Matt Good's Lyrics

[The_Rat_Who_Would_be_King]

autobahn is obviously the superior one here, as his sense of humour seems to depend heavily on the mature brilliance of sending people to tubgirl dot com (please don't go). I have nothing but respect for you. as for these idiots who like to think about what they are interested in enough to spend time on a message board and try and analyze it, as opposed to just making cracks at it, they are losers.

Edited January 24, 2005 by The_Rat_Who_Would_be_King

[jennzebel]

some common themes...well maybe not themes persee, but at least these words popped up again and again.

that was impressive as all hell....I bow down b4 you....

[spieslikeus]

thanks jennzebel .. p.s. i like your avatar.

 

and i will also commend summer bronze on the while we were hunting rabbits "meaning" .. nice depth, id say i agree.

 

and p.s. why would autobahn call you a loser? did i miss something???

[summerbronze]

I honestly do not know. Perhaps people with interesting things to say intimidate him?

[pearanoid]

Nope, he's just one of them Metroid folks trying to stir up trouble. Just ignore him and he'll go back to the other forum.

[Bladeso]

Exactly! How can you trust anything with ears that soft? It's obvious they are bent on enslaving the entire human race.

I've been saying it for years...I'm glad that there are others who understand their evil plot and are trying to do something about it...thank you Yam.

 

edit.

I believe that chinchillas are the rabbits henchmen in this scheme.

But you all are forgetting that it is the rabbits in our heads that run our bodies, and even then they work along the good/white you and the bad/black you. and heven forbid if you hit the purple switch

[The_Rat_Who_Would_be_King]

So do the rabbits in our head get along with the rat who's in there ruling the world? This is all very confusing.

[leafsfan17]

ok a friend of mine and i have been trying to figure out the meaning of the song suburbia off the beautiful midnight cd can anyone tell me what it means if so please feel free to tell me

[Truffle Pigs]

Well,most of matt's songs i feel can be interpreted in different ways......as for that delightful song called Suburbia....I think the name holds true to the song.....that its about the shittiness of the Suburbs....how its like a dirty little hell hole....and your life is going to get ruined if u stay there......thats my opinion ;)

[The_Rat_Who_Would_be_King]

Yah I too always figured Suburbia was about suburbia. It can certainly be applied to other things though, for example just plain old... Urbia? and of course rural...ia?

[summerbronze]

I take the title suburbia less literally. Think of utopia, dystopia etc. The use of the suffix "ia". The title isn't "suburb" it's suburbia. Utopia, dystopia, and suburbia are all imagined places that are created out of human intentions, ideals, and values.

 

The idea of a suburbia connotes a place where the ideals are mundaneness, non-uniqueness, status quo, easy, safe, but also boring and severely lacking in anything profound.

 

The song alternates between present tense (description of suburbia - "there ain't nothing here at all")and future tense (I will, someday, they will, etc).

 

"someday this place is gonna burn" - I take this to mean that the idea of suburbia will become undesirable - will be destroyed. Suburbia is an imaginary place - an internal state ("is your whole life in there waiting?"). Your life is suspended in this suburbia, this mental state of doing the same thing everyone else is doing (like in the suburbs where every house looks the same, and everyone lives the same lives), but someday it will cease being an "ia" - will be revealed as a sham that prevented you from really living your life.

 

"I will know what this is for" - a projected wish of coming to terms with this inevitable mundane-ness that is part of life - part of reality. It's important to note that it's in the future tense - he's not yet realized this goal.

"there ain't nothing here" - he's still in suburbia (metaphorically) and looking forward to a time when he won't be anymore - "you'll realize I'm missing".

 

There seems to be a more personal element, in the "I'm missing" and "you're missing" sections. He's imagining a time when they are both missing, so one way to interpret this is that they've both overcome their mental state of suburbia and therefore are no longer missing to each other, just missing from suburbia. Does the song end with an optimistic tone (they'll finally be together and escape from suburbia)? Or, does the fact that this desirable state only exist in the future tense suggest it may not be attainable, but can only be dreamed of?

[middle class gangster]

summerbornze, you are soo much smarter than me, holy crap that just blew my mind.

 

on a diffrent note, along with the animals being used alot in his writing, in alot of his songs he kinda has the same format. he is usually talking to a girl abouth how awful something is. his imagery is usually using modern words. best example i can think of is "advertising on police cars" or "everything is automatic". im not goodat this kind of stuff though.

[The_Rat_Who_Would_be_King]

One time I wrote a short story about a character named Bad Andy, but it was really just my theory about the meaning of Avalanche. I heard Matt wrote AoB in a cabin on a mountain when he was sick and tired (kind of like now). So from there I thought that perhaps while there Matt decided to write an album that Dave would hate and the band would have to break up. So maybe "Avalanche" refers to his epiphany to straighten up and fly right, and to take control, an epiphany that would start on that mountain top and go down through the figurative trees (the band, fans, every aspect of his career). It was a pretty cool short story, and it made more sense than it does here.

[Antipop]

Speaking of Audio of Being: Take this for what you will, but a musician friend of mine in Vancouver said he worked at the studio where the CD was recorded. I asked if he had any stories about Matt's time there and he said that Matt liked to decorate the studio with "porn, bowling trophies and pictures of people holding bowling trophies."

 

Interesting insperation.

[The_Rat_Who_Would_be_King]

I wonder if any of the porn incorperated bowling trophies.