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Jade Castrinos was a vocalist and guitarist in the group.

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A willful denial of anxieties that threaten to disturb his naive joy (“head in the sky”)–he is happy in the moment and actually wishes time would stop, but he knows it can’t, and tries to make himself happy with what reality he has.

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The simultaneous beauty and convenience of America’s national parks and infrastructure is contradictory. While the roads are facilitate travel, it is necessary to destroy nature to build them. As Joni Mitchell wisely put it: “They paved paradise to put up a parking lot.”

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David Byrne puns on sense/cents to suggest the socioeconomic relationship between workers and employers both defines adulthood and denies other, earthier, satisfactions. According to Byrne, “Stop Making Sense” is the best advice he can give. Check out his bizarre video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE-mxVxFXLg

This line would later give the film of the same name its title.

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The album “Speaking in Tongues” was released in 1983 when President Ronald Reagan was in office.

But note how extremely vague the line is. It could work for any president, and that’s the point. Byrne was no fan of Reagan, but he’s making a point about how anyone who participates in society, not even its leader, is in a position to judge what’s really strange or crazy.

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You must conform or you will end up behind bars. Another verse that denotes a sense of despotism and corruption.

“Snap into position” and “Bounce ‘til you ache” come across in the melody as playful imperatives to dance, but they also invoke the proverbial dancing monkey: stay in line, don’t be too out of the ordinary, or this deviation will result in your removal from our society

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She states that her thoughts cannot be understood by people that haven’t been in her situation. This line references that explaining the traumatic experience does not give understanding. True absorption can only happen by experiencing a similar traumatic experience.

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It’s also possible that this part of the song is a knowing bit of gender subversion: its a line that seems like characteristic mansplaining that Grimes interrupts and undercuts with Beach Boys-like “la la la"s.


It’s also about mental health, because being stuck in the past isn’t good for your future nor your present; by living in days long passed, you aren’t learning your lesson, you’re forcing yourself to continually relive what is debilitating you.
She needs someone to wake her up from her nightmare.

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He received a card (potentially a wedding invitation) from his former lover. It seems as though they’ve planned one more act of infidelity in a cellar on Friday night. He wants her to remember this final act of their love by writing it down, but urges her once again to get her story down. After all, she is about to marry another man!

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He’s playing with the last line about the ‘ghetto life’ being an error in the system, so he is now backdooring (hacking) the system to get around what is blocking him from progressing in life.

Also backdoor means anus, so backdooring means ass fucking.

The term “Backdooring”,also used by his fellow TDE mate Ab-Soul in Terrorist Threats, serves as a description of sneaking into the “game” (hip hop) influencing black youth, even if they are unwilling to let him in the “front door”. This also ties in the previous lines, his music will teach “things WE will never learn soon” whether we like it or not.

So keep an open mind and clinched cheeks!

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