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She's a break-thru
She's a break-thru
She's a break-thru
She's a break-thru Dirty Projectors – Break-Thru
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The title is unlikely to be a reference to The Doors' “Break on Through,” but appreciating The Doors and the film The Doors actually helps a lot in understanding other work by Dirty Projectors

The video refers to David Byrne’s break from Talking Heads (his suit) and Longstreth’s earlier career (the birds, which may be a way of quoting his earlier albums such as The Glad Fact that discuss birds). It also seems inspired by late Eighties dadrock like George Harrison’s “Got My Mind Set on You” and Paul Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al.”

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Just hanging out all Julian Casablancas Dirty Projectors – Break-Thru
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Perhaps just to say she looks relaxed and indifferent, not requiring anyone’s approval, which was his trademark. Casablancas' father, who ran a modeling agency, was a famously successful seducer.

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Archimedes Palimpsest Dirty Projectors – Break-Thru
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A roundabout way of saying she’s perfect because she’s inscrutable and deserves further study. The Archimedes Palimpsest is real.

A palimpsest is “a manuscript or piece of writing material on which later writing has been superimposed on effaced earlier writing.” (OED) Longstreth often uses this motif in his work – “I’ve always loved cuneiform,” he said in 2012 and at other times – and refers to the “tablet of values” on “About to Die.” But about starting over, in general. He seems to be using the word just for the hell of it, because it sounds good, though there was an art magazine at Yale named Palimpsest when he was there, and it’s still around!

This sounds like Dipset, overall, there for the sake of being there – and think how the first verse opens like “Hey Ma” – but Archimedes‘ screw allowed the Greeks to build a temple to Aphrodite…

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she's got features on Fellini Dirty Projectors – Break-Thru
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She’s more stylish than one of the most stylish film directors of all time. This is either lazy or a breakthrough in learning how to express oneself clearly and purely.

Federico Fellini - Wikipedia — Wikipedia
Federico Fellini, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI ( Italian: [fedeˈriːko felˈliːni]; 20 January 1920 - 31 October 1993) was an Italian film director and screenwriter. Known for his distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness, he is recognized as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time.

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Marked this as a stretch?
4 years
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4 years
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6 years

i dont wanna be that guy, but the point of this line is that fellini was really inspired by his dreams when making his “features.” so its a goofy pun on the dreaminess of fellini films, or features. “stylishness” isnt really the point.

sorry

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How's it going?
Neo real cheekbone Dirty Projectors – Break-Thru
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This rhymes – it seems self-explanatory, but the opening is a good place to note that this song and video seem to be Longstreth’s version of “the new uncanny”

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4 years

Neo real refers to neorealism, a cinematic style focussed on authenticity and a rejection of the artificial Hollywood aesthetic. So her cheek bones are genuinely beautiful. Fellini’s films are in this genre.

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Middle-earth highbrow Dirty Projectors – Break-Thru
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In the context of Longstreth’s earlier work, it might be a thing about Zeppelin nuts, or children of Zeppelin nuts, though this may just be messing around.

It also sounds like Dwight MacDonald’s Masscult and Mid-Cult: Essays Against the American Grain.

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4 years
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Fb169c777a28d4b8cbd4691bfc18072d

106

4 years

This is clearly a reference to elves: the highbrow characters of middle Earth. She is elvin in her beauty and grace.

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Under the sun, there's nothing new Dirty Projectors – Break-Thru
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After Ecclesiastes, which Longstreth’s frequent collaborator Ezra Koenig said he was reading during several interviews for the Modern Vampires of the City press tour.

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Ab40eaf39f26d22ab636cea47ca6375b

1,144

5 years

He’s referring to the old biblical phrase “There’s nothing new under the sun”… kind of talking about the monotony of life…

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78vvo0z40bi

497

5 years

this line also reminds me of the phrase “everything under the sun”, that even though it doesn’t seem like there’s anything left to be impressed by, she’s still a breakthrough

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Her line is Pablo but her color's Fauve Dirty Projectors – Break-Thru
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This line is predictably convoluted. It seems to allude to Bob Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay” (“His clothes are dirty but his hands are clean/And you’re the best thing that he’s ever seen”)

This is about a guy feeding a woman lines, ultimately, but her line is probably Kanye West’s Pablo merch. Longstreth has collaborated with Kanye West, most notably on “FourFiveSeconds.” The other part refers to Fauvism, an early 20th century school of visual art associated with Picasso collaborator Georges Braque. Longstreth’s brother Jake is an artist best known for his California landscapes.

“Whatever colors you have in your mind
I’ll show them to you and you’ll see them shine”

Henri Matisse, Woman With A Hat

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2 years

The Bob Dylan and Kayne West allusions both seem tenuous.

I read it that he’s conveying more about his subject’s personality by evoking Picasso’s quick but brilliant line drawings and the Fauves' bold colors. There’s range to her personality; she can get straight to the point and say a lot with a little, or she can be splashy and bold – caring less about reality and more about emotional nuance.

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D71de8d072a46f7d6f27e7167b5bdff7

115

2 years

I think this line is doing double duty as a reference to both Picasso and Kanye. The whole song plays with fusing the high and low brow. This is particularly explicit in the “Middle-earth highbrow” line just before this.

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Fb169c777a28d4b8cbd4691bfc18072d

106

4 years

Definitely not about Kanye

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5 years

“Her line is Pablo” undoubtedly refers to Pablo Picasso’s bold cubist style, meaning that the figure she cuts in the world is unusual, strange but still captivating. Picasso is also well known for having a “blue period” where his work was monochromatic, and Longstreth lets us know that nothing like that is happening with this woman. Rather, she combines the bold lines cubism with the riotous color of les Fauves, “twentieth-century modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism”.

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Jim
6 years

‘Line’ likely simply refers to the lines of Picasso’s line drawings and paintings. This also complements the following, ‘her color’s Fauves,’ which, mentioned above, was a stylistic movement predicated by bright, vibrant color.

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But we will not break
Not on bended knees Scarborough – Stand
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Scarborough, hymnic, means supplication of broken spirits, but he could also mean Take a Knee NFL protests. Either way, it is a bizarre choice for a song about women in 2018 in light of the recent resurgence of interest in the Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan kneecapping incident from the 1994 Winter Olympics.

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You may get the chance to stand
Against a column of tanks
Holdin’ up your hand Scarborough – Stand
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Scarborough compares #TheResistance to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests

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