Reply To: Lyrics and gender
even now that i'm aware of the less charitable reading of 'soft rocked' i don't really look twice at it, at least not individually, because yeah if you take it that way the dude is totally a creep and you're not even really supposed to be sympathetic with him. he's sort of a creep in a pathetic way that makes you laugh at him. (although, i prefer to hew to the more charitable read, just because i just like it better when things are sincere and earnest.)
i can't really get myself to do that with verse 2 of always the moon, though. there's a sort of frankness, a 'this is just how it is, oh well' attitude that combines with the larger implications in a way that makes me uneasy, and when you take the body of work as a whole, this one piece starts to reflect badly on other ones that might've been more or less innocuous before.
my read of 'till the money comes' differs from bry's when it comes to the assumption that the narrator can get away with his proposed course of action. clearly he thinks he does, but i don't recall any evidence in the song to support this. it's possible the moneymaking party is simply humoring our self-absorbed narrator, for whatever reason, as long as it suits her.
and i guess i'd always understood that the guy in make you cry was never actually going to succeed and that eventually the lady would just get fed up with him and tell him off and that would be that.
i'm not sure what i'm really trying to say, here. i'm still a total fanboy, make no mistake. i still like always the moon because it is still catchy and addicting. i guess it just makes me uneasy. i would really like to see coulton move away from that theme, i guess, is all.