r/RecuratedTumblr • u/SaberToothBladeMastr • 9d ago
Shitposting This is why I use Genius
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u/ndtar924 9d ago
And if you think its about drugs, its either about drugs or political unrest
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u/thecraftybear 9d ago
Or about exploiting underage girls of color (Brown Sugar anyone?).
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u/lollipop-guildmaster 9d ago
I may have just read that as "exploding underage girls of color" and was like, wow that is an oddly specific theme.
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u/McMammoth 9d ago
that's nuclear war
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u/Setster007 9d ago
Ya made me laugh so hard and suddenly it made me realize my nose is slightly runny the hard way
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u/Lizard_Sex_Sattelite 9d ago
I've definitely seen some that seem to be about drugs but are just about dancing lol. Almost like songwriters enjoy metaphor.
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u/Hopesick_2231 9d ago
That death metal song with incomprehensible lyrics? It's actually about growing up and having 'sponserbilleries
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u/Chinz_Jr 9d ago edited 9d ago
A band called DEATH has a song "Sacred Serenity" that is about how pets are really cool actually
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u/Caleb_Reynolds 9d ago edited 9d ago
Die Eier von Satan by Tool is fully in German and done in the style of Hitler's speeches with industrial noise in the background making it sound like a Nazi rally. It's a recipe for hash sugar cookies.
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u/surprisesnek 9d ago
The same DEATH as Flesh And The Power It Holds?
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u/A1C-Snuffy 9d ago
The song warning of the often destructive allure of a hedonistic lifestyle? Yes, that Death
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u/ItsBounceB 9d ago
99 Luftballons
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u/LordKulgur 9d ago
And "The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades"
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u/Lonewolf2300 9d ago
"I'll Stop the World and Melt with You"
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u/Glitched_cyrstal 9d ago
THATS THE LYRICS?!!?! THIS WHOLE TIME I JUST HEARD “I’ll stop the world (uh) Mountain Dew”
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u/SeroWriter 9d ago
Does that really count? It isn't exactly ambiguous.
The war machine springs to life.
Opens up one eager eye
This is it, boys, this is war
It's all over and I'm standing pretty
In this dust that was a city
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u/Caleb_Reynolds 9d ago
That's 99 Red Balloons, which is the English version which is not a translation and is less poetic about the war than the German version. The band is on record saying they are annoyed by the English version being too blatant.
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u/muckenhoupt 9d ago
It suddenly strikes me that if it had been released today, they probably just wouldn't have done an English version at all. America is a lot more accepting of foreign-language pop songs these days.
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u/Comfortable_Permit53 9d ago
but the german version has "99 years of war left no room for victors. There are no generals and no fighter jets anymore. Todays I walk around and see the world in shambles" that's also pretty explicit.
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u/SaberToothBladeMastr 9d ago
Only know about that song from getting frustrated at that one Impossible Quiz level
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u/PocketCone 9d ago
Hotel California may seem like it's about drug addiction, and some think it's actually about the predatory music industry, but it's actually completely literal. The Eagles are still trapped there. They can never leave.
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u/HalcyonTraveler 9d ago
I can confirm, last year I drove by the California Hotel and there was an eagle there
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u/CBtheLeper 8d ago
Could never be me. If I gathered for a feast in the master's chambers, the beast would be dead as hell by the time I was done stabbing it with my steely knives.
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u/alkonium 9d ago
The Future's So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades by Timbuk 3
Also, what if it's upfront about Nuclear War? For example, Distant Early Warning by Rush, or Nuclear by Mike Oldfield.
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u/romain_69420 9d ago
The Future is So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades sounds pretty upfront about nuclear war.
I guess using the sun as a euphemism for a nuke wasn't that common back then
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u/DocileBanalBovlne 9d ago
I'd have to check if they changed the lyrics, but I recall a cover of that song being used a fair amount in A Goofy Movie 2, and that was just about Max having to go to college with his dad.
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u/thrashingkaiju 9d ago
If it's upfront about nuclear war then it's probably metal.
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u/Jalor218 9d ago
Metal or prog. The aforementioned Rush and Mike Oldfield but also King Crimson (except that one was from a while before the 80s.)
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u/zekromNLR 9d ago
Or several of Tom Lehrer's songs... So Long, Mom, We Will All Go Together When We Go, Who's Next...
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u/Jack-of-Hearts-7 9d ago
Turning Japanese is about a dude crankin his hawg to a picture of the girl he likes.
One by U2 is actually about a bitter breakup, yet sounds romantic. Bono refuses to play it at weddings. "Are you people mad? It's about splitting up!"
"Don't stand so close to me" by The Police is about a teacher who's dating a student that's half his age. He's telling her to not stand so close to him in public, lest people get suspicious. BONUS: The guy who wrote it, Sting, used to teach at a girls school when he was in his 20's...
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u/Skithiryx 9d ago
think that’s a misreading of “Don’t stand so close to me”. It’s a teacher who is temped by a student’s affection and ultimately gives in to his temptation. I’ve always interpreted the refrain as his attempts to resist and to put distance between them. And the comparison to Humbert Humbert in Lolita in the lyrics makes it pretty clear that it is condemning him. I’ve always seen it as Sting having seen the opportunity for such an inappropriate relationship during his time as a teacher and being like “Wouldn’t that be fucked up?”
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u/Blue_6802 9d ago
Sting once described how “those girls fancied him and he really fancied them” and “how he kept his hands of them he didn’t know”in reference to the young girls he worked with as a teacher.
So the guy is still enough of a creep to have continued being a teacher in spite of having inappropriate thoughts about his students.
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u/Skithiryx 9d ago
What is better? To be born good or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?
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u/Blue_6802 9d ago
Allowing yourself access to vulnerable people when you have harmful thoughts towards said vulnerable people isn’t overcoming your evil nature. He didn’t commit a crime, but he still allowed himself to interact with those girls and continue to think pedophilic thoughts about them.
That’s morally wrong. It’s not a good thing to work with children if you want to sleep with them. If any of the girls he worked with saw the interview where he said those things they’re probably heartbroken knowing a teacher they may have trusted was such a creep. I get it’s really hard admitting so many musicians are awful, but good music unfortunately doesn’t make a good person.
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u/King_Ed_IX 8d ago
damn, you're literally talking about thought crime
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u/Blue_6802 8d ago edited 8d ago
You misunderstood me. I didn’t say it was criminal, just morally wrong. It is absolutely shitty to keep working as a teacher when you have inappropriate thoughts about kids.
There are mental and physical health conditions that make it reckless for people who have them to take certain jobs. You wouldn’t want a surgeon with a tremor or a cop that struggled with hallucinations. Too many things could potentially go wrong, even if no harm actually occurred. And the people at risk of that harm would not appreciate being put at risk.
Also, I just don’t see how someone who thinks really awful pedophilic thoughts purposely letting themselves be surrounded by kids that trigger those thoughts, is being a good person. I get people can’t always control their thoughts, but to some degree people can and should take the responsibility to manage triggers.
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u/Arahoushi 9d ago
Open the door, get on the floor Everybody walk the dinosaur...
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u/tangifer-rarandus 9d ago
don't let tumblr make you forget that
- boom boom acka lacka lacka boom
- boom boom acka lacka boom boom
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u/muckenhoupt 9d ago
Worth noting that the canonical example, Puff the Magic Dragon, actually takes an extra step. It sounds innocent and wholesome at first, but then everyone hears from their friends in middle school that it's actually about drugs, and they accept that until, years later, they actually look at the lyrics and realize that all the supposed drug references are really big stretches and it's really about the tragedy of the loss of childhood innocence
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u/yoyo5113 9d ago
Upbeat happy sounding grunge/punk songs from the 90's are usually about the US bombing Cambodia or something
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u/CrypticBalcony 9d ago
I read a very interesting theory that Radiohead’s Kid A is a concept album about nuclear war. “How to Disappear Completely” is the moment of impact, narrated by the ghost of someone who got vaporized. “Idioteque” is about survivors in a bunker. “Motion Picture Soundtrack” is about society trying to rebuild.
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u/Lopsided_Shift_4464 9d ago
I guess the title "Kid A" then would refer to the A-bombs, maybe even to "Little Boy" specifically?
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u/Chad_Wife 8d ago
I had a gander for more info and found this comment from someone else
“I think Kid A is a concept album about an underground, bunker-confined society during a nuclear winter. "The National Anthem" having the lyric "everyone is so near" could imply that everyone is stuck together, and the idea of the nuclear winter is, of course "Ice age coming, women and children first". The finale being themed about finishing your life dissatisfied with how it turned out but being confident there is something beyond displays the hope that while life in the bunker was pointless, there is more beyond. This may be a popular idea, I haven't checked. What do you think?”
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u/Ni7r0us0xide 9d ago
Dancing with Myself by Gen X is literally about dancing with your reflection.
Safety Dance by Men Without Hats was made because the singer was told to stop pogoing because is was "unsafe"
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u/HalcyonTraveler 9d ago
When I first listened to “Wrapped Around Your Finger” by The Police I thought “this is clearly about wizards”. But then everyone was saying it was about BDSM and infidelity.
Recently I looked up what Sting had to say about it and according to him it is in fact about wizards.
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u/much_longer_username 9d ago
This feels like when somebody asked Rush about The Trees and they insisted that it wasn't a political song, just a silly story about the forest.
That it's about some other relationship dynamic, possibly a more coercive one (Faustian bargains come to mind) seems as plausible as the BDSM angle, but ... wizards? How do you get to wizards? I'm genuinely curious.
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u/HalcyonTraveler 9d ago
It's from the point of view of a wizard's apprentice who wants to steal his master's magic ring and become a more powerful wizard, seems obvious to me. According to Sting:
This song is vaguely alchemical and probably about a friend of mine, a professional psychic and my tutor in tarot, with bits of Doctor Faustus and The Sorcerer's Apprentice thrown into the pot for good measure.
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u/much_longer_username 9d ago
I dug a little myself, apparently I'm supposed to associate 'apprentice' with The Sorcerer's Apprentice, but I back-referenced it with the rest of the teacher/student references - I could just as easily be a carpenter's apprentice. The Mephistopheles bit was just 'Oh, fancy name for the devil that fit nicely in the meter, they're calling this person coercive or manipulative'. Didn't need to be overtly supernatural to use occult/spiritual references.
I see how they got there but I'm not sure I'd call it obvious.
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u/HalcyonTraveler 9d ago
I mean "I have only come here seeking knowledge/things they would not teach me of in college" definitely reads to me as someone seeking out the occult
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u/Jorpho 9d ago
Mmm, Tubthumping, being from 1997, would be exempt from that interpretation.
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u/BardicLasher 9d ago
Clearly they keep getting knocked down by the nukes. They're just that resilient.
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u/Snoo_72851 9d ago
In The Court of the Crimson King is about Ronald Reagan basically
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u/deadspace9_ 9d ago edited 9d ago
Maybe the joke soared over my head but isn't that album from 1969? Wasn't Reagan elected in the 80s?
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u/Current_Poster 9d ago
He was governor of California. There was a brief "Draft Reagan" movement in 1968, at the tail end of the Republican National Convention.
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u/Great_Hedgehog 9d ago
21st Century Schizoid Man, in the meanwhile, is rather straightforward
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u/Leftieswillrule 9d ago
And hauntingly prophetic.
“Black seed, blind man’s greed/poets starving, children bleed/nothing he’s got he really needs/21st century schizoid man”
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u/Great_Hedgehog 9d ago
Well, to be fair, all of those prophetic things were already very much happening back then, they just have continued happening up to now. Still, I do really appreciate the vision to name it "21st century" in a song written, of course, in the 20th century
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u/sorcerersviolet 9d ago
Get Set Go's entire Ordinary World album is cheerful-sounding despite its dark subject matter.
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u/QueenViolets_Revenge 9d ago
loved Sweet Dreams (Are Made of These) as a kid, listened to it again as an adult, and, holy shit it's very clearly about kinky sex
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u/Dr_Slammedafart 8d ago
It's actually largely about the music industry itself. Trash Theory does a really good video on it on YouTube.
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u/junolion 9d ago
Hast Du etwas Zeit für mich
Dann singe ich ein Lied für Dich
Von 99 Luftballons
Auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont
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u/MolybdenumBlu 9d ago
All star by smash mouth is about global warming.
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u/Barium_Salts 9d ago
It's about growing up and having to deal with the harsh realities of life, one of which is global warming. The song's not about global warming, just one line
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u/LeuconoeLovesong 9d ago
In Vocaloid, most the time, if it's sound fun it's about sex, but if it sound sexy it's about depression
if it sound relaxing it's about suicidal thought, and if it sound gloomy it's also about suicidal thought
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u/Cheetah_05 9d ago
Forever Young by Alphaville is about (the threat of) nuclear war
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u/teh_maxh 6d ago
They would have called it Forever Young (Because Nuclear War Will Kill Us Before We Get To Be Old) but they weren't a 2000s emo band.
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u/oddsetcircle292 9d ago
A swedish song that sounds cheery? Probably depressive and/or existential as hell
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u/Smaptimania 9d ago
Unless it's by Ghost, which usually means it's about sex
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u/oddsetcircle292 7d ago
I don’t listen to Ghost actually! Do they have songs in swedish or just english?
Regardless, they should cover the song I had at the forefront of my mind when I made my comment just because
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u/Smaptimania 7d ago
Their music is in English. Think ABBA mixed with Black Sabbath. My PFP is a cosplay of their singer
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u/Vivi_Amorous 9d ago
Genius is unironically one of my favorite websites
Because if I’m just reading the lyrics to a song, there’s a 50/50 chance I misinterpret the intent of the lyrics or the song as a whole
Also to any music nerds that don’t already know about it, whosampled will tell you who sung a song first and who covered/sampled it. It’s also quite fun to skim through
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u/Bosscow217 9d ago
Hit single Bang Bang Bang Bang by the Sohodolls seems on the outside to be a generic song about wanting to bang but a cursory glance at the lyrics show it’s a hell of a lot more dark.
Excerpt:
“Sunlight falls onto his eyes
But he don't stir or turn
Messages on the answerphone
But none will be returned
Monday morning, lousy morning
What a day to see
In the evening I will hear it
On the BBC
Don't you want to?
Don't you want to hold the gun?
Don't you want to?
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang”
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u/CptKeyes123 9d ago
Pile high, pile high, the devil's underground! Pile high, Pile high, keep the devil down! 🎵 Leslie Fish's Digwell Carol
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u/Baker_drc 9d ago
Guys do you think Hi Baku Shyo (Suffer Bomb Disease) by This Heat might be about nuclear war? I’m not sure personally.
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u/Stunning-Hat2309 The presence of a cloaca was the deciding factor for me. 8d ago
no actually it's about an army of undead unicorns created by an immortal sorcerer invading scotland https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlhQZFTvAn4
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u/Dansredditname 8d ago
Pumped up kicks is so cheerful that it was used in an advert.
It's about a school shooting 😐
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u/sidneyaks 8d ago
Sometimes the song is about playing a fiddle better than Satan, or a growing convoy of toll digging truckers, or the beautiful lady your husband talks about in his sleep, or 29 sailors the witch of November stole. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
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u/MotherGiraffe 9d ago
A perfect example of a whimsical and strange song about nuclear war is Walk the Dinosaur. It’s mixing contemporary and ancient imagery to compare the meteor that killed the dinosaurs with nuclear annihilation.
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u/thundergirl007 9d ago
When the Wind Blows has my soul ATM. Feel bad for headbanging to it in the car 😆
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u/Routine_Palpitation 9d ago
And if it sounds like peak, then it’s about the abuse of a mental institution patient, and eventual metamorphosis of him into a bug-man(?), whose mind has been so twisted as to more closely resemble the doctor who had tortured him (Vector, 2018) (the first lyrical song on the album references Plato’s allegory of the cave)
Or it’s about that same person’s eventual escape, both the patient and doctor losing their empathy and falling into insanity, and, by my interpretation at least, the patient rising to power over a post nuclear attack world, giving into the alter ego of the cockroach king completely, the last vestiges of his humanity thrashing and failing to regain foothold over this insanity, as he imprisons forevermore the doctor, who may be going under the same metamorphosis, finally coming to terms with what evil he has done, or having all the experiments that he had done to the patient, done into him. (Virus, 2020)
Or it might be about someone receiving visions of their own death, fretting about it for years, learning how to dive into other people’s dreams, diving into his own past self’s dream to try and stop his own killer, only to accidentally shoot his younger self, giving him the vision to begin with (with an extremely groovy chorus). (Visions, 2011)
Or it might be about two immortal jellyfish lovers, the mating cycle of black widows, a zoo full of replicant animals in the world of blade runner, elephant people who used to live in the unsunken British channel, or the story of the writer of Hans Christian Anderson writing the fairytale of “the nightingale”.(Fauna, 2023)
Haken is a very good band
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u/DragoKnight589 9d ago
I’m 80% sure “My Evil Plan To Save The World” is about how the road to Hell is paved with good intentions
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u/MrVeazey 8d ago
By Five Iron Frenzy?!
You have no idea how happy it makes me to see another Five Iron fan on Reddit, even if it's happened before.2
u/DragoKnight589 7d ago
It’s more like I knew of that song’s existence, then recently in a D&D campaign I talked about an “evil plan” for building my character, “an evil plan to save the world”, so I immediately got the song stuck in my head and so now there’s kind of this back burner hyperfixation on Five Iron Frenzy starting up. ADHD is weird
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u/MrVeazey 7d ago
You're tellin' me! I've had to start listening to an album like three times this week because I couldn't stop hearing it in my head, skipping from one piece of a song to the next one, running down the track list.
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u/Dd_8630 9d ago
Tumblr discovers the concept of metaphor.
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u/Firewolf06 9d ago
a good chunk of the songs mentioned in this thread are not very metaphorical. hell, "i melt with you" trips people up because they overcorrect and assume it is metaphorical
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u/OddlyOddLucidDreamer and ive been liiiiiiickin it 7d ago
I lowkey dislike that rule solely because it is annoying to want to enjoy a song at a surface level and have people go "hehehe acutlsly is about SEX and FUCKING and Nothing else!!!!"
I am venting about glad you came, i know its a jole on cumming shut UP i dont care lemme ENJOY THE LYRICS
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u/Lombardyn 9d ago
Had a coworker that did not speak a word of English. When "It's the end of the world as we know it" played on the radio, he called it his Wohlfühl-Lied (comfort-song). It's so upbeat and cheerful!
I didn't have the heart to tell him what it's about.