Another day, another stolen idea.
I’d like to apologise and thank Pandora (at Pandora Queen of Denial for sewing the seed with her
Random Lyrics post.
I have in my possession an mp3 jukebox jammed full of songs, mostly rock and heavy metal. And in that collection there are some moving, funny and thought-provoking lyrics – even from the heavy metal section.
So without further ado, here are five sets of lyrics from five rock maestros:
Alice Cooper – It’s The Little Things
You can burn my house
You can cut my hair
You can make me wrestle naked with a grizzly bear
You can poison my cat, baby, I don’t care
But if you talk in the movies I’ll kill you right there.
Now I fully understand how Alice feels when he sings this song. To me, the basic message is, there is only so much shit you can take and while you may cope with the horrible things that life throws at you, it might just be the little things that push you over the edge and make you explode with rage. I know that I have a tendency sometimes to bottle things up.
In the past, I have allowed the pressure to reach boiling point and then flown into a rage when confronted by something simple, like, say a piece of cat shit on the carpet. The good thing is that I think I can let off steam a little better these days – I’ve mellowed considerably with age. Nevertheless, tiny little things can sometimes irritate the hell out of me.
That’s what my soapbox is for.
It is a pressure cooker outlet valve.
Def Leppard – From The Inside
So you play the joker and I’ll play the clown
And I’ll laugh while you’re up there and I’ll laugh while you’re down.
Though your screams break the silence, they won’t make a sound.
I love this song.
It is about drug addiction but from the point of the drug itself.
My drug of choice is alcohol and I certainly relate to how alcohol may react to the full cycle of getting drunk and then paying the price. A drunken night out starts off happily enough, with the alcohol loosening those tight strings that harness the extrovert that exists in all of us.
And as the extrovert escapes, all inhibitions are lost and end up having a wonderful time – in your own eyes of course. If you go over the top, you see yourself as an indestructible force that everybody else loves.
The alcohol must see you as a buffoon and laughs because it knows what’s coming. It’s almost like selling your soul to the devil.
Ultimately you pay the price and as you wake up with a hangover, an unknown assailant battering your head with a hammer as your stomach rebels and makes you throw up air, you can imagine the alcohol laughing at you.
And nobody else cares – you brought it all on yourself.
Metallica - The Unforgiven III
How can I be lost, if I’ve got nowhere to go?
I’ve been in a bad place; I guess everybody has at some time or another.
Your life seems to have no direction and you are at your wit’s end.
It takes something to haul you out of that bad place – a loved one, a steely determination that lies deep within yourself.
I’ve managed throughout my life to somehow find something to cling onto when I am lost – so I have always had somewhere to go.
I still have.
Rush – Witch Hunt
Quick to judge, quick to anger, slow to understand.
Ignorance and prejudice and fear walk hand in hand.
Of course – there had to a song from Rush, my favourite band.
The thing I like about Rush is that most of their songs have amazing lyrics.
And this one is all about prejudice. The basic message is that some people are terrified of things that they don’t understand and lash out rather than trying to overcome that barrier. I’ve always been tolerant of differences between people. The human race is a marvel and rather than blaming other cultures and for the ills of the world, we ought to try to embrace those differences. This is one of the primary reasons I love travelling; to immerse myself in a new country and its customs. I may not always like what I see but that’s no reason to hate people for it.
We are all different – why not enjoy those differences?
Nine Inch Nails - Every Day Is Exactly The Same
I believe I can see the future, cos I repeat the same routine.
We’ve all been there, living a life that seems to be like a scratched record, repeating itself over and over again. Work is like that for me sometimes; I go to work on Monday, feeling pissed off because I still have five days of frustration to go and gradually as the week reaches its peak on Wednesday lunchtime, I start to feel better. It’s like climbing a mountain and then launching yourself off it towards the weekend when you can relax for a couple of days – before Monday morning blues slap you in the face again.
The good news is that although there are tedious aspects to my mundane work life, I do occasionally find the work interesting and the prospect of a trip abroad keeps me interested enough to cope.
But I would dearly love to break the cycle and just escape; one day it will happen. I can see the future – and the future looks good.
Well, that’s it. Thanks to Pandora for the idea. I might do this again in the future.
I have provided links so you can listen to the songs; of all of them, the Def Leppard and Metallica songs will surprise you as they are uncharacteristically mellow songs that do not conform to the stereotype.
Have a listen – and tell me what you think.
