43
The moon revolves around the Earth at the exact same speed at which it rotates, due to a phenomenon having to do with the uneven weight distribution of the moon itself. Because of this, on Earth, we only can ever see one side of the moon. The other side of the moon is sometimes referred to as the dark side of the moon, as it is never visible to us. There is ...
35
This is quite certainly intentional. While the double negative used as an intensified negative is considered ungrammatical in "standard" English, it is very common in many English dialects, particularly those associated with lower socioeconomic class levels (see my answer to a similar question in ELU).
Song lyrics are typically written in conversational ...
16
The way I heard it, one of the guys on their road crew, who was Latino, told Henley and Frey that "colitas" meant "little buds" in Spanish. As in, marijuana buds. So, in that lyric they're describing driving down the highway smoking weed.
16
I've been unable to find any comments directly from Roger Waters (writer of the music and lyrics of the song) on the meaning of those lines. Looking at the lyrics on Genius.com, the annotation for the first line says that if you read it as a double negative, it could mean two different things
"We do need education"—A call for education
"We don't need this ...
15
This song is an example of what one might call "effectively instrumental" in that the song has no lyrics that are particularly meaningful. The vocal elements are, for the most part, just another instrument. Such songs are happy, often danceable songs meant to be fun and entertaining.
The line that you were interested in "Uptown funk you up" is mostly a pun, ...
14
It's an intentional play on words.
When we hear the opening lyrics:
Du
Du hast
Du hast mich
It's unclear if they're saying "Du hast mich" ("You have me") or "Du hasst mich" ("You hate me").
It's not until the later text:
Du hast mich gefragt
Du hast mich gefragt
Du hast mich gefragt und ich hab nichts gesagt
That we actually get the real meaning: "You ...
12
And if the cloud bursts, thunder in your ear
You shout and no one seems to hear
And if the band you're in starts playing different tunes
I'll see you on the dark side of the moon
During the moon explorations and moon landings - the first landing only occurred four years prior to this album's release - viewers of these historic events came ...
12
Here's something from the Def Leppard FAQ:
These four words that you hear at the start of "Rock of Ages", mean
nothing, though the band sometimes jokingly claims it means "running
through the forest silently". It's actually just German sounding
gibberish, said by producer Mutt Lange during one of the later takes
of the song. Lange was a ...
10
It was real. The station, WBCN in Boston was an alt-rock station that was HUGE in the 90's but was shuttered in 2009, though it lives on online. Bradley Jay was a DJ and is currently a talk-radio host on Boston's WBZ AM 1030 from midnight to 4am. I actually heard this call live when it happened so I can confirm, it is legit. Bradley was a great DJ to listen ...
10
The "numbers" were indeed the lottery, but this was back before the government decided to get in on the action, so it was an illegal lottery run by gangsters.
Basically, it was a common, but illegal activity, so it has a slightly naughty feel to it, like drinking during prohibition. Many, many grandmas did in fact play the numbers.
There's a fairly ...
8
The literal meaning of uptown is usually the more northward part of the center city, but it has connotations (via New York City) of an urban area that is more "upscale", wealthy, classy and sophisticated. Funk is a style of music pioneered by black American artists such as James Brown and George Clinton, it was most popular in the 1970's and features a ...
8
It seems that the phrase has multiple possible sources with none truly confirmed. I've listed the sources below:
"..poet Samuel Coleridge (1825): 'All nature seems at work ... The bees are stirring—birds are on the wing ... and I the while, the sole unbusy thing, not honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.'"
"earlier instances of this idiomatic ...
8
It's to refer to his lover. The whole section is actually:
If I'm a pagan of the good times
My lover's the sunlight
To keep the Goddess on my side
She demands a sacrifice
It can be viewed as him saying the care for his lover is outside the typical church values and could be considered "worshiping false idols" in the context of the church. ...
8
After asking this question, it was pointed out to me that "running a river" is a way to refer to travelling down a turbulent river, usually on a raft, kayak, or canoe.
So, I think I was reading that phrase wrong. Here's the phrase:
Run me like a river
Here's how I was reading it:
Run me like a river would
Here's how it's probably supposed to be read:...
8
The annotations for these lines on Genius.com suggests a few potential explanations.
Annotation for "I've fallen in love/I've fallen in love for the first time".
The narrator says that he may have fallen in love with someone who’s not of the opposite sex. He may have had relationships with women before, but it wasn’t love, and therefore falling in love ...
7
Wikipedia is rather vague:
Guns N' Roses' lead guitarist, Slash, states that the song was written
in the back of a rental van as they were on their way back from
playing a gig in San Francisco with the band Rock N Riders. He says
that the band was in the back of the van, drinking and playing
acoustic guitars, when he came up with the intro. Duff ...
7
Parental Advisory (abbreviated PAL) is a warning label first introduced by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 1985 and later adopted by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) in 2011. It is placed on audio recordings in recognition of excessive profanities or inappropriate references, with the intention of alerting parents of ...
7
The meaning of Brain Damage can only really be guessed from inferences in the actual lyrics..as no one but Roger Waters truly knows what it means. I'm not sure he has publicly stated that meaning either.
However, the inferences suggest it is about some form of mental illness or psychosis; perhaps schizophrenia or other mental disorder. That pretense helps ...
7
The Wikipedia article about Strawberry Fields Forever says the following:
In 1974, McCartney said, "That wasn't 'I buried Paul' at all – that was John saying 'cranberry sauce' … That's John's humour … If you don't realise that John's apt to say cranberry sauce when he feels like it, then you start to hear a funny little word there, and you think, 'Aha!'"
...
7
The Offspring used it to replace the 1,2,3,4 count that some bands (i.e. The Ramones) would start their songs off to. Of course, a few seconds after the opening, they count to 6 in Spanish....go figure!
Def Leppard actually used this beginning for Rock of Ages for the same reason, it was just made up jibberish by their producer, Mutt Lange as you mentioned ...
7
You might be thinking of another Linkin Park song, "Numb". Looking at the lyrics, it has a few lines very close to the ones you remembered from it (emphasis mine), but it's missing "something I am not gonna say to you" and "I love you".
Put under the pressure of walking in your shoes
And every second I waste is more than I can take
And ...
7
This is one of my favorite songs, it means so much to me.
The meaning is this:
It has to do with being neglected, mistreated, overlooked and taken for granted by people you care about. They might mean much to you but you get the feeling that you don't mean as much to them. So the chorus says that:
''I am not your rolling wheels I am the highway'' I am not ...
7
This is close in the lyrics, but the delivery does not match what you have described.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PraN5ZoSjiY
Billy Bragg's "Goodbye Goodbye" sounds more like the sort of performance you described, but it's only the last chorus that says "goodbye" 9 times in a row.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqUGeLyxa9s
Mr. Ray, by Suicide, could ...
6
It means that you have gone mad. Most, if not all, of the album is about the onset of madness. Here is a detailed analysis of the lyrics.
Those lyrics are actually from Brain Damage, which fades into Eclipse.
6
The obvious answer (when talking about recent releases) is that lyric sheets cost money to produce. If you can put them online for free, why waste money on something that isn't as important to the core of the release?
Other bands, like Tool, don't include lyric sheets because they don't necessarily want to spell everything out for the listener. They want ...
6
Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983).
This assertion (without accredation) shows up in a variety of places: wikipedia, a thesis (pg 16), a sermon (pg 7).
More authoritatively is this anthology (pg 152-153) about Fuller, and this article from people magazine in 1980 on occasion of Denver performing the song for Fuller:
...Denver proposed "my toast to Bucky." ...
6
Genius has a cool feature which lets users interpret song meanings cooperatively. It also allows you annotate the meaning of smaller blocks of the lyrics.
As it happens, Aerials has been interpreted quite extensively:
http://genius.com/System-of-a-down-aerials-lyrics
This is the main interpretation of the song:
The overall theme of the song is our ...
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