(classic way of starting a blog entry) I really hate it when people take song lyrics and try to analyse their meaning. When they try to break it down and figure out exactly what the artist was feeling or thinking while they were writing a particular song. I will spare everyone the suspense: YOU WILL NEVER KNOW what they meant. Ever. If they wanted everyone to know what they were saying, they would use plain and direcet language in their music, not metaphors or deeply hidden messages that are NOT meant for you anyway. The songs are probably so personal that they are only written for the artist themselves or for someone really special to them, and that special person probably still wouldn't be able to figure out that the song was for/about them anyway. I really hate it. I also hate when interviewers actually blatantly ASK the artist "ughhh what did you mean when you wrote ..." and then the artist tries to come up with something which is probably a bullshit reply just so that they can answer the question, get their exposure and money and get the hell out of the interview. They don't care. This is why I don't analyse what songs mean. I pick out bits of lyrics that I like or that i think are witty and that's about it. I love clever little lines in songs, cool ways of saying things, snappy biting sentences, but I never love songs for what they are "supposed" to mean or because of how "meaningful" the lyrics are to me. I feel that what is said in the songs are for the artist and that I could not possibly even begin to grasp what they're trying to say, so why bother? I just enjoy the song for the way it is put together as a whole, not individual pieces. I enjoy how the lyrics go along with the music and how it is all delievered to you and how it makes you feel and elicts certain emotions (MUSICALLY not lyrically), not because of how I can write a book report on the song and pick out literary devices and meanings and symbolisms. I know a lot of people will disagree with me on this one, and that they really find special meanings in song lyrics and songs really speak to them, and they can relate to the artist and they prevented them from committing suicide and what not, and that's absolutely wonderful. Good for you. I just don't enjoy music in that way, and I personally think I enjoy it more because of it. I take more of a broad view of a song rather than cutting it down into its component parts. I let the music itself, rather than the words that are sung, affect me more. I enjoy the voice and how the person sings and how beautifully this interacts with the music, not the actual semantic content. The fact that some songs might even have a meaning is simply a bonus to me, because everything else that goes along with the lryics are just amazing and impactful to me. That's why I like such a wide variety of music, because I enjoy the sounds of people's voices and the incredible music they create and I don't pay attention to the subject matter of the songs. I don't discriminate on what genre or music I am listening to, on WHO the artist is or what things they sing or play about in their songs. I just like what I like for exactly what it is without devling too deep into what it's "supposed" to mean. Don't get me wrong, some songs have very blatant and very cool and inspiring messages with catchy and obvious lyrics that make you and me love the song and that's just great. It happens. None of the things I say are really hard and fast rules set in stone, but what I am talking about are those songs where the meaning isn't very apparent, where there are possibly multiple interpretations and maybe the song wasn't meant to be figured out. Maybe I am just taking the "ignorance is bliss" route to listening music, and maybe I could get even MORE out of it if I tried to sit down and figure out what songs were supposed to mean, try to decipher incoherent lyrics and see how this song and this artist and his or her lyrics could speak to me, but I choose not to. I just like to sit back and let the combinations of the lyrics and the instruments and the passion of the artists playing and the feelings and vibes of the music wash over me and let my mind wander and get lost in the song without letting the analytical part of my brain try to put literal meaning to things. But I guess that's just basic human nature, trying to make sense of things and put meaning to something when maybe it wasn't meant to be figured out and explained in the first place.