What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon collaborated with Kanye on two of the latter’s previous projects, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Watch The Throne. On getting asked to help out with Yeezus, Vernon told Pigeons and Planes:

After Twisted Fantasy, I kind of assumed that I’d get the call again at some point. I get along with Kanye really well and I think his musical decisions are exquisite. He feels otherworldly—he talks about being a god and shit, and his confidence in himself is inspiring. But at the end of the day, he’s a musician working in the lab. We have fun. So when the call came for this album, I was like, ‘Shit yeah!'

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

As a radical departure from the rest of Reed’s catalog, Metal Machine Music is generally considered to be either a joke, a grudging fulfillment of a contractual obligation, or an early example of noise music.

The album features no songs or even recognizably structured compositions, eschewing melody and rhythm for an hour of over-modulated feedback and guitar effects, intricately mixed at varying speeds by Reed himself. In the album’s liner notes he claimed to have invented heavy metal and asserted that Metal Machine Music was the ultimate conclusion of that genre.

The album cost Reed credibility in the music industry while simultaneously opening the door for his later, more experimental material. Historically, Metal Machine Music is now considered a seminal forerunner of industrial music, noise rock, and contemporary sound art.

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

Review originally published by The Talkhouse on July 2, 2013.

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

Here’s what Pixies frontman Black Francis had to say about “Bagboy”:

“The lyrics, coincidentally, were composed at a Starbucks Coffee in Harvard Square in Cambridge, about a hundred feet from where, 25 years ago, I composed some of the lyrics to an old Pixies song called ‘Break My Body.’ Twenty-five years later, some Starbucks in Harvard Square…I thought that was kind of interesting. The music for the song has been around for a few years. There are some demos I made with Joey and David a few years ago in Los Angeles, related to a film idea that still has yet to see the light of day, although work on the music continued. So a lot of the musical idea had been kicking around for awhile. It’s pretty simple, kind of a blues-based, two-note kind of thing, really.”

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

The second single from the album.

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

This could mean a couple things:

  1. The narrator is ending the relationship with someone, and will probably never see them again, though it’s a possibility.

  2. The narrator is going to take his own life, and will see this person in heaven.

Either way, it’s over…

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

Don likely has social anxiety, a disorder characterized by an intense fear of interacting with strangers, fear of situations in which you may be judged, and worrying about embarrassing or humiliating yourself.

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

The captain has lost everyone that he holds dear to him (“the storm took them all”), and he just wants everything to be like it was in the past.

Following the theme of transition to adulthood, the Captain is the last one to change; the only one among his crew who was not taken by the storm, clinging to childhood and the boy.

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

An addendum: Perhaps the child represents the captain when he was younger. In his quest to return to his carefree, simpler youth, the captain has to be granted it’s permission before he can go back. However, his youth doesn’t want let him in because the captain’s been stained by all the wrong deeds he’s done. The final stanza is the captain trying to apologize to his youth about the terrible things he’s done.

The boy represents the Captain’s childhood in which he trying to find solace. However, even in childhood, he recognised that he could not be innocent forever; the boy going pale is an example of childlike terror to the pain of becoming an adult.

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.

What is this?

The Genius annotation is the work of the Genius Editorial project. Our editors and contributors collaborate to create the most interesting and informative explanation of any line of text. It’s also a work in progress, so leave a suggestion if this or any annotation is missing something.

To learn more about participating in the Genius Editorial project, check out the contributor guidelines.

Loading...

“Michael” may at first appear to be a frank exploration of homoeroticism (“Michael you’re dancing like a beautiful dance whore”) but really Alex is just playing at sexual roles in the same way Morrissey enjoyed 20 years ago.

-A review in NME by Anthony Thornton

This video is processing – it'll appear automatically when it's done.