|
The Stories Behind The Songs |
|
|
If you have any other song interpretations, or know the story behind any of the songs which aren't featured, then
please email the webmaster: phantomlimbsting@yahoo.co.uk
|
|
Becoming X
|
|
|
"The symbol 'X' is one of the most abused symbols in 20th-century culture. "'X' is a variable in mathematics," he notes, "meaning that it's a
substitute for whatever you like. So there's that instant ambiguity. And when we were in America, someone said that it could be a cross.
Then someone else said it was a kiss. Plus there's Generation X, and Malcolm X, and on goes the list..."
|
|
Low Place Like Home |
|
|
Liam: "This targets a particular breed of person, but has a universal sentiment sent out to anyone who has f**ked you over.
Sometimes it's about an eternal victme of magazine propaganda, problem page wannabees, designer troubles. I've got no
sympathy. No one is listening."
|
|
Tesco Suicide |
|
|
Liam: "Magazines make monsters. Go on girls you know fulfilment starts with blind independance."
Explanation 2:
the track was inspired by a drunken argument Liam and Kelli had about the glamourisation of suicide, where Liam
suggested that suicide kits might as well be available in supermarkets.
|
|
6 Underground [Short for 6-Feet Underground] |
|
|
Liam: "At the same time, the most self critical and arrogant song on the album. A complex introspection into
personal ability; the occasional burst of brilliance followed by the frustration of mental; drought. The struggle with
needing people you could easily hate and having to choose something you dont want."
|
|
Becoming X |
|
|
Liam: "Consequence of wanting to be something to anyone - an audience, a friend, a lover. Are emotions a priori
or consequences of other existences. (Phenomenology)."
|
|
Spin Spin Sugar |
|
|
Liam: "12 lines to capitalism and consumerism. The sheer sleaze of life is helped down witha spoonful of satellite TV
and a skinful out on the town. Sell me something else. Give me what you say I want, not what I need. It's impossible
not to play a part in it."
|
|
Post Modern Sleaze |
|
|
Liam: "The re-introduction of sleaze by a conceptual mechanism that turns a once cultural weakness or symptom into
a cultural affirmation of power. How many re-inventions can we take? Ironic sleaze? Irony is post-modernisms excuse to
shit out anything it wants. Time to wipe its arse."
Explanation 2:
It dissects the 'Thelma & Louise' syndrome, whereby seemingly happily married women ditch their
partners for a trashier lifestyle straight out of a magazine.
|
|
Waterbaby |
|
|
Liam: "A slab of self loathing. Not just living the worst kind of life, but actually nurturing it, caring dor it.
Complete dependance and desperate need. What is done is done - a little water clears us of this deed."
|
|
Roll On |
|
|
Liam: "'Sink With Me' An invitation to the content of the album. A puzzling parallel between the gravity of sex and the
ill fates Roll On Roll Off ferries. Promiscuity, satisfaction and disaster."
|
|
Wasted Early Sunday Morning |
|
|
Liam: "The title is taken from a Robert Lowell poem, but the song owes little to it. Every Sunday is less like the start of a
fresh week and more like the end of another week with nothing done. The 'day or rest' is a real effort - too much time to
think of nothing. It's a question of what you put your faith into get through it. Dope? Booze? Bird? (not gender specific).
How do you get by? Nothing really helps."
|
|
Walking Zero |
|
|
Liam: "A sadomasochistic obsession on a national scale. The disease of a nation (see Nietzche) the disease of an
individual, compromised and sacrificed in private and in public, 1979 - 1996. Morality as a poison not cure (see Plato's Pharmakon)."
|
|
How Do |
|
|
Liam: "The last tune on the album, "How Do," is a cover tune from an old 1973 British horror film called "The Wicker Man."
The song actually features a sample from the film with Britt Ekland. We had to ring her up to get permission to use
her voice. I've actually got the piece of paper she signed giving us permission to use it."
|
|
Splinter
|
|
|
Halflife |
|
|
Chris: "Halflife is about past relationships, your sexual history, talking about how losing someone is like having a limb
chopped off, then having a phantom limb and getting an insect sting on that phantom limb."
|
|
Low Five |
|
|
Chris: "It's an anti-corporate anthem; its about how we hate American-ness. It was exciting going there, but I couldn't handle it.
This is a statement that we are going to be English. Lyrically, it's not sensational. We talk about ordinary things.
We're European and this is a European record."
|
|
Empathy |
|
|
Chris: "It plays with androgyny and incest. I think that the reason for love is that people want to become one person,
this super adrogynous person. It's a personal things, I don't want to sound like a pervert... erm.. okay. It's about a specific
person that I am in love with. It's about wanting to become that person, wanting to be inside that person, to be
everything to that person; brother, father, mother.. everything."
|
|
Cute Sushi Lunches |
|
|
Chris: "This song is about uncomfortable situations - being taken for Sushi in L.A. for the novelty, being in
this cold, awkward situation you really dont want to be in."
|
|
Bloodsport
|
|
|
Kiro TV |
|
|
Kiro TV opens the album and it's a song the group feels sets the tone for their current sound. Appropriately, it also
opens Sneaker Pimps live show. "It's like an electronically controlled version of a punk song," describes Westlake
of the track's many layers of beats, vocal wails and guitar bursts. "It's dirty and dense, similar to 'Tesko Suicide' from
the first album. It works really well live."
“Tragedy is far more interesting than success. Tragedy resolving into happiness is very Hollywood but the European way is wallowing in tragedy. That’s the way art is. A happy ending is not really the truth,”
“We made the track about people’s reaction to stardom. It doesn’t actually make any particular comment about Cobain but just referencing it. I wouldn’t want to put the back-stop to the Nirvana world - there’s too many out there!”
|
|
Sick |
|
|
"Sick" is an up-tempo anthem about identity, says Howe. "It's about reinventing yourself because you feel people get
bored or sick of you too quickly. In a relationship, when it's going down the tubes, you try so hard to be attractive to
the other person and you contort your identity to please them."
Chris: “I think that’s our idea of pop. There just doesn’t seem to be anything like that in pop music and it really confuses me why because people would seem to like it.”
|
|
Small Town Witch |
|
|
Underneath the floating melody of "Small Town Witch" you'll find a story of small-town resentment. "Me, Chris
and our mate Ian (Pickering, lyricist) grew up in the northeast (of England)," says Howe. "And there's a feeling of
anti-success in these small towns. We used to go back quite a lot and people sometimes resent any success
you may have. It's quite bizarre."
|
|
Polaroids |
|
|
Ian (Pickering): Polariods is harsh and beautiful - slacker boy, domineering mother (ring any bells
Amy Girdlestone at your most hormone replacement therapy nastiness?)
Dave: Laurie Anderson meets Cyndi Lauper meets O.M.D. meets The Undertones. Or some such
crap... that’s the kind of talk P.R. people come out with. It’s a good tune, it’s up-tempo, it’s pop music.
It’s the first ever time all four pimps sang on the same song, even the straw-haired drummer.
|
|
Loretta Young Silks |
|
|
There is a tune on the new record called "LORETTA YOUNG SILKS" after the practice, invented by her cameraman, of placing silk stockings over the lens to achieve a soft focus. The song is about vanity and soft focussing yourself and, as such has nothing to do with Loretta herself but out of idle curiosity we went on to the official Loretta Young site and downloaded a pic of her that looked back at us every day. Sneaker Pimps do not believe in the pre-destined but there was something pretty spooky about the fact that she died the very day we left the house.
Howe affirms. “I think in that way we are quite obsessed with tragic forms like Loretta Young; she was someone opposite of the character she portrayed.”
|
|
A Fans Interpretation
|
|
|
Song Interpretations by Rachel Nelson & her sister.
Low Place Like Home - constant calls to the dear Angeline columns in the weekly paper...
Quite arrogant, in seeing how so many people despise those who are less fortunate..
Spin Spin Sugar - Why leave ALL the descisions up to me...I prefer not to live with the stress because I cannot stand peer pressure...so leave me alone..
Tesko Suicide - Pimpin' ain't easy as I have found it called...
This song seems to be a commentary on a prostitute who refuses to be "pimped out" again.
She wants the endless calls from her manager to stop...and she turns to say to a younger audience that you are taking a chance by sleeping around...it's a form of drug to some...a lifestyle for others, she does so by mocking the "pimp" in speaking for him when she says, "Come on girls...".
The Fuel - A psycho killer that never quits...
"Give me back doors, give me blood on sheets again..."- a cry to the gods that he needs the willpower to quit his serial killer habits...This song like "Walk the rain" is about a killer who is ashamed of what he's done, but has no power to quit...Unlike Kelli Dayton in "walk the rain", the male killer in "the fuel" has great desire to stop his inevitable habit..
Loretta Young Silks - one word "me"...I was so terrified when I heard this song that I had nightmares that told me how self-centered I was, and forced me to change my tune about forcing my opinions on others....
Blue Movie - what can I not say...except...no one actually WATCHES movies in England in the younger generations...
They go there to make out...to put in bluntly...have sex!.
Think Harder - no matter what you say, you will always be dumb in my opinion....
Kiro TV - the rough lifestyle of living as a TV entertainer in REAL TV....Kiro I believe... don't quote...means protector in Japanese...
The lifestyle of this aforementioned person is obviously a life-gamble....
Ten To Twenty - so many things left unsaid.
Diving - Whenever you think something will happen one way, life always finds a way to surprise you....
Becoming X - the world will never stop amazing us....
Maidez - although I don't like this one...it is simply a man's way of crying out...Life is hard to live so help me...before a crash on the shores of loosing everything....
Roll On - Elevator sex...first thing that came to my mind...Why else that crazy music in the begining and the constant statement of rolling on and off...going throught the elevator door and going down on me, could mean doing itin the elevator, or just a funny statement for missing out on the love of your life....
Small Town Witch - not speaking of a witch but the local slut who wants to get with Chris...lol.
Perfect One - Look at me now, after years of you laughing at me, it shall be I who gets the last laugh....
7th High - quite the gamble of getting high...closer to heaven so to speak...the breaking point in one's life is realized after coming down again....
Sick - a man who has to change for the woman he loves just to get into bed with her...yes that is SICK!...lol...j/k...truth is, no...Chris has to keep this woman around...so he tries to keep her with a freakshow of changes...Same idea lol! ^_6
|