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Post by Grroosss on Jul 26, 2021 22:16:10 GMT
Jeff says he doesn't pay much mind to the lyrics he writes, but that hasn't stopped people from trying to dissect what they mean.
So, here's a place where we can share. It can be a misheard lyric, misunderstanding, or some other change in your perception that has fundamentally changed your understanding of a particular song... or maybe just a unique and/or outlandish interpretation that you're pretty sure is not what Jeff intended when he wrote it, but holds meaning to you nonetheless.
I'll start with a couple of mine...
Towards the end of 21st Century Man, I always misheard the lyric as "return with what you've learned and kiss the ground you walk upon". Later I found out that it's actually "return with what you've learned, they'll kiss the ground you walk upon", suggesting that the people of 1981 regard the protagonist as some sort of hero returning with knowledge of the future. Even after realizing that, I happily stick with my mondegreen, to me it makes more sense to the album's plot and especially the preceding line "you stepped out of a dream believing everything was gone"... in his dream (or reality?) about 2095, the protagonist thought he'd lost everything, and is so relieved when he finally returns to 1981 he's basically worshipping the world he knows; yes, he returned with knowledge of the future, but he carries it more as a burden since he didn't like what he found in 2095.
Recently I became the proud owner of a lovely little rotary-dial phone ...anyroad, growing up I'd always been yelled at over the answering machine whenever my mom really wanted to get ahold of me, and until I was doing some research on this latest antiques store find, I had no idea that back in the days before answering machines a phone would just keep ringing indefinitely if no one answered and the caller didn't hang up. Which lent a new meaning to Telephone Line for me. "Well, can't you just let it ring a little longer, longer, longer... let it ring forevermore"--I'd always assumed this was just figurative and the narrator wished the phone could keep ringing forever, or was pleading with the operator to let it ring a few more times (clearly I had no idea how operators worked, lol!), but instead it's quite literal and that actually makes me feel his pain even more, as he sits there letting the phone ring on and on and on into the night, hoping against hope that his girl will eventually pick up...
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Post by Helmut83 on Jul 27, 2021 9:34:55 GMT
Recently I became the proud owner of a lovely little rotary-dial phone ...anyroad, growing up I'd always been yelled at over the answering machine whenever my mom really wanted to get ahold of me, and until I was doing some research on this latest antiques store find, I had no idea that back in the days before answering machines a phone would just keep ringing indefinitely if no one answered and the caller didn't hang up. Which lent a new meaning to Telephone Line for me. "Well, can't you just let it ring a little longer, longer, longer... let it ring forevermore"--I'd always assumed this was just figurative and the narrator wished the phone could keep ringing forever, or was pleading with the operator to let it ring a few more times (clearly I had no idea how operators worked, lol!), but instead it's quite literal and that actually makes me feel his pain even more, as he sits there letting the phone ring on and on and on into the night, hoping against hope that his girl will eventually pick up... What you are doing is youth ostentation in the middle of a retirement home, young lady... I'll tell you something else: if whoever had phoned you hadn't hang/cut/finished the call properly, your phone became unusable for as long as it took that person to realize about it and hang properly. Your only chance to fix this was to scream that person's name close to the phone's mic and hope that he/she would hear you and realize about the mistake. Or if you were less scrupulous and more nosey you could also pick up the phone and listen at whatever conversation was happening in that house, which at times could be very revealing! As someone whose native tongue is not English, I'm in a particularly good position to misunderstand and consequently misinterprete lyrics so I have quite a rich archive of those. One that comes to mind right now is "Sweet is the night". For me the second verse went "well, you start to sway, check your Cartier, cause it's getting late, you get a poetry wave". Haha, yeah, somehow I understood that, and my interpretation was that the night was so beautiful that it suddenly inspired the character to speak more poetically.
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Post by Horacewimp on Jul 27, 2021 11:08:39 GMT
I never knew the line “ No Toulouse, Vincent, or Pablo” in When Time Stood Still I think I just made up words in my head. The lyrics only came to my notice when I think it was eloneen posted them in the Once Upon a Time Thread, I thought she had made them up
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Post by eloneen on Jul 27, 2021 13:20:20 GMT
I never knew the line “ No Toulouse, Vincent, or Pablo” in When Time Stood Still I think I just made up words in my head. The lyrics only came to my notice when I think it was eloneen posted them in the Once Upon a Time Thread, I thought she had made them up Horacewimp , Well, I wasn't so very astute in that case. You're right that I didn't make up that line, but I actually had to look it up because I had no idea what JL was singing there, either.
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Post by unomusette on Jul 27, 2021 21:19:22 GMT
I never knew the line “ No Toulouse, Vincent, or Pablo” in When Time Stood Still I think I just made up words in my head. The lyrics only came to my notice when I think it was eloneen posted them in the Once Upon a Time Thread, I thought she had made them up Me too - I just used to sort of skim over that bit, vaguely thinking it was something like "No Toulouse prints of old Pablo" - guessing that Mr Lautrec might have painted Picasso for some reason, forgetting of course that they lived in entirely different times
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