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Songs that start out promising, but then...

robertk

09:00 / 27.02.06

It happens to me everytime i listen to that one song, "The Last day of Summer" off the Cure's Bloodflowers album. I really like the atmosphere of the song, its melody, and I certainly have a faible for this nostalgic feel the title indicates.

The song starts with a verse which is okay, and then comes the chorus which really starts out nice as well:

But the last day of summer
Never felt so cold

Yeah, I like that. The image is so obvious and simple, yet not a cliché. Pure poetry.

But then it happens:

The last day of summer
Never felt so old

Never felt so old?! Okay, let's see, cold, fold, sold, mold, OLD! That's it! Perfect!

I mean, not only does it sound as if a student in elementary school had written it - it doesn't even make sense at all! How can a day be old?

Well, I have other examples but unfortunately none of them are in English, and translation would be kind of meaningless.

Tell me, have you made experiences of a similar kind?

doglikesparky

13:10 / 27.02.06

I might be completely off the mark here but it seems to me that maybe there's a silent "I" at the front of that line?

I don't know any more of the lyrics though so this is pure speculation.

GogMickGog

15:58 / 27.02.06

Now I adore it, I really do, but I always think that funny two chord shift with wobbly guitars that opens "Bill Drummond's Dead" off Fried is much more promisngly psych. than the rest of the song, which, while pleasingly melodic, should be so much more.

Agree?

haus of fraser

16:14 / 27.02.06

surely "Bill Drummond Said" not dead!

robertk

17:15 / 27.02.06

okay, i get it.

it probably makes much more sense if we know what the other is talking about. and it also would be much more barbelith than just be like "yeah, i know what you mean".

so, here's the song. i don't see any evidence for a silent "i" in the beginning of the line, he was possibly just being lazy when he wrote the lyrics.

mick: if you have the song you're talking about anywhere as a file, could you imagine sharing it?

ZF!

19:57 / 27.02.06

"Stacked Crooked" by The New Pornographers.

It starts off with a pretty cool intro, good beat, a little electronic goodness then 3/4 in devolves into a Toto-esque type thing a la "Africa".

Yeauuch!

GogMickGog

20:58 / 27.02.06

Will look into it..

Um, yuh, sorry copey..it it 'said', "Dead" was in Drummond's riposte, was it not?

De Selby

00:47 / 28.02.06

i don't see any evidence for a silent "i" in the beginning of the line, he was possibly just being lazy when he wrote the lyrics.

Isn't it implied? Although "cold" and "old" is pretty fucking slack.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

04:04 / 28.02.06

I liked the line- I took it as meaning "old" in the sense of all used up, like "that's getting a bit old now". Prior to this one, the last day of summer has never seemed quite so empty and stripped of meaning.

grant

20:43 / 28.02.06

Rationalizations, Stoat.

robertk

20:59 / 28.02.06

might have just been my english then, just me not getting that part.. the whole matter is probably pretty much up to personal taste also.

grant

12:05 / 01.03.06

Don't let them convince you otherwise, robertk. It's an objectively bad line. It can be mathematically proven to be bad, with a graph charting co-incidence of rhyme and signal against the co-incidence of meaning and noise measured in increments of novel expression wherein 0 is silence and 1 is an inhuman noise coming from a human throat.

Jawsus-son Starship

21:05 / 01.03.06

This is gonna sound shit, but The Ordinary Boy's song Talk Talk Talk is really good until the chorus colapses in on itself.

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