Songs and Meanings?

I found a you tube of El Condor Pasa ( If I Could) for a baritone Uke a Simple three chord song, and being a fan of Simon and Garfunkel went looking for lyrics to put down the chords in my Music book. I have it with notes and staff but wanted a chord sheeet as my copy has the lyrics in 4 pt text! Which I can't read unless my nose is 3" from the paper.

I've heard this song about a million times but never thought about what the lyrics mean.

I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail
Yes I would, if I could, I surely would
I'd rather be a hammer than a nail
Yes I would, if I only could, I surely would

Away, I'd rather sail away
Like a swan that's here and gone
A man gets tied up to the ground
He gives the world its saddest sound
Its saddest sound

I'd rather be a forest than a street
Yes I would, if I could, I surely would
I'd rather feel the earth beneath my feet
Yes I would, if I only could, I surely would

but the site I was on (http://songmeanings.com/songs/view/7340/) also discusses the song and I was taken by a comment about what it was about.

"My Interpretation
I believe it is about power, oppression, futility, despair, and freedom. Almost everyone who has posted a comment in the last 7 years recognises that hammers strike nails, but no one has mentioned that sparrows eat snails, and that forests eventually overcome streets. Power. Winners. Losers.
Has anyone reading this heard "When you're a nail, all the world is a hammer, and when you're a hammer all the world is nails." Everyone recognises that it is better to be the one with power, but do the song's listeners also hear that even the oppressors, for all their power, are not free? Oppression takes time and energy to maintain. Could a driver achieve toil from a slave without force and threat? Can the cat expect to catch the mouse if she is not prowling it? Will the shepherd get wool off the sheep if he doesn't get out there and keep track of them? Better to hold power, best to have freedom.
Swans symbolize people who are very rare. Swans are the real winners. Most people are either oppressed or oppressors. But even the oppressors are not free. They have locked themselves to the unending occupation of persecuting their victims or subordinates, and it eats their lifetimes. They cannot disengage, least their captives escape. They forge lifetimes of chains for others to wear, but inadvertantly also chain themselves to the lifelong task of oppression. The real winners are the swans. Freedom."

I wonder how many other songs I've heard and never really considered the hidden meaning, until I took up the Ukulele?

I have done that before. Kinda just enjoy the time without really thinking too deep about it. Sometimes I'm glad I've learned the meaning sometimes not.

Jack you were obviously touched by this and put a lot of thought and effort into this post. I clicked on the link and read some of the other comments. I believe people see things that they are looking to find. One person believes in oppressed and oppressors, another in love another in freedom. We can also interpret things one way or another depending on our mood or current situation in life.

Your post has given me a great appreciation of that song again. I had forgetten how beautifully it plays and sings.

JackLuis said:

I've heard this song about a million times but never thought about what the lyrics mean...I wonder how many other songs I've heard and never really considered the hidden meaning, until I took up the Ukulele?

Click to expand...

Very common. That happened to me earlier this year with Alone Again.

Most people don't realize Joy to the World isn't really a Christmas song.

Songs are so subjective. A song can be written about one thing and mean something totally different to others. I once heard an interview with Bob Dylan and the host was asking him how he felt about being such a prolific song writer who's written such powerful, meaningful, and revolutionary songs. His reply was something along the line of, "They're just songs. I just wrote some songs. If there's meaning to them, that's up to the listener". I think is it so interesting that our life experiences can paint so many different views of a song...

I think it means freedom, knows he's shackled by living in the modern world, & would like to be free of the everyday hassles.

I agree with the sentiment that the interpretation of song lyrics is subjective. A great song, like any great work of art, should have enough depth of meaning to "speak" to the listener - i.e. it should connect with something inside a person and understanding should emerge out of that connection.

It sounds like you (Jack) maybe found something in this song. Cool

Edit: Actually, a song that I've been learning recently (Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now) could be said to be about the subjective nature of human experience. Essentially, exploring the idea that the glass can be seen as half-full or half-empty, depending on how you choose to look at it.

I've always like El Condor Pasa but never really analyzed the lyrics. I wanted to play it but have been put off by the 'notes', as I don't finger pick, though I'm getting in to that. Yet the chords onthe Baritone are Em-G-C so you only need two fingers, how is that not cool? Even I can play that!

jollyboy- Edit: Actually, a song that I've been learning recently (Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now) could be said to be about the subjective nature of human experience. Essentially, exploring the idea that the glass can be seen as half-full or half-empty, depending on how you choose to look at it.

Last edited by jollyboy; Today at 08:49 AM.

Yeah I like this too. "Clouds Illusions" can mean many things. Taking up the Uke has given me a lot to learn and think about. I was thinking yesterday about holiday songs and thought "Have yourself a Joyous Little Kwanzaa" so I looked it up and found what it is really about and it is pretty cool way to celebrate the days between Christmas and New Years. It means "First Fruits Of the Harvest" in Swahili and my oranges ripen in December, so there is that too.

Ukulele can be illuminating as well as fun.:music:

The question is what was meant by the person who wrote it? There are many great things written which are considered as "fair game" for a personal interpretaion. I think of one book which mentions something of people wrestling with their own interpretation to their own destruction. Yes, that is severe, and not likely to happen with a song, but there are songs I will NOT sing because I know what the person who wrote it says it means. I don't want that thought banging around inside of my head, nor do I want to sing it and put it in anyone else's head .

Auni said:

Songs are so subjective. A song can be written about one thing and mean something totally different to others. I once heard an interview with Bob Dylan and the host was asking him how he felt about being such a prolific song writer who's written such powerful, meaningful, and revolutionary songs. His reply was something along the line of, "They're just songs. I just wrote some songs. If there's meaning to them, that's up to the listener". I think is it so interesting that our life experiences can paint so many different views of a song...

Click to expand...

But if you look at the songs that he wrote while Suze Rotolo was in Italy, especially when she was supposed to come back to him but she didn't, it would seem to be more contrived to try to say that they were not written to Suze but were just songs, than to admit that they were songs driven from the emotions that he was going through during the separation. Just pointing out that Bob says a lot of things, not all genuine. I'm a huge Bob Dylan fan, by the way.

TheCraftedCow said:

The question is what was meant by the person who wrote it? There are many great things written which are considered as "fair game" for a personal interpretaion. I think of one book which mentions something of people wrestling with their own interpretation to their own destruction. Yes, that is severe, and not likely to happen with a song, but there are songs I will NOT sing because I know what the person who wrote it says it means. I don't want that thought banging around inside of my head, nor do I want to sing it and put it in anyone else's head .

Click to expand...

Ah, I see that you are a victim of the intentional fallacy. Me too. Personally, and in violation of the teachings of my high school lit teacher, I like to know something about what the artist meant to say. However, I do realize that ultimately the author's intention is irrelevant. A work of art stands on its own and gets interpreted by everyone a little differently. This is true whether the author is anonymous, or died a thousand years ago, or is Paul Simon who will sometimes give us a hint.

Collectively, the many shades of meaning that we all bring to a song like El Condor makes it richer and more beautiful than if we tried to agree on a single "correct" interpretation.

Playing ukulele hasn't changed much about how I look at lyrics (I was a writer and actor long before I took up uke so interpreting words is my stock-in-trade) but writing tab for uke clubs and trying to get the copyright credits correct has greatly expanded my appreciation for the twists and turns of how a song gets created. The creation story for El Condor Pasa is fascinating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Cóndor_Pasa_(song)

Listening to ABBA's "Eagle" from their album "The Album" this morning, I wondered if it was influenced by the book "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" by Richard Bach (a quick check on Wikipedia indicates it most likely is), and how many other songs might (or might not) have been influenced by it. It's clear that Barclay James Harvest's "Jonathan" is; and when this thread came up, I initially thought "El Condor Pasa" might be, but after a bit of Googling, I think almost certainly now that it isn't. In fact I wonder if Paul Simon's lyrics have anything to do with the Condor of the title at all?

That said, some of the sentiment in "El Condor Pasa" seems similar to that found in "Jonathan Livingston Seagull", and I'll always associate the one with the other in my own mind now.

One thing as well, it depends a lot on where the song comes from. For a singer/songwriter, we might look in retrospect at their lives when they were composing and singing a song, and make our own observations, but how many singers buy their songs from a song writer? How many of Janis Joplin's songs were written by Kris Kristofferson? Kristofferson wrote Me and Bobby McGee, but he actually wrote it for, not about, Fred Foster. And Foster suggested that when Kristoffersong write the song, that maybe he think of Bobby McGee as being a woman, as Fred had come up with the title and he knew a woman named Bobby so that is why he came up with it. Then Roger Miller actually picked it up and recorded it first. So recently I read an article about the song where the music critic called it an iconic love song that spoke of the loneliness and despair that Janis was feeling just before she died. And that could well be the case, that the song moved her, but just the same, it was a song written by Kris Kristofferson, who happened to be Janis' boyfriend at the time, for a record producer, that may or may not be interpreted as a song about a woman's love for another woman in Janis' case, and originally recorded by a man. Find the meaning in that. This is an interesting subject, by the way. I'm loving this thread.

Like lines of poetry, some song lyrics point you to what's not said.