Louis Barabbas and the Bedlam Six: Year of the Bitch

Some song lyrics are really good. But song lyrics particularly of less well-known bands often go without any appreciation or thought and you listen to the song you enjoy the song and the meaning sometimes filters through. But I think there is a place for listening closely to lyrics and thinking about them. This is the first in what I hope will be a long series of posts which looked to analyse the lyrics of some signs a little. But I don't to do all the work I hope for lively discussion in the comments. I prefer to do little-known bands as I have dreams (or may be grandiose delusions) of that this being a way to promote bands that I like which I don't feel have achieved sufficient prominence. So although I love a lot of Bowie lyrics I probably won't be talking about them.  any song  suggestions leave in the comments.

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Year Of The Bitch

Next year is the year of the bitch
No one will get lucky and no one will get rich
And we’ll be telling lies when we say we don’t know why
We talk about this world as if it’s all in bits

This became part of the song is really speaking about how we all contribute by our apathy to the wreck described later in the song. There's also an element of blame avoidance going on here but I don't really know what to make of that.

Next year is the year of the bitch
The panicking will peak at a piercing pitch
And everyone will hate
And obsess about their weight
And waste away in want for the things that they once ditched

This is one of my favorite verses. The several reasons are first I really like the way the rhymes work it's A A B B and then a slant of the A rhyme which is something that always makes me smile. I also love the way it so contemptuous about the things that we in our modern society find very important and it shows how poisonous our obsession with image and acceptance can be. 

Where were you when we changed our minds
Put our ideals on ice and our hearts into brine
Where were you
When we fell?

This first chorus is a very accusatory it asks the listener directly why they allowed to the state of the state of the world is in to come about.

Next year is the year of the bitch
We’ll package up our lives and take them to the tips
And sit back in our chairs
Assuming fancy airs
As it all falls round our ears drip by drip

This file is about how will probably just keep going into more and more into decadence as the world falls apart. Instead of doing something which could actually have helped we'll just get on with smoking and drinking and snorting and injecting and consuming because that seems to be the least my generation's reaction to quell hopelessness and disenfranchisement. 

And people all just stood around watering their lawns as the cities fell down
I could barely make out the time
As the air turned to ash and the sea to slime

I love the image here of the whole world and all of nature falling to pieces that almost everybody keeps bizarrely well irrigated patch of useless grass that the sake of appearances. I love the idea of a crumbled city seen from from the suburbs with a woman watering her grass in the foreground, just a really powerful image (Your Yard is Evil)

Where were you when we changed our minds
Put our ideals on ice and our hearts into brine
Where were you
When we fell?

Next year is the year of the bitch
We’ll swallow all their lies like hungry little chicks
Every consonant and vowel
Wretched, rank and foul
We’ll cling to every word like tiny little ticks

This is the only place in the cell where it seems like it's trying to blame somebody else I feel like it lashes out at the media and at the governments but really it's just another more subtle self flagellation swallowing their lives and clinging to their words doesn't sound particularly good for us. In the final analysis we let them get away with it and they did most of it in our name.

Where were you when we changed our minds
Put our ideals on ice and our hearts in brine
Where were you when we fell?
where were you when we lost ourselves
where were you?

I'm not going to do conclusions in these. I think we should conclude together in the comments.

Look at me acting as if I'm going to get comments.

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