Vega considers this the first song she ever wrote, at 14. It's a country song, dedicated to her kid brother, Matthew. But it wasn't released until her Close Up 4 album.
While it's about being a big sister, the tone is fairly maternal; she even leads off by calling him "Sonny boy." She notices that needs new shoes, and also "just about everything," so she plans a shopping trip.
Perhaps she saw his beat-up shoes by the door first, then his face once she got further inside the house. Because most people would first notice his black eye that isn't mentioned until the second verse.
Yes, his eye is "black and swollen," because he got into "another fight." She calls him a "troublemaker," and irresponsible for needing medical attention when they "don't have much money."
She seems to back off a bit-- "Maybe I shouldn't yell/ I know you're just a kid." But really, it's only her tone she is apologizing for, not her message. She is, in fact, in earnest: "I don't expect you to get everything just right/ But I think you ought to use a little more sense."
She admits that she tends to "worry too much," and that she should accept that "what [he's] got to do, [he'll] go ahead and do it."
Until now, she has ended every statement with "I know everything will be all right," or "I think everything will be all right." After she tells him to use more sense, she says, "Maybe then things will be all right." So they will be... and now are not. And, it's his, or at least his impulsiveness', fault.
But now the she realizes that she can't be there to police him at all times, this is going to keep happening. And she lets slip a note of doubt: "I sure hope things will be all right." Maybe her intuition is smarter than her optimism..?
Well, right now, it's bedtime, so all she wants is to kiss him goodnight. So she tucks him in...
...with a not-quite-comforting observation: "I know if you were gone, I'd miss the sound of laughter." Wait, she's 14 and he's her kid brother, so even younger. What makes her think he's "going" anywhere, and somewhere she'd "miss" him? He's certainly going to be coming home every evening for the foreseeable future, right, and not off to college or the army or an overseas business trip. Or does she think his impulsiveness is going to get him, well, killed?
If she is that worried about him getting into "trouble" he can't get out of, she needs to tuck him in, then go have a conversation with her parents about him.
Next Song: The Silver Lady
Showing posts with label clothes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label clothes. Show all posts
Saturday, October 1, 2016
Monday, May 16, 2016
Last Year's Troubles
This song doesn't seem to need much explanation. Vega contrasts the romanticized way poverty and crime are depicted in Dickens novels (and the movie versions thereof), old ballads, operas, and other entertainments with the poverty and crime of our day, which we see for ourselves and in our news.
"Maybe it's the clothing," she says, "the earrings, the swashbuckling blouses," and the "petticoats." Even their "rags are so very Victorian."
Criminals used to be daring, robbing people on the highway or at sea. Today, a "pirate" is someone who illegally downloads a movie-- hardly a role Erroll Flynn could sink a cutlass into.
Overall, those old problems "shine up so prettily" and "gleam with a luster they don't have today."
Meanwhile, today's homeless "just don't give it their best," she smirks sadly. Also, there seems to be a difference in place as well as time. The above comment is about "the ones here at home." "Here," she repeats, meaning America, "it's just dirty and violent and troubling."
Is there more or less "trouble" now or "last year"? "It would be the same, would be my guess," she concludes.
Which is worse, the threat of debtor's prison for bankruptcy and being hanged for pickpocketing... or the fear of being shot for your sneakers or having to live near a drug den? "Trouble is still trouble," she decides. As for crime, "evil is still evil."
So why are last year's troubles romanticized?
Because everything eventually is. Time softens all tragedy. Conquerors like Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun were played for laughs in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Night at the Museum.
Even Hitler is has been a sitcom character already (it was called Heil, Honey, I'm Home, and thankfully it was quickly cancelled. But this year, Netflix launched one called Look Who's Back). And anyone strict about anything-- from grammar to soup-- is called a "Nazi."
Meanwhile, the heroes are played with, too. There is a movie called Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, and a new photo app can put your face on Benjamin Franklin's head.
We romanticize the past. Already, the 1980s victims of AIDS are compared, in the musical Rent, to the Bohemians of La Boheme, which was set in the 1840s. Rap somewhat romanticizes today's urban poverty.
We gave an Oscar and Tonys to a singing Oliver Twist years ago... and this year a rapping Alexander Hamilton looks to sweep the Tonys.
Someday, people will look at today's leaders with the same bemusement. Lord only knows what they will have Barack Obama sing on Broadway in 100 years.
Next Song: Priscilla
"Maybe it's the clothing," she says, "the earrings, the swashbuckling blouses," and the "petticoats." Even their "rags are so very Victorian."
Criminals used to be daring, robbing people on the highway or at sea. Today, a "pirate" is someone who illegally downloads a movie-- hardly a role Erroll Flynn could sink a cutlass into.
Overall, those old problems "shine up so prettily" and "gleam with a luster they don't have today."
Meanwhile, today's homeless "just don't give it their best," she smirks sadly. Also, there seems to be a difference in place as well as time. The above comment is about "the ones here at home." "Here," she repeats, meaning America, "it's just dirty and violent and troubling."
Is there more or less "trouble" now or "last year"? "It would be the same, would be my guess," she concludes.
Which is worse, the threat of debtor's prison for bankruptcy and being hanged for pickpocketing... or the fear of being shot for your sneakers or having to live near a drug den? "Trouble is still trouble," she decides. As for crime, "evil is still evil."
So why are last year's troubles romanticized?
Because everything eventually is. Time softens all tragedy. Conquerors like Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun were played for laughs in Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure and Night at the Museum.
Even Hitler is has been a sitcom character already (it was called Heil, Honey, I'm Home, and thankfully it was quickly cancelled. But this year, Netflix launched one called Look Who's Back). And anyone strict about anything-- from grammar to soup-- is called a "Nazi."
Meanwhile, the heroes are played with, too. There is a movie called Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, and a new photo app can put your face on Benjamin Franklin's head.
We romanticize the past. Already, the 1980s victims of AIDS are compared, in the musical Rent, to the Bohemians of La Boheme, which was set in the 1840s. Rap somewhat romanticizes today's urban poverty.
We gave an Oscar and Tonys to a singing Oliver Twist years ago... and this year a rapping Alexander Hamilton looks to sweep the Tonys.
Someday, people will look at today's leaders with the same bemusement. Lord only knows what they will have Barack Obama sing on Broadway in 100 years.
Next Song: Priscilla
Monday, January 4, 2016
Stockings
The main character in this song is a woman who can be described as a "tease." She delights in flirting, even as she has no intention of fulfilling the desire she provokes.
The speaker in this song is a person-- perhaps a man, perhaps a woman-- who is caught in this web of enticement. Unfortunately, they seem to be trapped in what is commonly (at least today) known as The Friend Zone, the emotional space in which one will be a person's friend, but never anything more.
The first line is from the woman, whose technique for starting a conversation is to call attention to her legs: "'I don't care for tights,' she says... she hikes her skirt... revealing one brown thigh." (As in "Caramel," it seems the target of desire is a person of color. Or at least some who has spent some time in the sun.)
The speaker, who notices this flash of flesh, instead focuses on her "slender little fingers." Then, in a (very) off rhyme, the speaker muses that they "pull upon/ The threads of recent slumbers." Does this mean "dreams"? Has s/he been fantasizing about her at night?
Then the speaker defines a border of The Friend Zone, "where friendship ends/ And passion does begin." And it lies "between... her stockings and her skin." A friend can see the stocking, but nothing more, not the skin itself. The border is as sheer and transparent as nylon stockings.
One small complaint: While it is admirable to try to rhyme "skin" with "begin," it becomes clunky to add the "does." We have already had "fingers/slumbers," so rhyming "skin" with "where passion begins" would have been preferable to the stilted "does begin." This isn't even speech being transmitted, it's thought... so the rules of grammar are even less expected.
The Friend-Zone denizen still harbors some hope. Maybe since it is late, "she'll ask me to go dance?" (Again, "out to dance" would be better. It's "go dancing.") "But something in the way she laughed/ Told me I had no chance."
So... there never was an invitation to dance, just a hope of one. And then the speaker reads intention into something her laughs, even. It's unnerving when you know you have no chance, but think maybe you're wrong and that perhaps you do...?
Then we shift to what else we know about this temptress. Her reputation in her family, which the speaker feels is undeserved, is that she was "never nice." The speaker says that it is more subtle than that-- she is "very" nice, but that niceness comes at a "price" that is not initially evident.
The speaker, armed with this realization, again tries to find the border of The Friend Zone and finds it may also be in alcohol and its ability to lower inhibitions. "When the gin and tonic/ Makes the room begin to spin." Yes, the speaker asks "where" and answers him/herself "when." This may be one gin and tonic too many.
If we have been working our way through the stages of grief, here, we have already passed through Denial, Bargaining, and Depression (we don't seem to have experienced Anger) and have arrived at Acceptance: "There may be attraction here/ But it will never flower."
So... what now? "I'm assigned to read her mind/ In this witching hour." Wow, it's already midnight? That is late. But more to the point, why "assigned"? I heard "resigned," which I think makes more immediate sense. But "assigned" implies that someone did the assigning. Did the speaker assign him/herself? Why?
The woman certainly didn't. Unless the speaker assumed that she implied that she did at some point, which is totally in character for our befuddled speaker.
The speaker now admits that dealing with being teased is "no game for those... easily bruised." Very true.
Then s/he says something revealing: "But how can I complain/ When she's so easily amused?" At least, if s/he can't be with her in the intimate sense, s/he can be in her tantalizing company-- she's willing to keep our speaker around as entertainment, at least.
But is that all that's keeping him/her there? Having the one who toys with him/her as an audience? Once more, we find the problem with being in The Friend Zone. No, there is no way out of it into her Sanctum Sanctorum...
But there is also no way out of it and back into autonomy. Like a comet that has become a planet, s/he is trapped in her orbit-- unable to land on the surface but equally unable to break free and resume careening across the solar system.
So, there is no way out of the The Friend Zone that ends up being closer to the woman. But there is also no way out that ends up being apart from her, either, with the Zone lying unoccupied in between the two parties. As the speaker puts it: "She does not show you the way out, on the way in."
The Friend Zone lies "between the binding of her stockings and her skin." And so we see there are two meanings to the word "binding." Our speaker is bound up in this elastic edge of the stocking.
Never to be fully joined, but never to be fully free. In limbo.
Next Song: Casual Match
The speaker in this song is a person-- perhaps a man, perhaps a woman-- who is caught in this web of enticement. Unfortunately, they seem to be trapped in what is commonly (at least today) known as The Friend Zone, the emotional space in which one will be a person's friend, but never anything more.
The first line is from the woman, whose technique for starting a conversation is to call attention to her legs: "'I don't care for tights,' she says... she hikes her skirt... revealing one brown thigh." (As in "Caramel," it seems the target of desire is a person of color. Or at least some who has spent some time in the sun.)
The speaker, who notices this flash of flesh, instead focuses on her "slender little fingers." Then, in a (very) off rhyme, the speaker muses that they "pull upon/ The threads of recent slumbers." Does this mean "dreams"? Has s/he been fantasizing about her at night?
Then the speaker defines a border of The Friend Zone, "where friendship ends/ And passion does begin." And it lies "between... her stockings and her skin." A friend can see the stocking, but nothing more, not the skin itself. The border is as sheer and transparent as nylon stockings.
One small complaint: While it is admirable to try to rhyme "skin" with "begin," it becomes clunky to add the "does." We have already had "fingers/slumbers," so rhyming "skin" with "where passion begins" would have been preferable to the stilted "does begin." This isn't even speech being transmitted, it's thought... so the rules of grammar are even less expected.
The Friend-Zone denizen still harbors some hope. Maybe since it is late, "she'll ask me to go dance?" (Again, "out to dance" would be better. It's "go dancing.") "But something in the way she laughed/ Told me I had no chance."
So... there never was an invitation to dance, just a hope of one. And then the speaker reads intention into something her laughs, even. It's unnerving when you know you have no chance, but think maybe you're wrong and that perhaps you do...?
Then we shift to what else we know about this temptress. Her reputation in her family, which the speaker feels is undeserved, is that she was "never nice." The speaker says that it is more subtle than that-- she is "very" nice, but that niceness comes at a "price" that is not initially evident.
The speaker, armed with this realization, again tries to find the border of The Friend Zone and finds it may also be in alcohol and its ability to lower inhibitions. "When the gin and tonic/ Makes the room begin to spin." Yes, the speaker asks "where" and answers him/herself "when." This may be one gin and tonic too many.
If we have been working our way through the stages of grief, here, we have already passed through Denial, Bargaining, and Depression (we don't seem to have experienced Anger) and have arrived at Acceptance: "There may be attraction here/ But it will never flower."
So... what now? "I'm assigned to read her mind/ In this witching hour." Wow, it's already midnight? That is late. But more to the point, why "assigned"? I heard "resigned," which I think makes more immediate sense. But "assigned" implies that someone did the assigning. Did the speaker assign him/herself? Why?
The woman certainly didn't. Unless the speaker assumed that she implied that she did at some point, which is totally in character for our befuddled speaker.
The speaker now admits that dealing with being teased is "no game for those... easily bruised." Very true.
Then s/he says something revealing: "But how can I complain/ When she's so easily amused?" At least, if s/he can't be with her in the intimate sense, s/he can be in her tantalizing company-- she's willing to keep our speaker around as entertainment, at least.
But is that all that's keeping him/her there? Having the one who toys with him/her as an audience? Once more, we find the problem with being in The Friend Zone. No, there is no way out of it into her Sanctum Sanctorum...
But there is also no way out of it and back into autonomy. Like a comet that has become a planet, s/he is trapped in her orbit-- unable to land on the surface but equally unable to break free and resume careening across the solar system.
So, there is no way out of the The Friend Zone that ends up being closer to the woman. But there is also no way out that ends up being apart from her, either, with the Zone lying unoccupied in between the two parties. As the speaker puts it: "She does not show you the way out, on the way in."
The Friend Zone lies "between the binding of her stockings and her skin." And so we see there are two meanings to the word "binding." Our speaker is bound up in this elastic edge of the stocking.
Never to be fully joined, but never to be fully free. In limbo.
Next Song: Casual Match
Monday, November 23, 2015
As Girls Go
The subject of this song is either a man dressed as a woman ("transvestite") or a man in the process of becoming a woman ("transsexual"). A "transgender" person is one who identifies as the gender opposite of which their body would suggest, so that's another possibility, but less likely.
The speaker's entire focus, in the lyrics, is determining which is the case-- is this a man dressed as a woman, or becoming one? She is forced to admit that the subject "make(s) a really good girl," in the sense that he can "pass" as one. She does withhold some praise with: "...as girls go." So maybe this man makes for a convincing woman, just not a particularly attractive one...?
"Still kind of look like a guy," she says, now that she thinks of it. "I never thought to wonder why," she adds, implying that all this time this subject has been somewhat masculine for a woman, yet the speaker thought that he was just a masculine-looking woman, not actually a man in the guise of a woman... until now.
"If I could pull this off," usually means, "If I can accomplish this task," but most often in a sneaky or over-ambitious way: "If we could pull off this bank heist, we'd be rolling in dough." In this case, the speaker means it literally, about some article of clothing the man is wearing. If she could pull off his clothes, she would "know for certain/ the real situation..."
"... behind the curtain." This is a clever reference to The Wizard of Oz, in which the Wizard says, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." Why mention this movie? It stars Judy Garland, a star with long-standing popularity in the gay community. Her character is named "Dorothy," and for decades if someone wanted to know if a person was gay without being open about it, they would ask, "Is he a friend of Dorothy?"
Well, we were wrong about the results of the womanly guise being unattractive. Now we learn that the speaker feels (or at least says) the subject is "so beautiful" and even "stunning," even if the effect is artificial and "not exactly natural." Perhaps, since vinegar did not work, she is trying honey now.
(As an aside, I would use this expression-- "Not exactly natural/ Stunning nonetheless"-- to describe the album as a whole. While many of the sounds are synthesized, the result is arresting.)
Interestingly, now that the speaker has acknowledged the subject's attractiveness, she calls him a "damsel in distress." This fairy-tale reference might mean that he himself is self-conscious about whether he is "passing" as a woman. (Personally, I think a stronger line would have been "damsel in this dress," which would have made the listener think about that idea... while also expressing that, in this dress, he is a damsel-- while in, say, a sweatsuit, not so much.)
The speaker then gets a bit invasive with her curiosity: "What happened to you/ To make you more girl that girls are?" This seems somewhat personal and even judgmental, as if it would have to be an accident that made the person was this way... not just that he was, as Lady Gaga said, born this way.
Then the speaker probes further: "Would you ever show or tell?" She really does want to "pull this off"! Maybe she is at a drag show, but she seems to be hoping it turns into a strip show. She now couches her curiosity in a compliment. She wants to know, she says, because the subject is "so good" at passing.
Then she lays it all on the line: Did the subject have gender-reassignment surgery or not? She admits that her curiosity is inappropriate, and that she is investigating the "dark," and private-- perhaps even psychologically painful-- "side" of the subject's "life." But she doesn't care! She asks anyway: "Did you ever keep the date/ With the steel side of the knife?"
Finally, it seems that the subject has called an end to this invasive line of inquiry. We know because now the speaker suddenly pretends she doesn't care: "Doesn't matter to me/ Which side of the line/ You happen to be/ At any given time."
This sudden nonchalance is almost insulting-- along with the flippant sense of, "You know what, forget it; I've decided I don't care," comes the demeaning implication that the subject jumps back and forth between being a man and woman haphazardly. It implies that this is all just a fun game the subject plays with his gender identity instead of a deeply wrenching, even existential, internal struggle.
That said, this last could be also be a come-on: "I am so attracted to you, I don't care if you are a man or a woman... or one and then the other and back again! Let's go!"
However, if I were the subject, I would find this seduction highly suspicious. All this time, the speaker has wanted to see, to know for herself, just what was between the subject's legs. She has asked and dared and even threatened to disrobe the subject right there! And now she wants to sleep with him because she's attracted to him? Oh, please. She just wants to satisfy her ridiculous, insulting, obsessive curiosity, and getting him in bed will allow her to see him naked and know.
She says it doesn't matter? It has until just now!
I think the speaker is trying to be funny, and thinks she is. She probably is having fun and "just playin'."
But I imagine the subject of this harassing harangue of questions wouldn't find it funny at all. He was brave enough to trot out his new identity in public and is deeply insecure on many levels: Is he passing? Is he pretty? Is this really what he wants and who he is? Is it all worth it, given his deeper uncertainty?
And then this woman sees him and starts asking all these personal questions! Ones that go right to the heart of his insecurities. "So? What is it? Are you a guy or a girl? You kinda look like a guy. Come on, tell me. Go ahead, let me see. Peekaboo! Haha! Please? You know, you're pretty. Beautiful, even. Why are you so mixed up? You can tell me. Wow, you're even more feminine than a woman usually is-- are you overcompensating? (sigh) So, already, yeah? Did you get the ol' snippity snip or what? Fine! I don't care. Be a boy, a girl, or whatever. You're no fun."
It's really somewhat disturbing how hyper-focused the speaker is on the issue of the subject's gender. Why not ask anything else about him-- whatever happened to, "So, what do you do?" or "See any good movies lately?"
I certainly hope that subject spoke with someone else-- a friend or therapist-- who could assure him that this one person's massive inappropriateness should not in any way make them assume that most people look at him as a sideshow. Just this one obnoxious twit does.
Next Song: Song of Sand
The speaker's entire focus, in the lyrics, is determining which is the case-- is this a man dressed as a woman, or becoming one? She is forced to admit that the subject "make(s) a really good girl," in the sense that he can "pass" as one. She does withhold some praise with: "...as girls go." So maybe this man makes for a convincing woman, just not a particularly attractive one...?
"Still kind of look like a guy," she says, now that she thinks of it. "I never thought to wonder why," she adds, implying that all this time this subject has been somewhat masculine for a woman, yet the speaker thought that he was just a masculine-looking woman, not actually a man in the guise of a woman... until now.
"If I could pull this off," usually means, "If I can accomplish this task," but most often in a sneaky or over-ambitious way: "If we could pull off this bank heist, we'd be rolling in dough." In this case, the speaker means it literally, about some article of clothing the man is wearing. If she could pull off his clothes, she would "know for certain/ the real situation..."
"... behind the curtain." This is a clever reference to The Wizard of Oz, in which the Wizard says, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain." Why mention this movie? It stars Judy Garland, a star with long-standing popularity in the gay community. Her character is named "Dorothy," and for decades if someone wanted to know if a person was gay without being open about it, they would ask, "Is he a friend of Dorothy?"
Well, we were wrong about the results of the womanly guise being unattractive. Now we learn that the speaker feels (or at least says) the subject is "so beautiful" and even "stunning," even if the effect is artificial and "not exactly natural." Perhaps, since vinegar did not work, she is trying honey now.
(As an aside, I would use this expression-- "Not exactly natural/ Stunning nonetheless"-- to describe the album as a whole. While many of the sounds are synthesized, the result is arresting.)
Interestingly, now that the speaker has acknowledged the subject's attractiveness, she calls him a "damsel in distress." This fairy-tale reference might mean that he himself is self-conscious about whether he is "passing" as a woman. (Personally, I think a stronger line would have been "damsel in this dress," which would have made the listener think about that idea... while also expressing that, in this dress, he is a damsel-- while in, say, a sweatsuit, not so much.)
The speaker then gets a bit invasive with her curiosity: "What happened to you/ To make you more girl that girls are?" This seems somewhat personal and even judgmental, as if it would have to be an accident that made the person was this way... not just that he was, as Lady Gaga said, born this way.
Then the speaker probes further: "Would you ever show or tell?" She really does want to "pull this off"! Maybe she is at a drag show, but she seems to be hoping it turns into a strip show. She now couches her curiosity in a compliment. She wants to know, she says, because the subject is "so good" at passing.
Then she lays it all on the line: Did the subject have gender-reassignment surgery or not? She admits that her curiosity is inappropriate, and that she is investigating the "dark," and private-- perhaps even psychologically painful-- "side" of the subject's "life." But she doesn't care! She asks anyway: "Did you ever keep the date/ With the steel side of the knife?"
Finally, it seems that the subject has called an end to this invasive line of inquiry. We know because now the speaker suddenly pretends she doesn't care: "Doesn't matter to me/ Which side of the line/ You happen to be/ At any given time."
This sudden nonchalance is almost insulting-- along with the flippant sense of, "You know what, forget it; I've decided I don't care," comes the demeaning implication that the subject jumps back and forth between being a man and woman haphazardly. It implies that this is all just a fun game the subject plays with his gender identity instead of a deeply wrenching, even existential, internal struggle.
That said, this last could be also be a come-on: "I am so attracted to you, I don't care if you are a man or a woman... or one and then the other and back again! Let's go!"
However, if I were the subject, I would find this seduction highly suspicious. All this time, the speaker has wanted to see, to know for herself, just what was between the subject's legs. She has asked and dared and even threatened to disrobe the subject right there! And now she wants to sleep with him because she's attracted to him? Oh, please. She just wants to satisfy her ridiculous, insulting, obsessive curiosity, and getting him in bed will allow her to see him naked and know.
She says it doesn't matter? It has until just now!
I think the speaker is trying to be funny, and thinks she is. She probably is having fun and "just playin'."
But I imagine the subject of this harassing harangue of questions wouldn't find it funny at all. He was brave enough to trot out his new identity in public and is deeply insecure on many levels: Is he passing? Is he pretty? Is this really what he wants and who he is? Is it all worth it, given his deeper uncertainty?
And then this woman sees him and starts asking all these personal questions! Ones that go right to the heart of his insecurities. "So? What is it? Are you a guy or a girl? You kinda look like a guy. Come on, tell me. Go ahead, let me see. Peekaboo! Haha! Please? You know, you're pretty. Beautiful, even. Why are you so mixed up? You can tell me. Wow, you're even more feminine than a woman usually is-- are you overcompensating? (sigh) So, already, yeah? Did you get the ol' snippity snip or what? Fine! I don't care. Be a boy, a girl, or whatever. You're no fun."
It's really somewhat disturbing how hyper-focused the speaker is on the issue of the subject's gender. Why not ask anything else about him-- whatever happened to, "So, what do you do?" or "See any good movies lately?"
I certainly hope that subject spoke with someone else-- a friend or therapist-- who could assure him that this one person's massive inappropriateness should not in any way make them assume that most people look at him as a sideshow. Just this one obnoxious twit does.
Next Song: Song of Sand
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)