Saturday, May 19, 2007
Jimmy Eat World: "The Middle"
Hey, don't write yourself off yet
It's only in your head you feel left out
Or looked down on
Just try your best, try everything you can
And don't you worry what they tell themselves
When you're away.
It just takes some time, little girl in the middle of the ride (over, and over)
Everything, everything will be just fine (over, and over) Everything, everything it'll be alright (alright)
Hey, you know they're all the same
You know you're doing better on your own (on your own)
So don't buy in.
Live right now
Yeah, just be yourself.
It doesn't matter if it's good enough
For someone else
It just takes some time, little girl you're in the middle of the ride (over, and over)
Everthing, everything it'll be just fine (over, and over) Everything, everything it'll be alright (alright)
It just takes some time, little girl you're in the middle of the ride (over, and over)
Everything, everything it'll be just fine (over, and over) Everything, everything it'll be alright (alright)
Hey, don't write yourself off yet
It's only in your head you feel left out
Or looked down on
Just do your best, do everything you can.
And don't you worry what the bitter hearts, are gonna say
It just takes some time, little girl you're in the middle of the ride (over, and over)
Everything, everything it'll be just fine (over, and over) Everything, everything it'll be alright (alright).
It just takes some time, little girl you're in the middle of the ride (over, and over)
Everything, everything It'll be just fine (over, and over)
Everything, everything it'll be alright (alright)
+++
This song is part of the Orange County soundtrack. It is very much apt for Colin Hank's role in the movie as he was struggling whether to leave Orange County or not in pursuing his studies. It's about being "in the middle" or the struggling phase in making a decision in life. It's about the addressee not caring about what "the bitter hearts" are going to say. When deciding, it is best to free oneself of the pressure coming from other people. People are fond of complicating things because they decide to please people. Other people will remain insatiable no matter what. The best thing to do is to be able to decide satisfying one's needs, especially if it concerns no one else but one's life.
I just can't help playing this song over and over again. I like the chorus line "You're in the middle of the ride, everything, everything will be just fine". As we all know, life is a long journey. And within this journey, we have stop-overs to guide us if we are getting where we are supposed to head to. Stop-overs are very crucial because they don't just give us time to rest and think things over but they give us a streak of hope that we are on the right path. It is a numberless measure to give us a pat on the back because we are inching forward to where we should be.
I also give much props to stanza 1:
Hey, don't write yourself off yet
It's only in your head you feel left out
Or looked down on
Just try your best, try everything you can
And don't you worry what they tell themselves
When you're away.
This part tells us all of the great message of the song. We shouldn't be discouraged by our "paranoid thoughts" of what others might think especially behind our back. The best thing to do is to be our best to best what best is out there.
3:54 PM
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Smashing Pumpkins: "Today"
Today is the greatest
Day I've ever kown
Can't live for tomorrow
Tomorrow's much too long
I burn my eyes out
Before I get out
I wanted more
Than life could ever grant
Bored by the chore
Of saving face
Today is the greatest
Day I have ever known
Can't wait for tomorrow
I might not have that long
Ill tear my heart out
Before I get out
Pink ribbon scars
That never forget
Ive tried so hard
To cleanse these regrets
My angel wings
Were bruised and restrained
My belly stings
Today is
Today is
Today is
The greatest day
That I have ever known
I want to turn you on
I want to turn you round
I want to turn you on
I want to turn you
Today is the greatest
Today is the greatest day
Today is the greatest day
That I have ever known
Billy Corgan is known for his artsy and web-like lyrics that will lead all of us into a clear confusion. His lyrics are rooted from his poetic inclinations. His words are well chosen to complement the evocative and experimental sound his former band is trying to attain (I guess have successfully achieved at this point of time). However, in this particular song, one can easily spot the probable frailty in Corgan's lyrics because of how minimal the use of language is in the song. The persona keeps on talking about today being the greatest day he has ever known. But if one can automatically grasp the concealed truth behind these simple lines, one can tell that Corgan is not playing dumb in the song. He speaks of a particular day, a frozen time wherein he revels about the beauty of it. A clever person will never say that today is the greatest day because the superlative use of "greatest" is an open-ended one pertaining to the days remaining in our lives. One has the right to use the superlative if he/she already knows the end.
Corgan brings us to a fleeting moment of happiness wherein one can say things that are difficult and perhaps, impossible to say. He enjoys this particular day not caring about the "long tomorrow" that will change things and pull his happiness apart.
8:56 AM
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Audioslave: "Be Yourself"
Someone falls to pieces
Sleeping all alone
But someone kills the pain
Spinning in the silence
She finally drifts away
Someone gets excited
In a chapel yard and
Catches a bouquet
Another lays a dozen white roses on a grave
Be yourself
It's all that you can do
To be yourself is all that you can do
Someone finds salvation in everyone
And another only pain
Someone tries to hide himself
Down inside himself
He breaks
Someone swears he's true to love
Until the end of time
Another runs away
Separate or united
Empty or insane
Be yourself
It's all that you can do
To be yourself is all that you can do
To be yourself is all that you can do
To be yourself is all that you can do
Even when you'd paid enough then put upon or been held up
If every single memory of could have been faces of love
Don't lose any sleep tonight
I'm sure everything will end up all right
Even with lows
Be yourself
It's all that you can do
To be yourself is all that you can do
This song showcases the dichotomy of life. Grief and joy. Pain and pleasure. Togetherness and solitude. There is always the other end, the exact opposite, the contradiction and incongruity. This song reminds us of our limitations as human beings. There is no such thing as superstition, no strange beliefs and other magical hooplas to get through, to get out, and to win in life. We are all weak and limited creatures. Our only source of strength lies within us. That is the only power that we have. What we are is what we have.
Chris Cornell continues to echo the old adage of looking into ourselves and stripping out all lies and concealed imperfections. We are what we are. If we "be ourselves" then we accomplish something. It is "all that we can do" and all that we NEED to do.
10:59 PM
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Foo Fighters: "DOA"
Oh you know I did it
It's over and I feel fine
Nothing you could say is gonna change my mind
Waiting and I wait at the longest night
Nothing like the taste to sweet decline
I was down, I fell, I fell so fast
Dropping like the grains in an hourglass
Never say forever cause nothing last
Dancing with the thorns of my buried past
Nevermind there's nothing I can do
Bet your life there's something killing you
It's a shame we have to die my dear
No ones getting out of here, alive
This time
What a way to go, they have no fear
No ones getting out of here, alive
This time
Finished, I'm getting you off my chest
Made you come clean in a dirty dress
A promise is a promise you kept in check
Heart across a heart that beats it's best
Take a good hard look for the very last time
The very last one in a very long line
Only took a second to say goodbye
Then the pleasure 'bout the pleasure's
been mine, all mine
Ain't no way, DOA
It's a shame we have to disappear
No ones getting out of here, alive
This time
If I regress back and consider even the present and Dave Grohl's future lyrics, this song is not the best one. It's another cruel (if not gory) and prideful break up song. But I like the title. At first, I didn't know the meaning at all. I was totally clueless. I was thinking that this was another one of Grohl's dippy locutions. Well, okay there's a first time for everyone. DOA. Dead on arrival. Isn't it interesting for a heartbreak song?
The intent of Grohl in this song is simple. He is proclaiming impossibility for the relationship (I assume romantic haha) to continue. It's like the hinted situation of recovering/saving a rocky affair. The comparison of someone being rushed to the emergency room that would be in vain as to that of the addressee's plead to do the same with their relationship.
Like what I've said, I was interested with the title. And as much interest as I've had with it, I tried to swerve my analysis to I guess, ehem, deeper meaning of this song. Not just relating it to love affairs and all that but as the chorus part says "It's a shame we have to die my dear/No one's getting out of here alive/ this time." I like the acceptance of fate: may it be physical death or otherwise. I like hearing that line that much. Really. It is weird because it is about death. It connotes the frailty and mortality of human beings. Did I make sense?
Haha, I just wonder if Dave Grohl would agree with my analysis.
5:21 PM
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
Tori Amos: "A Sorta Fairytale"
on my way up north
up on the Ventura
I pulled back the hood
and I was talking to you
and I knew then it would be
a Life Long thing
but I didn't know that we
We could break a silver lining
And I'm so sad
like a good book
I can't put this
Day Back
a sorta fairytale
with you
a sorta fairytale
with you
things you said that day
up on the 101
the girl had come undone
I tried to downplay it
with a bet about us
You said that-
You'd take it
as long as I could
I could not erase it
And I'm so sad
like a good book
I can't put this
Day Back
a sorta fairytale
with you
a sorta fairytale
with you
and I ride along side
and I rode along side
You then
and I rode along side
till you lost me there
in the open road
And I rode along side
till the honey spread
itself so thin
for me to break your bread
for me to take your word
I had to steal it
And I'm so sad
like a good book
I can't put this
Day Back
a sorta fairytale
with you
a sorta fairytale
with you
I could pick back up
whenever I feel
And I'm so sad
like a good book
I can't put this
Day Back
a sorta fairytale
with you
a sorta fairytale
with you
and I was ridin' by
ridin' along side
for a while till you lost me
and I was ridin' by
ridin' along till you lost me
till you lost
me in
The Rear
View
you lost me
I said
way up North I took my day
all in all was a pretty nice
day and I put the Hood
right back where
You could taste heaven
perfectly
Feel out the summer breeze
didn't know when we'd be back
And I I don't
didn't think
We'd end up like
like this
Tori Amos is one of my favorite alternative artist and lyricist. Aside from her piano-playing skills (Alicia Keys who?) haha, I am deeply enthralled with her bittersweet lyrics. You can always sense some bliss in her painful and morose songs. There is some sort of a smile even if the track is about solitude and heartbreak.
This song pictures out the burdens and drawbacks of hope. You are on the verge of giving into something or someone to make you happy when suddenly, something counterfeits. In the first part of the song, she is narrating about the day she was driving with this person whom she wanted to be a "life long thing." The narration continues with perhaps, the other person's "sweet words" to enslave the persona/narrator to believe or to hope that something good can be built between her and this man. Then the chorus, which I suppose is the culmination of the persona's consciousness about reality, is one of the most poignant lines I have ever heard in a song. Poignant, not cheesy okay?
I like the comparison of sadness to a good book. There is this feeling of "open-endedness" like when we read a very moving story, may it be a novel or a short story, even if the book ended well, even if it was "all's well that end's well" story, there is still this space for deep thought and immense and inexplicable feeling-- regret, joy, sorrow, pity. I don't know which one to appropriate in this particular song. But I assure myself and other people that there is that kind of fleeting moment.
Moreover, I like the image in the middle of the song about "until the honey spreads itself so thin." I like this metaphor for patience because I, myself is an impatient person. I like it too because not only does the image deals with patience, it also magnifies suppression of emotions. Just like what the chorus and the title are saying, the persona has created a "blissful/heavenly-like scene" between her and the other person and she knows her limitations. There is a built in wall that encompasses that so-called "setting". It's like loudly singing your favorite song but at the same time you know that you are not a good singer and you can never sing well, no matter how much effort you put into a song, you just can't. You are not being hopeless but you just know.
9:36 PM
Thursday, February 16, 2006
Smashing Pumpkins: "Tonight, Tonight"
Time is never time at all
You can never ever leave without leaving a piece of youth
And our lives are forever changed
We will never be the same
The more you change the less you feel
Believe, believe in me, believe
That life can change, that you're not stuck in vain
We're not the same, we're different tonight
Tonight, so bright
Tonight
And you know you're never sure
But your sure you could be right
If you held yourself up to the light
And the embers never fade in your city by the lake
The place where you were born
Believe, believe in me, believe
In the resolute urgency of now
And if you believe there's not a chance tonight
Tonight, so bright
Tonight
We'll crucify the insincere tonight
We'll make things right, we'll feel it all tonight
We'll find a way to offer up the night tonight
The indescribable moments of your life tonight
The impossible is possible tonight
Believe in me as I believe in you, tonight
Apart from the amazing and award-winning video, the song is mesmerizing too. Taken from the double-disc, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, Corgan offers us a hopeful song that assures that there is beauty in change.
He speaks of a particular night which can disprove all the misconceptions of people regarding change, moving on and aging. The song opens with the thesis, "Time is never time at all, you can never ever leave without leaving a piece of youth." As years go by, numbers add up to people's ages. We can never reject the fact that we are becoming old. We can no longer savor the nonchalance that our young years have dazzled us.
The message is clear cut: our view about change in our life can be "changed." It now depends on our choice of how to "change" it or how to make it as productive as it can be. We can color our own lives, we can direct it to positiveness. We are the masters of our own. The philosophical belief that human beings have free-will is implied in the lyrics. "Life can change, your not stuck in vain."
The important thing starts tonight. And on this particular night, the persona asks of the addressee to give him/her chance to prove about this beauty in change.
My favorite line would be the optimistic last stanza, "The impossible is possible tonight." I like his assertion of transcendence: going beyond, surpassing simplicity, defying plainness, challenging ephemerality.
4:44 PM
"It occurred to me by intuition, and music was the driving force behind that intuition. My discovery was the result of musical perception."
(When asked about his theory of relativity) - Albert Einstein
"Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art." - Charlie "YardBird" Parker
"There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another." -Frank Zappa
"... Just as Jesus created wine from water, we humans are capable on transmuting emotion into music..." Carlos Santana
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power then the world will know peace" -Jimi Hendrix
"Whenever society gets too stifling and the rules get too complex, there's some sort of musical explosion" - Slash / Guns 'n Roses
"Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung." -Voltaire (1694-1778)
"Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosphy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents." - Ludwig van Beethoven
"If music be the food of love, play on: give me excess of it..." -William Shakespeare
"Sugar is not so sweet to the palate as sound to the healthy ear." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
4:14 PM
