already know that you’ll find some way to sneak me in,
and oh,
Mind the empty bottle with the holes along the bottom
You see, it’s too much to ask for
And I am not the doctor.”

Some songs, like the aforementioned Sheryl Crow piece (as well as her deliberately insequiter “The Na Na Song”), just make very little sense to me and so they don’t bother me nearly as much. I just take them to be random thoughts and personal anecdotes that sound good, but make no sense to us.

What drives me nuts are the songs that almost make complete sense, then toss in a line like the one above that leaves you wondering “What the hell?”

24

…that would be deliberately nonsequitur, not “insequiter,” whatever the hell THAT means.

Grumble.

25

I remember thinking that most of the songs on The Cars first album was just stream-of-free-associating-gibberish. A sample:

you can tuck it on the inside
you can throw it on the floor
you can wave it on the outside
like you never did before
you get the diplomatic treatment
you get the force fed future
get the funk after death
get the wisenheimer brainstorm

(I’m in touch with your world)
so don’t you try to hide it
(I’m in touch with your world)
and nobody’s gonna buy it
it’s such a lovely way to go
it’s such a lovely way to go

I been lying on your feathers
you keep talkin’ about the weather
I’m a psilocybin pony
you’re a flick fandango phoney
it’s a sticky contradiction
it’s a thing you call creation
everything is science fiction
and I ought to know

26

There’s one dance song I’ve been hearing at the bar for years and have never understood what a particular phrase meant. A part of the chorus goes “What’s she gonna look like with a chimney on her?”

I have no clue what it means. It’s very clear…I’m not misunderstanding words. It’s repeated (in typical dance song fashion) multiple times over multiple iterations of the chorus. Those are the words. But I have no clue what it means.

jayjay

27

Cream’s White Room definitely belongs in the “What the fuck?” catagory.

28

How about this:

Chainsuck’s “My Only Son”

“My daughter was my only son
But I thought I could bring him 'round
I never knew she had a gun
I swear I never meant for her to take him down”

Also, from “Shindo” also by Chainsuck

"We pulled into a gas station
An antique ambulance was in the yard
I asked for directions and he laughed and said for girls it’s too hard

Shindo"

These are not the only clear-yet-unlear lyrics I know of, just the ones that I thought were particularly weird. [Okay, and I admit, I’m too lazy to walk across the room and get out more of my CDs to quote. :smiley: ]

A lot of Belly’s lyrics are like that, but I read somewhere that Tonya Donnelly writes about her dreams a lot, which aren’t supposed to make sense necessarily.

29

zeroth:

His son is an homosexual, transexual, or transvestite.

The father thouhgt he could change his son’s choice. Also, the father is not very happy about his son’s lifestyle.

His son owns/has a gun.

His son comitted suicide. The father never thought that his nagging(and other pressures) would make his son comit suicide.

My two cents.

30

Google is your friend. Trust Google.

Go Here to find this:

31

pcubed, you are my hero!

32

Thanks. :smiley:

33

McArthur’s Park:

McArthur’s Park
is melting in the dark
the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don’t think that I can take it
because it took so long to bake it
and I’ll never have that recipe again
Oooh, nooooo

Huh? :confused

Everone’s tried to figure out what some of the Lines in “American Pie” are. Don McLean (sp?) ain’t sayin’…

Other songs I can’t figure out:
Strawberry Fields
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds
I am the Walrus

34

I realize this is a rather old thread, but I figured its my duty as a SDMB poster to fight ignorance, so I’ll answer this one, DMB brethern: The Song That Jane Likes means absolutely nothing. Dave Matthews himself has said that the song has no meaning. They are just lyrics, made up to sound cool to the rythm. And as for the name, if you didnt know, it comes from his sister Jane’s fondness for the song.

35

Tori Amos is quite good at stringing together seemingly incoherent phrases. Take “Silent All These Years” for example:

Silent All These Years © 1990 - Tori Amos

Excuse me but can I be you for a while
My DOG won’t bite if you sit real still
I got the anti-Christ in the kitchen yellin’ at me again
Yeah I can hear that
Been saved again by the garbage truck
I got something to say you know but NOTHING comes
Yes I know what you think of me you never shut up
Yeah I can hear that

But what if I’m a mermaid
In these jeans of his with her name still on it
Hey but I don’t care
Cause sometimes I said sometimes I hear my voice and it’s been
HERE silent all these years

So you found a girl who thinks really Deep Thoughts
What’s so amazing about really Deep Thoughts
Boy you best pray that I bleed real soon
How’s that thought for you
My scream got lost in a paper cup
You think there’s a heaven where some screams have gone
I got 25 bucks and a cracker do you think it’s enough
To get us there

But what if I’m a mermaid
In these jeans of his with her name still on it
Hey but I don’t care
Cause sometimes I said sometimes I hear my voice and it’s been
HERE silent all these

Years go by will I still be waiting
For somebody else to understand
Years go by if I’m stripped of my beauty
And the orange clouds raining in my head
Years go by will I choke on my tears
Till finally there is nothing left
One more casualty
You know we’re to EASY easy easy

Well I love the way we communicate
Your eyes focus on my funny lip shape
Let’s hear what you think of me now but baby don’t look up
The sky is falling
Your MOTHER shows up in a nasty dress
It’s your turn now to stand where I stand
Everybody lookin’ at you here take hold of my hand
Yeah I can hear them

But what if I’m a mermaid
In these jeans of his with her name still on it
Hey but I don’t care
Cause sometimes I said sometimes I hear my voice
I hear my voice
I hear my voice
And it’s been HERE silent all these years
I’ve been here silent all these years
Silent all these
Silent all these years.

…the hell?

36

Submitted for your perusal, the oldie classic:
Sally Go Round the Roses

37

David Bowie. God knows I love him, but The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust has its share of both unclear and incomprehensible song lyrics. Still, they’re fun…

From “Hang Onto Yourself”

And what exactly is a “mellow thighed chick”? :slight_smile:

38

Loser by Beck. I understand what all the words mean, but together they make no sense.

Forces of evil in a bozo nightmare
Banned all the music with a phony gas chamber
‘Cuz one’s got a weasel
And the other’s got a flag
One’s on the pole, shove the other in a bag
With the rerun shows
And the cocaine nose-job
The daytime crap of the folksinger slop
He hung himself with a guitar string
Slap the turkey-neck
And it’s hangin’ from a pigeon wing
You can’t write if you can’t relate
Trade the cash for the beef
For the body for the hate
And my time is a piece of wax
Fallin’ on a termite
Who’s chokin’ on the splinters

39

Mylène Farmer. Not just because she sings in French.

Here’s “L’âme-stram-gram” (“soul-stroul-groul?”)

In me, in me, you who I love,
Tell me, tell me, when it’s no good
There’s nothing but that that governs us,
Tell me how many times?

To share my most abyssal boredom
With the first one to come along, who will find it banal,
I hear everything you confess,
And the swarm chants drunkenness,
I hear everyone you condemn,
They savage you, they make you charm;
It’s ‘l’âme-stram-gram’

In me, in me…

In me, in me, you who I love,
Tell me, tell me, that it’s no good
Mix in and slide the abdomen
Into the orifice of me [sic]

Absentees, a burden, a friendly ear
Confidences, on a couch we psychoanalyze ourselves

I hear everything you whisper
And the swarm beats the measure;
I hear your Oedipus complexes
And the swarm manifests itself:
it’s ‘l’âme-stram-gram’

‘âme-stram-gram’,
spades and spades and ‘colégram,’
stuff and stuff and ‘ratatam’,
‘âme-stram-gram’ spades queen,
‘âme-stram-gram’ poke me, poke me in the soul,
stuffed and stuffed with male cocks,
‘âme-stram-gram’ spades queen/pokes ladies

(note: ‘’ = nonsense word; “pique” means “to poke” and “dame” means “lady”; at cards, they mean “spades” and “queen”)