Oh, I needed a smack with a clue stick, to be certain. But, I dunno, I kinda numbed myself to quasi-menacing rock as a kid. Angus with a bloody guitar through his back; Paul Stanley telling you to put your finger on the trigger of his Love Gun - just mindless provocative crap with a beat. So I go in assuming they are after a certain feel, but am not expecting much in the way of coherence, if that makes sense.
I knew it had a menacing feel and lyric - that’s part of the feel that’s creepy-cool - but hadn’t fully appreciated how far it went. I don’t need to be that far inside a killer’s head, thankyouverymuch.
Obligatory “Every Breath You Take” reference It’s about a stalker.
Ann Rule used it for the title of a book about a woman who was stabbed by a killer hired her ex while she was home alone withher two year quadruplets (by her second husband.) Children were left home alone with her bloodied body for four hours until their older sister came home and found the carnage.
Sarah McLachlan’s song “Possession” sounded like a very intense love song. Nope. It was inspired by letters from majorly obsessive fans, including one that was a confessed stalker of hers.
Is the last part of this a whoosh? Hell Yes certainly is about being rejected by God but that’s pretty much the only one of their songs I’m aware of that gets close to being Satanic (in the religious sense rather than the generic, hedonistic, sense.)
You could say roughly that it’s “in 15.” I’d count it as 3 bars of 4/4, a bar of 2/4, and four bars of 4/4. Basically a 4-bar pattern with the fourth bar shortened every other time.
When I first heard the song Closing Time, I thought it was drawing an analogy between closing time at a bar on the last day of Spring Break and graduating college and going out into the world.
Then the band said it was about being born and I stopped liking the song as much.
I must confess there are a lot of songs that I really like and don’t really know the lyrics to (except for a few phrases). Since learning the guitar, I’ve had a few experiences of deciding to learn a song, looking up the lyrics, and finding that they’re just not all that cosmic. One example I can think of offhand is the Rolling Stones’ “Child of the Moon”. I still love the song, but it just seems like it should be about something more consequential than driving down the road at dawn in a convertible in the rain.
Are you talking about Leonard Cohen’s Closing Time, or a cover of it, or another song entirely? Because I am trying to wrap my head around the idea of a Cohen song that could be about Spring Break, and I just keep giggling…
No - different song by the band Semisonic - youtube link
I don’t recall the “being born” reference when I read the book written by the drummerabout falling into a one-hit wonder band and the state of the music business…
**Biffy **- thanks for the rhythm analysis. Hmm, a 15-count foot - just like Black Dog…
The songs I liked less when I found out what they were really about would be almost everything I ever heard and liked in a foreign language.
I’m a songwriter, and I dislike talking about my songs. I never talk about my songs during a performance. I think it’s the most boring thing a musician can talk about. I seldom write oblique or strictly evocative lyrics, but I do sometimes, and they mean exactly whatever you think they mean.
Hmm - they reference the book I read by the drummer - I must just not remember that reference.
Well - Axl Rose claimed that the song I Used to Love Her But I Had to Kill Her was about his dog, but that doesn’t change the fact that it comes across as a sick, misogynistic attempt at black humor. If they want to claim it started off as about birth but they futzed with the lyrics so it was more vague and broadly applicable - well, heck - that’s what songwriting is all about: capturing feelings that folks can apply to their lives…
Slayer’s “213” was one of my favorites of theirs. In a weird way, I innocently thought it was a love song about having a very close, trusting relationship.
One day when I was older, it finally hit me that the song was about necrophilia. I still like the tune, but not nearly as much.