Any Guided by Voices fans in here? If so, what the heck is this song about?
Cold hands, touching my face. Don't hide, the snake can see you.
Old friends you might not remember, fading away from you.
The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory
And we looked and we passed, throught the hallway of shatterproof glass...
She runs through the night as if nobody cares,
She screams and she cries and ignores all the stares,
she wants me to come, but I'm never going there...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`No, no, first you tell me what this means:
And after that, you can interpret this, please:
Kids. They think they invented incomprehensible pop lyrics…
GBV fan here. I would venture to guess that this song is about the same thing all of Robert Pollard’s songs are about–words that sound good when sung together. I think in general people stress to much about the literal meaning of songs. Many times, the lyrics for songs may have a personal meaning for the writer, but the limitations of the form (probably should rhyme, must fit exactly within the meter, etc.) prevents any clear meaning from filtering through. And the fact is that song lyrics aren’t meant to work on the same level of meaning as, say, a post on the SDMB. The words are supposed to conjure fleeting images in your head. You put these images together, generously colored by by the tone of the music, and it creates meaning in the listener. What the words mean to the singer is largely irrelevant. The feelings that you get from a song is the only important meaning.
Now there are major exceptions to this (Bob Dylan springs to mind), but in most cases don’t worry about what the song is SUPPOSED to mean and just go with what YOU think it means. If you want concrete menaing, read an essay.
Yeah I usually assume there’s nothing really to be figured out on these songs, but the title in this case sounds so specific I thought I’d check it out.
Well, assuming that I even wanted to find out what the lyrics meant, I would go to a good search engine, such a Google, type in< “Guided by voices” interview> and see what came up:http://www.rollingstone.com/videos/playvideo.asp?cid=1084&cf=116
http://www.mudmag.co.uk/interviews\guided_by_voices.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:Bk7vxsbY84A:www.puncturemagazine.com/gbv1995.html+“guided+by+voices”+interview&hl=en
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:6ULM8FkHcQg:www.puncturemagazine.com/gbv1993.html+“guided+by+voices”+interview&hl=en
http://www.gbv.com/inter1.htm
You get the picture.
Warning: the above interviews may have nothing to do with the lyrics. They may give insight into the artists minds. Good luck.
BOB DYLAN!!! of, “the pump don’t work 'cause the vandal stole the handle”? - Yea, that’s deep.
Anyway, think of it like this; some lyricist are literal, like a Rembrandt painting. Others are imagist, like Pollack.