What the songs really mean

According to me, off tha top of tha dome

• Everlast, "Ends" : This song is about how greedy and materialistic people are these days (they always have been, but it's worse now). They're only about getting their ends: Making money, shamelessly promoting themselves, and doing whatever it takes to advance themselves and keep bringing in the cash. In summary, "Money isn't everything; don't whore yourself out for material gain, money won't make you feel any better."

• Everlast, "What It's Like" : It's about milquetoast bourgeois liberals: the sort of sub-human who cannot fathom why people different from themselves (poor whites, blacks, and whatnot) cannot think and act like them, and have no intent of allowing dissenting voices to speak crudely. Basically, people who have sheltered themselves so much from the harsh realities of life (in this specific case, realities like that stupid teenagers get knocked up and have to get abortions, that lots of people, for whatever reason, live in doorways and on street grates and have to scrounge off strangers in order to eat, and that people get killed on the streets every day), that when something forces them to face these realities, they're shocked and outraged. In summary, "Who the fuck do you think you are? You don't know what it's like to be in this kind of situation, so don't talk shit."

• Hole, "Celebrity Skin" : About how plastic and superficial Hollywood is: It'll chew you up and spit you out, making you plastic and empty like it is.

• Rancid, "Roots Radicals" : I think this song is an account, mainly by Lars Frederiksen, of being a punk in Campbell (he's from my hood, that's crescent fresh). I guess this was when he left his momma's place.

• Primus, "Glass Sandwich" (or something like that, on the 'Tales From the Punchbowl' album) : This song is about a guy seeing his ex-girlfriend on the opposite side of the glass at a nudie booth.

• Nirvana, "Even In His Youth" : I think this track is kind of autobiographical, about Kurt's father. I guess he thought his father was ashamed of him, because he was a scrawny little pansy artist, rather than a big athletic macho man. (Editor's note: Maybe this is because I'm also a scrawny little pansy artist, AND a major fan of Kurt's, but if I had a son, I'd rather he was a sensitive, non-macho, creative sort of kid than a big macho jock.)

• Nirvana, "About a Girl" : I've read stuff about this song. I think it's about Kurt's girlfriend at the time, Tracy Mirander (sp?). She was asking why didn't he write a song about her, so he wrote this. It also refers to how he lived with her, and she was hassling him to get a job or at least keep the place clean, because he was such an unemployed slob.

• The Offspring, "She's Got Issues" : This song is a jab at pop psychology and the modern culture of whiny victimhood. Specifically, stupid chicks who prefer whining over just dealing with their problems and setting them aside. Everyone's a goddamn victim. In reality, a lot of people are just assholes. In summary, "Quit whining, you silly bitch. Bad shit happened to you, get over it."

• Silverchair, "Anthem for the Year 2000" : It's a kind of apathetic, "Aw, sod off you stupid wanker" dismissal of politicians and 'grown-up' society in general. In summary, "Fuck off. We're not as stupid as you think." But I might change my mind next time I listen to it. (Editor's Note: Bear in mind, these guys ARE my generation. They're only about 2 years older than me, they're Australian, though.)

• The Offspring, "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)" : It seems pretty clear to me, that this song is about stupid suburban white kids who try to front like they're from the ghetto (FYI, that would usually be someplace like Compton or South Central LA, or maybe Harlem or the Bronx or whatnot if you're on the East Coast). I'm familiar with this cultural phenomenon, two of Paul's siblings are afflicted with this. Especially his 15-year-old sister, she says she's all kinds of shit (Honduran, Cuban, Mexican, shit like that) on a weekly basis. We're thinking of starting a betting pool on when she realizes that she's a suburban American white girl from Campbell (my money is on her first two years of college). But that's beside the point, and the subject for another rant.

• Nirvana, "Blew" : Like a lot of Nirvana songs, this is kind of tricky to interpret, because it's more of a generalized feeling. I think it's about being smothered and controlled by someone else, possibly his mother; also possibly refers to the losers she got involved with after The Famed Divorce. "Could you believe him when you discussed his staying" (I think) might be a reference to a guy Kurt's mother dated who was a lying asshole. I don't know... "Here is another word that rhymes with shame" is obviously there for just that purpose: to provide another rhyming word. The end of the song, "You could do anything", is either addressing Wendy (his mother), saying that she could do better than these losers (who apparently included an abusive paranoid schizophrenic), or something that was said to Kurt, in the context of, "You could do anything, why are you wasting your life getting stoned and playing guitar?"

• Everclear, "Summerland" : A song about escape. A fantasy about getting away from one's fucked-up meaningless surroundings and starting over.

• The Smashing Pumpkins, "(Fuck You) An Ode to No One" : An ode to disconnection. This song sounds to me, like it's saying, "Who the fuck are you anyway? I don't know who any of you are any more, stay the fuck away from me."

• Everclear, "Strawberry" : Art has said that he wrote this song around when "Sparkle and Fade" was recorded, because he was having scary dreams about "falling off the wagon", which I'm guessing is a reference to starting drinking or doing drugs again. Hence, the song is largely about drugs.

• Everclear, "Twistinside" : I'm not sure, but this song smacks of amphetamine-induced paranoia and insomnia. Also, I detect classic self-mutilative overtones, of doing strange and painful things to oneself to master negative feelings. Listen to me, I sound like a fucking psychiatrist.

And once again, I remind you that these are my interpretations, I have no clue what the songwriters were thinking when they wrote them. I don't claim to know shit about any of this, this is, as always, nothing more than my speculative opinion.