Bends towards herself, the soothing
Proves that she must still exist
She moves herself about her fist Neutral Milk Hotel – Communist Daughter
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I once loved a woman, a child, I'm told
I give her my heart but she wanted my soul
But don't think twice, it's all right Bob Dylan – Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
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This stanza marks the first shred of growth by the narrator. He recognizes the fling as a childish affair, with his ex being an unknowable and selfish partner.
Alternatively, the child could be interpreted to be the narrator’s baby, conceived while he was with his ex. This gives new power to the punchline, “don’t think twice, it’s alright.” In this interpretation the narrator feels like he was robbed of a relationship with his son or daughter, robbed of having a real family, and is trying to console himself by not thinking too much about what was lost.
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When Dylan performed “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” for the first time at the Gaslight Cafe in October 1962, Suze Rotolo – his girlfriend at the time – had already been taking classes at the University of Perugia, Italy, for four months. The acute pain of Dylan’s separation from Rotolo is heard throughout Freewheelin' and, in this song, he seems surprisingly bitter and disillusioned, but still in love with his beautiful girl.
The song’s ubiquitous empathy provides for a subjective listening experience: it is neither optimistic nor pessimistic. As Dylan himself put it: “[It’s] a statement that maybe you can say to make yourself feel better… as if you were talking to yourself.”
The sublime fingerpicking guitar was originally credited to early Dylan backing musician (and Mr Tambourine Man himself) Bruce Langhorne, but Dylan scholar Eyolf Østrem makes a convincing argument that the track is a solo Dylan piece.
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What is this?
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To wait upon him hand and foot, yet always answer no? Bob Dylan & The Band – Tears of Rage
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A pretty obvious allusion to the Shakespeare work “King Lear”, in which daughter Cordelia refuses to flatter her father (the title character) with the best intentions, through which Dylan continues his lamentation of the direction America was/is heading in.
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Rivers Cuomo, perhaps the most nerdy Rock star to ever exist, opens the song with the anachronistic usage of some rap lingo of the 1990s. He made similarly ironic use of the contrast between his lily white persona and hip hop language when he quoted Chuck D in “El Scorcho”.
Rivers is trying to put up a tough front, getting ready to defend his friend. Later verses show that he’s more bluster than fight, despite his good intentions. For all his hip-hop braggadocio, he’s quite sensitive: a real “tough guy” wouldn’t care why the people bothering him were acting that way.
Over the years much of this slang has now entered into standard English usage. Both “homies” and “diss” can now be found in the Oxford Dictionary.
(I may be paranoid, but not an android)
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(I may be paranoid, but not an android) Radiohead – Paranoid Android
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Yorke has said of the title “Paranoid Android”:
I mean, the title was chosen as a joke. It was like, ‘Oh, I’m so depressed.’ And I just thought, that’s great. That’s how people would LIKE me to be.
– From Jam! Showbiz, 1997
This suggests how Yorke views the narrator: A depressed and depressing drag on everybody else. A miserable figure in a bar full of people trying to have a good time. The fact that this is (sort of) a joke is highlighted by the obvious reference to the humorous Douglas Adams series The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy and more specifically Marvin the paranoid android.
Marvin is the robot aboard the starship Heart of Gold. He is afflicted with severe depression and boredom, in part because he has a brain the size of a planet which he is seldom, if ever, given the chance to use.
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What was I thinking when I let go of you? Wilco – I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
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