Favourite NMA song for JS lyrics ?

[Shush]

My first choice would be my favourite song "Better Than Them". To me it talks about trying to maintain some self respect when you are down on your luck, and faced by others who are not. The song meant a lot to me when I was on the dole in 1989 with little hope of getting off it. Having to watch my friends take their opportunity to go onto higher education while my chance had been taken from me. My parents could not afford it. Didn't help when one of my friends of the time took his opportunity of  higher eduction which I would have loved, and then watch him piss it up the wall over the next three years, buts that's another story.

The song I most admire lyrically is "Higher Wall"

Such clever lyrics like a story, the story immigrants desiring to, and trying to get into the U.K. from their viewpoint.  While at the same time, we are shown to want to keep, not share the proportional riches we have accumulated for ourselves. The most powerful line in the song " We are your bastard children, all coming home" At first I thought JS  was perhaps making a reference to what must be in fact thousands of people across the former British Empire who are indeed illegitimate descendants of British Soldiers or Officials. The more I have listened to it in relation to the rest of the song I think it is more about Commercialism. In Third World Countries we traded and shown from the Western World the day to day luxuries we take for granted, things that most people in the Third Would could never expect to own, or experience very rarely. Mobile phones, cars, computers, light and heating, fast food chains, etc, all of which such people may see in their cities, but perhaps not have themselves. Hence the desire to go to the source of origin, where the wealth started from in the West, acquire such things for themselves, and live the lives they imagine the Tourists they have seen from the West in their country have.  That"s my take on it. Either way, a very powerful well written song.

Spoilt for choice I know, but which is your favourite song for JS  lyrics

[Amandistan]

High for me. It makes life feel less crap. The idea that all the shit that goes on means nothing when in among nature and looking from a high hill of mountain.

[peternotbaldyet]

I like the comparison of cancer and political extremism in 'Fat Better Thing'. I like ' Immaculate conceptions in sterilized laboratories' and ' Nothing is as cruel as the righteousness of innocents with automatic weapons and a gospel of truth' Could have been written yesterday. My favourite at the moment is 'They say that the meek shall inherit the earth except that they shan't'

[Pol]

Wow this is tough one higher wall is a brilliant song I've never heard any other song writer approach the subject in such in way definitely a eye opening song if ever there was one. Imperial day is along similar lines but uses another angle.
High is another excellent choice surely the lyrics all these things you fear so much depend on angles of vision but from high on high on high hill it all looks like nothing are some of the best anyone has written.
For now im going to choose believe it and bury the hatchet two songs with deep personal meaning Always reminds me of past relationship and how my life is in a much better place I've got to mention 'fate' as well especially the lyric loving is the key that unlocks the door but you never know what is waiting behind

[Gavin D]

Changes all the time....right now it's "Ghost of your father" as I only listened to it this morning. This is the problem with Justin's lyrics, they all touch you so the last song you've listened to stays in your mind.

[andydrbeard]

Good question but for me and for many I suspect completely impossible to answer. For me every song has beauty and power and integrity in the lyrics. The opening lines of High are majestic in their beauty. Pure poetry. The lyrics of Prayer Flags portrays a scene full of the other and transports me away. I could go on and on. There's a lot of reference to and obvious love and deep respect in the natural world that shines in many of the songs and I really relate to that. I could possibly just about get it down to one per album just about but doubt I could get it narrow it down further. There's so much. Gavin D says it nicely in the previous post, in that often it's the last one you listened to.   

[Master Ray]

For me, it's gotta be Modern Times...

It seems strange to write about these things now... but the time has probably come when we should accept whatever is past and gone and never will return.

Looking back to the beginning, I see a flood of painful memories and the bitter hurt and wounded pride that comes with our defeat...

We set out with our heads held high, so sure of our ground, our righteousness, the new Jerusalem to be built with love and guts and truth...

But in the end we surrendered easily, it's no use pretending otherwise... well, most of us had a little something to lose, enough to break our nerve...

Well, some of us made an easy peace and moved into the brave new world... it's hard for the true believers to look back now and realize that for many of the crowd it was just the fashion, the cause of the moment... well we, if anyone, should know that you can look pretty dumb, standing in last year's clothes... and some of us, shell-shocked still, ran for shelter and do the rituals, the same old way pretending that someone out there cares...

And some of us live in the modern world, We give unto Caesar what is due and harbour the bitterness of defeat and daydreams of revenge...

Now, nothing you see out there is real
It matters not what you believe in
It matters less what you say but only what you are
It matters what you are, it matters what you are
It matters what you are


Absolute ******* poetry.

[Willard]

For me, it's gotta be Modern Times...

It seems strange to write about these things now... but the time has probably come when we should accept whatever is past and gone and never will return.

Looking back to the beginning, I see a flood of painful memories and the bitter hurt and wounded pride that comes with our defeat...

We set out with our heads held high, so sure of our ground, our righteousness, the new Jerusalem to be built with love and guts and truth...

But in the end we surrendered easily, it's no use pretending otherwise... well, most of us had a little something to lose, enough to break our nerve...

Well, some of us made an easy peace and moved into the brave new world... it's hard for the true believers to look back now and realize that for many of the crowd it was just the fashion, the cause of the moment... well we, if anyone, should know that you can look pretty dumb, standing in last year's clothes... and some of us, shell-shocked still, ran for shelter and do the rituals, the same old way pretending that someone out there cares...

And some of us live in the modern world, We give unto Caesar what is due and harbour the bitterness of defeat and daydreams of revenge...

Now, nothing you see out there is real
It matters not what you believe in
It matters less what you say but only what you are
It matters what you are, it matters what you are
It matters what you are


Absolute ******* poetry.

I agree.  I also find it quite interesting that Modern Times and Bittersweet seem to be addressing the same concept (in my mind, anyway), the failure of idealism to realism, yet Bittersweet was written as one of the earliest NMA songs.

[Master Ray]

Willard, good call!  Haven't listened to 'Bittersweet' in a long while but re-reading those lyrics... MT and BS are like bookends, aren't they?  Amazing how a young man, like Mr Sullivan as he was back then, could be so prescient.

Damn, I love this band!    

[andydrbeard]

Modern Times would be up there in my top 5 of NMA songs. I know it's an often used term nowadays but those lyrics are the work of true genius. There's not a line in that song that doesn't resonate with such a depth of feeling and intelligence and truth.  You just don't get in a lot of other artists work and it's one of the reasons why NMA are still so relevant and so fresh 30+ years on.

[huwcamden]

"I'm crying out in fury to the gods of fate come on and get me if you can" from fate, "are you still scared of the future" from bad old world,"quit the job that very day and flew into the sky" from aimless desire and the "you're the one I'll remember" from green and grey(although rob heaton may have written that one, not to sure).All euphoric tingle moments which nma songs are littered with.

[Guillaume]

High for me. It makes life feel less crap. The idea that all the shit that goes on means nothing when in among nature and looking from a high hill of mountain.

I like the line "All these things you fear so much depend on angles of vision"...that's so true!!
This is really a beautiful song...when Justin sings "The keening wind it blows through me, it blows through me, my time it must be almost done, almost done" like if he/we is/are dying, i find it strangely incredibly poignant, the way Justin sings it.   

[Guillaume]

Sometimes i ask myself if the meanings and feelings i feel in Justin's lyrics are the ones he wanted to express or the ones i've brought myself, listening to his songs...sometimes you understand things in the lyrics that the writer didn't think of, or sometimes you feel exactly the things he wanted to say in his songs.
I'm french and not English native so maybe sometimes i don't understand all the meanings, ideas in JS's songs...but at least his voice, and his passionate way of singing are very evocative to me, often very touching.

Others lyrics i like...

"Family" ("Give me some place where i can go, where i don't have to justify myself, swimming alone against this tide...")

"Drummy B" ("...and though you will never forgive me Billy McCann goodbye": the story of a betrayed friendship between Justin and one of his friends??)

"Marry the sea" ("Did you try to marry a man who married the sea?" he looks right through you, to the distant grey..."  so poetic!)

"Headlights" ("And the ghosts that you have laid...for all the while the past is close behind": the idea that the past we want to forget in our lives is still there in our present lives, despite our struggle to go ahead)

"Orange tree roads" ("Will you still love me when everything is changed?")

"Someone like Jesus" ("There's always something in the corner of our lives that we cannot quite see...")

"Sentry" ("And only the seasons change..." i feel that this song is about the endless loneliness of the human being)

"Tales of the road" ("We all want what we cannot have!")

"Navigating by the stars" ('i must have been looking in all the wrong places...")

"Peace is only" for the dead and the dying...

"Disappeared" (..."I miss you, i miss you")

"March in September" ("I tried to tell you that you had everything that you need, but you would never believe it" "Aint it always the ones that want to be saved, that do all the saving")

"Did you make it safe?" ('It's a very long way... up to the end of the song/lyrics")

"I need more time" ("As one by one the faces we love, slide away into deep, deep waters...")
 


What do you think mean the lyrics of "Home" and "Falling", two songs and lyrics i both like very much?
I understand in "Home" that Justin talks about a person he knew that was ill ("Chris you were gone, out of the edge...these things that destroy, are inside our heads") and "Falling" is about the family links, the way sons try to have their own way in their lifes, despite the past and their fears ("This fear you carry with you is not of your own making")

 

[Shush]

Another of my favourite songs for lyrics, "Grandmothers footsteps".

I imagine at the time of its writing in the 1980s, for JS this was about American Foreign Policy, a bit like the Monty Python sketch - Buy American defence.
Like many of JS song lyrics, you can make your own interpretation of what it means, and what it says to you.  For me at the time, the song referring to powerful nations dominating other Countries with the façade of "for your defence", it was about the USSR in Eastern Europe. Maybe people in the now British Commonwealth can imagine it refers to Great Britain.
Great lyrics. Still one of my most favourite songs of all time.

[Guillaume]

The intro of "grandmother's footsteps" is especially great!
I like Stuart's bass at the beginning, and the "tick tock tick tock" like sound of the intro...