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Unread 04-11-2017, 08:22 PM
Andrew Szilvasy Andrew Szilvasy is offline
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Join Date: May 2016
Location: Boston, MA
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Default Metaphors/Images in Songs You Wish Were Yours

I was listening to the most recent Wilco album, Schmilco, and really enjoy the song "If I Ever Was a Child."

There's a line: "And I cry like a window pane."

When I heard it, my reaction pleasure to seething. It's simple, so simple even someone like me could come up with it, but I hadn't. It's evocative of a rainy day, blurred vision, and the homonym even works well. I don't feel like my metaphors are always the strong suit of my writing, but this sort of feels like something I might have written in another life.

Another is from Dylan's "It's All Over Now Baby Blue" (oddly, also about crying): "Crying like a fire in the sun." It's a compelling image to me of contrast (tears and fire), and of futility. Similarly, it's a simple image that surprised me and made me mad.

At least my excuse with the Dylan lyric is that I wasn't even born when he wrote this. Hell, it was released a few weeks before my mom was born. But I've got no excuse for not beating Tweedy to that line.

There are others, but these two have been ringing in my head for a while, and I'm curious--keeping this to music, and pop music more generally--are there snatches of popular music that feel like they could have been yours stylistically but, sadly, are not?
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