What song are you listening to right now? What does it mean to you?
Last Updated: 23.06.2025 02:24
Everybody’s got one.
Nope. It isn’t the thing.
Some lovely story about what the artist went through prior to making the thing? Human interest, yes! We love to be deep in the gossip, we kind and faithful beings. Yet is this OF the artwork? No.
What is the reason behind some people wearing trunks instead of speedos when swimming in pools?
It is yours. Your own. Don’t be too precious about it, please. Shoot me a comment below: tell me what’s moving in you, easily or uneasily as you listen for yourself to the song (below!), and judge it for all that it is, or isn’t. For what they have done, or for what they have failed to do: in you.
Every meaning is valid to the degree it can be supported from within the text.
Kind of like John Linnell, John Flansburgh & The Band Of Dans (who hadn’t yet joined the bandwagon as of the above-limned song’s original finished debut).
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A. See below. It’s a 2-Parter!
Art is what moves you in ways mere craft could not.
So be it, then!
It means what it is, not what some paid or unpaid maker thinks it should mean to you. Kind of like oh, I don’t know, Neil Diamond? Neil Sedaka? Bing Crosby? I’ve no idea really. Elvis Costello? Aimee Mann? Sean Penn’s sister-in-law? The Beatles? Who gives a rat’s toss? These people were paid and paid handsomely to prettily dish up something for us, for us to take in and mean, and feel. And sure, think! Why not?
It is we the living who’ll each decide what it means: to each and all.
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Why should anyone swallow it? Except for what IT truly is? Your own original production! At best or at worst, “based on” or “inspired by” the thing itself.
Meaning is what you get out of it.
I’m not sure if it’s like Wet Leg. I haven’t really drawn a bead on Wet Leg yet. Look.
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Why even read my take on what it means? You think my “hot insider intel” can override, overrule or otherwise upset the work itself: in all it truly IS? Can interpretation unseat the text?
It’s one motive, at least. If that’s your meaning then run off with it and see who’ll bow, buy, or slap a bow-tie on it for a garrotte. The rest of us?
No need to confess
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Whatever each viewer, hearer, taker-in and receiver “gets” out of it is, if anything, that critic or fan’s own personal production. Of what? Meaning. Value. Worth. Call it by any metric you can lay forth or set out: it’s pure personal judgment in play now, dog. Cur. Bitch?
Context is not “key.”
Is “it” an art at all?
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Well, duh. More than that: TUH-DUH. TA-DA! It means the words! It means each and only what the words say. Read ’em and weep not! See? Right up there for you. SEE? See!
You gonna tell us the mere author or creator of a work gets to decide for YOU what it means?
I men: you’d have to be a surefire every-miss dweeb of cretinous nature to credit what I have to say here with authority, or even a slick, greasy Greek booty-toot of value. GROSS. GROW UP, if so! Get a real load on!
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Look.
Behold!
Is that what you think of IT? Of art? Or if you’re a real capital-A ASS, of “Art”?
What the singer or writer, the true creator, the artist (modern, classic, wise or otherwise) thinks it should mean in addition to what they’ve indeed made is…puff. Fluff. Tacky add-on, at best.
It, whatever the heck it is or may be to someone, doesn’t really mean anything else but its own real features and properties. The thing itself is what must mean, and the only thing that can mean: to anyone, everyone, okay uh-huh alright forever and ever amen.
Everyone looks naked when you know the world's address
Don’t believe the hype.
Care to have a listen?
Big “A” or little? Done for Art’s sake, or just for free sushi and sake? Got anything for us, anything for each or all? GIVE IT UP, HOMO SAPIEN.
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CALL THE MEN OF SCIENCE
Give us what cha got, “artist.” If indeed you consider yourself an artist: give it up. For all we the living, for any and each who might be moved, AND HOW.
Disabuse you of that “secret meaning” or “real meaning” nonsense notion pronto and galore! I mean consistently, coherently, cogently and with integrity: in every onstage bout of audience-aimed grateful candor, plus every interview segment you’re likely catch them in, speaking for themselves to all the world: unabashed, unashamed, not too guardedly at all.
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Take it in every sensory or sensual way it exists, by any medium presented! Like, love, want, even need, and even share that with others! Your own lived experience of the thing itself, yeah-heah!
There is no “code” in art to break.
How are you moved? It’s not a f***ing contest. Why would anyone want to WIN a f***ing contest? Oh, that triple asterisk stands for “art” not “uck.” Pretty yucky, that droll substitution. Pretty disgusting, those who try to pass it off as “fresh.”
worn...etc.
In many circles (and the glorious art that erupts and cruises forth from these circles is not to be puked at), what’s vulgar is pretty always a-gonna be a good bet: to pop.
I’ve got to be some kind of “sense, senses or sensual snob” who wants to root like King Tut on human growth hormones and steal your golden moment right out from under you, right?
…this is all very well beyond what the thing itself means, or meant. It is new.
AND LET THEM HEAR THIS SONNNG
I say leave that to the one being called, Holmes. Or…sure, lock your tongue away behind your lips and bite yourself, hard! Why offend needlessly over what amounts to a nickname? Must you?
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I like to enjoy music, literally. Just the text, just what it says.
Nobody could possibly credit my take over and above or underneath the text itself, the thing itself: the actual work and nothing else. Nothing but. All that’s in or within it. Right?
It is trivia.
Under every garment I can see the world's address
It is background intel, no part of the work at all, at all.
No critic and no investor, no, not even any Capital-A Author or Major League Maker can add one jot, jolt, titter or teardrop to the finished work of art. As it was, or as it lasts in its finished form.
I’m far worse than serious on such scores: I’m sincere.
Whose song is it, any old way?
The original authors did.
What does it mean to me?
This isn’t a matter for seriousness.
I’m so mean I mean it all.
Context (since there’s every single context you or anyone could choose to clap on top of it or pretend-slide beneath any artwork) is keyhole.
I can see your secrets
THE WORLD'S ADDRESS
The thing itself is the thing itself.
I'll repeat it for those who may not have already guessed:
Official audio only.
WERE WRONG, the world's address! A place that's
Just leaves me depressed
You decide. Purpose is what you put into life.
I know you've deceived me
Anyone who wants to pretend their free gift to the world means something other than what they actually made and gave is welcome to be that pretentious.
Nothing beyond what was literally made part of the song is the song’s meaning.
Hold!
Touch!
They told you simply: by making the whole thing, nothing less. Nothing more. In every single word strong strung in sequence.
“The Word’s Address”
A place that's worn
You know it.
Would be wildly, reasonably sane to call “BULL’S-HIT!” on such fancy-shmancy anti-bullseye potshots.
A finished work. A “fait accompli.”
Whatsoever is moved in you: now THAT you can know!
Answer one. “What song” indeed! I’m listening to "The World's Address":
Here’s the musical recording from the band They call “TMBG”
Yes! You nailed it! A “full-on slob-mode aficionado of pop cultural forms” to boot! Who minds what I, some rando asshat off the internet, told YOU couched so hot, deep and hard in threadbare shorts, rocking and a-rolling on a huge leather sofa stolen from “schools” and “styles” of old thought, “BUD”? Not it!
TELL THEM ALBERT EINSTEIN AND COPERNICUS
Popular, yes. That’s what vulgar originally meant.
A sad pun that reflects a sadder mess
Bull. The public has always known better than that. It isn’t novelty of theoretic conception that makes good art. It is truth. It is beauty. Which can include: hideous ugliness, if true. Or: hideous ugliness, if for some reason you the viewer, the onlooker, the innocent bystander, the paying customer or the passerby decide: I rather like the feel and style of that hideous thing.
Who says what’s art? The Modernists united in a real cheap-shot art-critic sold and commanded zeitgeist ventriloquism voice: The Artist! Art Is Whatever The Artist Nominates As Art!
Let’s not get personal. A woman, even a very young and competitive woman far too good for the likes, loves, needs or wants of me (or you, for that matter) is only called a “dog” by some sour grapes loser. Or! Hey, if she must love dogs, maybe she won’t even mind being called in a doggy style?
Not I.
What more could one ask of a work of art? Sometime, maybe try to ask the song itself what it means.
I’m plain-out roaring, here!
What kind of hack art critique confidence job (or “fanfic”) would you like us to call that crap?
This is They Might Be Giants, and contrary to the dull, glistening and listless imaginations of self-perverted twerps who think songs have “real” or “secret” meanings that only the author or authors could tell you, John L. & John F. of They Might Be Giants will lay it all right out on the line for you every time I’ve ever seen ’em get into it.
Call it an affectionym, but be sure the other wants yours first. It isn’t a very high art to be sure, this dealing and doling of names. Lables and boxes, more often than not? Empty of everything but nerve, bile and gall. Turn your head and cough, please. Yes!
A great deal like Robert Frost. “No musician!” would you say? HA. HA! HA! HA! Nonsense!
Not at all like Pet Shop Boys, but who really is these days? Beyond Tennant and Lowe, no one has ever been very much like those Pet Shop Boys, actually.
Q. What song are you listening to right now? What does it mean to you?
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This is each person’s moving contribution to any work of art: to say how it moved in you.
It means an “accomplished fact.” Something that has already been done, and there it is: “that’s-that.”
HAH. HA! No! How could I possibly be, about something as trite as art has in our day and age become? Grossaroo!
Who do you say I am? Some “grammar anarch & semantic champion” for the people!
“The text” here means only: the entire artwork of whatever kind. Picasso’s Guernica is a text. Citizen Kane is a text. “The World’s Address” is our text, for this instance.
Feel!
Why be a turd about it, stuffing imaginary made-up “author’s intent” (beyond what the author actually DID do, DID make whole) into some fantasy “envelope-pushing” exercise?
This all holds true for every thing called art, in every form of art, or called art.
The world's address
Is that what you think of me?
You say. You’re the one to be moved, after all. In the “final anal”—what some call the “final” analysis. Why be rude? Art may be! Art may be the rudest thing in the world, taken out of its own natural time, place and culture! Pay heed! Open your eyes and let your tongue waggle like a slug!
That doesn’t mean the trivialist has some secret special key and code in their possession. They’re just kinky like that: like to be deep in the loopy sh!t. Smells like some way too-old pretend teen’s spirit hit the fan again, though. VULGAR.
So…you can read the lyrics above. Those words, in that simple order? That IS what the song really means.
Am I serious?
We humans do love trivia, and some of us: we love it more than art.
Taste!
I didn’t tell you what it meant.
A song made for public consumption has no “real meaning” beyond what it means to you: the hearer. The listener, ideally. The artist, the creator, the originator or the band of record merely bring you the best they could put out to move you, given available talent and production time. So?
Not in some misbegotten competition with the dead.
Or do not. Yoda won’t take them odds, and you shouldn’t aspire to be some critic’s forceless green-tinged puppet, whether cartoon or foam rubber: IT STANK EVERYWHERE BUT THE BOX OFFICE, and buddy?
Couldn't sleep last night
A deft touch like Peter Gabriel, in such regards.
A whole lot like AC/DC, Sia Furler and The Black Keys! Great pool hall music, the lot of them!
Shall we uphold that craptastically egotistical self-shoveling attitude? Why should we? Because we, two should be famous for moving the world with what moves us in art? Hey.
Now pull the other one! How did it make YOU feel, about your mother for instance?
The thing really done.
Vulgar?
Yet…
Did it stink for you, or were you moved to applaud? Don’t be shy.
Now my tearstains on the wall reflect an ugly sight
It ain’t the thing. Is it?
Hear!
The sales and marketing job (includes all backstory and behind-the-bio of the real maker, doer, makers or doers) is nothing to do with the genuine article: the act performed, the thing made.
It is what the thing itself meant in you. Or: means to you, coming forward now.
Check between one or the other set of your cheeks, and go blow.