What the hell is that about - songs no one knows the meaning of

[Gangster Octopus]

Ta.

[Amor de Cosmos]

Yeah, but that wasn't the intention when it was written:

It has often been presumed that the song refers to Clarksville, Tennessee, which is near Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the home of the 101st Airborne Division, which was then serving in Vietnam. However, according to songwriter Bobby Hart, that was not the case. Instead, according to Hart, "We were just looking for a name that sounded good. There's a little town in northern Arizona I used to go through in the summer on the way to Oak Creek Canyon called Clarkdale. We were throwing out names, and when we got to Clarkdale, we thought Clarksville sounded even better. We didn't know it at the time, [but] there is an Army base near the town of Clarksville, Tennessee — which would have fit the bill fine for the storyline. — Wiki

[ursus arctos]

I was going on what we were told by a music teacher at the time, but I read that as the songwriter saying that he did indeed the draft storyline, but wanted a euphonious local (it being obvious that Parris Island, Quantico or Fort Dix wouldn't really work).

[Amor de Cosmos]

I dunno, for me it's at best tenuous:

Hart: "We couldn't be too direct with The Monkees. We couldn't really make a protest song out of it — we kind of snuck it in."

Although "Clarksville", a common U.S. place name, is in the song title, the video accompanying the song on the Monkees' TV show showed a sign pointing to "Clarkesville", which is a much more rare spelling now used only for a town in Georgia.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Ah, I didn't know the full thing, all I knew was that it was "about the IRA", which means that I thought "It's gonna happen til you change your mind" referred to bombings rather than hunger strikes and was hence surprisingly aggressive for a pop song.

On a similar note it slightly surprises me that Dexys were able to get "You know the only way to change things is to shoot men who arrange things" onto TOTP. Maybe they didn't understand Kevin's singing.

I'd say that the third verse "It's going to happen" is entirely unchanged.

[Jon]

For everything else, you're on your own...

Bummer. I was really hoping you'd explain "Oh the snot has caked against my pants."

[Amor de Cosmos]

Bummer. I was really hoping you'd explain "Oh the snot has caked against my pants."

Oh Arthur explained that himself in Love Story. It's very literal. He was seriously stoned and nodded off in a chair. When he came to he realised he'd been drooling and the saliva had crystalised on his jeans.

[Jon]

We've all been there.

Thanks, amor

[Sporting]

There are songs in which the lyrics are deliberately meaningless (the crabbalocker fishwife school of lyric writing) or those in which stream-of-consciousness comes into play, as in the Wire song I referenced upthread:

"Smith & Wright shoot in from ballistic Berlin
Fuelled by the Finnish Rude-boy Engineering Front
In plum-black knit love, they officiate
Open-plan tendencies, engulf the room
Enthusiastically embracing, the ziggurat beat
Head locked in gridlock, oozing through Flanders
White kicker magic plants poppies of remembrance
Popeye remembers a cycloptic monster"

I can't find it now, but I think Colin Newman himself sad that these words are little more than Jabberwocky type nonsense. But it's fun nonsense, if you ask me.

Then you have lyrlcsts who seem to be teasing and testing you, of whom Mark E Smth was a prime example:

Tied up to posts
Blindfold so can't feel maintainance
Kickback art thou that thick?
Death of the dimwits

Businessman hits train
Businessman hits train
His veiled sex seeps through his management sloth
The journey takes one hour

Is Dylan similarly having fun with the lyric interpreter when he sings:

Sad-eyed lady of the lowlands,
Where the sad-eyed prophet says that no man comes,
My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,
Should I put them by your gate,
Or, sad-eyed lady, should I wait?

What are warehouse eyes and what does tied up to posts refer to? Songwriters are usually fairly averse to discussing their own words. (What exceptions are there?) When does imagery become obtuseness/borderline rubbish? I love the two songs from whose lyrics I've quoted above, but wonder if I would enjoy them equally if the lyrics were laid on a plate for me, meaning-wise. And, perhaps strangely, I think not.

[Amor de Cosmos]

My warehouse eyes, my Arabian drums,

I always heard it without the comma. So "My warehouse looks at my Arabian drums." Which is equally meaningless of course. Dylan uses 'cut ups' to assemble a fair amount I've heard.

[Jah Womble]

Since when was saliva ‘snot’?

[Amor de Cosmos]

Since when was saliva ‘snot’?

Since Arthur called it that I guess. "The drool has caked upon my pants" doesn't have the same impact I suppose. It's first line just about everyone remembers, which is what you want so it did the job.