Oar Way Back When Me and My Friend We Had Good Times We Said We Gonna Do It Again

Lyrics

One of the biggest ongoing debates most Cocteau Twins relates to the "lyrics," or lack thereof. For years journalists, fans, and even tape labels tried desperately to decipher what Elizabeth Fraser might take been singing. (Japanese tape labels notoriously insisted on including lyric sheets with every album, and so would take staff write up what they idea they were hearing, which most always led to some rather bizarre outcomes.)

Comic strip from New Musical Express (NME), July 1991

In the offset, information technology wasn't always so difficult to figure out. Some of the lyrics were included on the sleeves of Garlands and Head Over Heels.

Over time, Liz's song acrobatics became more complex and almost entirely obscure before returning to relative clarity in the 1990s. Lyrics were included wholesale in the videos for "Rilkean Center" and "One-half-Gifts" in 1995 (from Twinlights) and for "Tishbite" in 1996. The 1996 LP Milk & Kisses featured snippets of lyrics printed on the inner sleeves of both the standard and special editions.

Liz has had many interesting things to say in response to questions nigh her lyrics, some of them very revealing and worth because:

"It's impossible. Information technology'south impossible in as much equally…No. Y'all'd be disappointed if you plant out. I might make it sound equally if I recall it'southward unimportant, but the words are of import, important to me I mean, but… I think you're only supposed to go out of them what you can. And they DO make sense." [Sounds, 1983]

"I'grand not ashamed… I mean, even in the studio in that location's been words, similar really singing… 'Peppermint Sus scrofa,' singing most 'runts' and things (laughs), there's definitely some words that are very embarrassing to sing. The words that are on the sleeve [of Head Over Heels], there'due south bound to be people who hate them, then it makes you really frightened, that might have something to do with it."

"I'm proud of them, I'chiliad very proud of them, but I've always said I didn't desire them to be a let-down to people, I didn't want people to think, 'Oh hell, I liked my version better' (laughs), and even if people did like the words they'd get sick of them eventually, probably, and it merely seems such a sad situation. I don't desire to sing about me anyhow. Sod that! I accept to distance myself from it. I don't know whether I have to or not, but I do. Fortunately they come up out making a sort of sense. They brand enough sense to other people for them to really… they can understand, they tin can see things, they have these mental pictures." [Sounds, 1983]

[Jokingly] "I remember I feel a bit sorry for them. I feel sorry me, as well! I don't know. I but wish they'd take reward of it. They could really utilize that. I could be singing annihilation. I could be singing things they could be sort of really against, like I could exist raving on almost hell or something!" [Baktabak Interview Disc, 1984]

"A lot of the stuff I was singing about [in the early 1980s] was all metaphorical. I wasn't talking like I am at present. I guess information technology's back to how much personal ability y'all feel that you have. Like, if I'thou 17 and I don't even know when I'm hungry, am I tired, have I had any sleep—if yous don't even know that, and then how can you talk about lyrics that come from such an unconscious place? I always said 'I don't know', and I didn't." [Alternative Printing, 1995].

"That was the signal this time [with Four-Calendar Café], to make them mean something. I tin can see that now in hindsight. Back then [on Blue Bell Knoll], with the sounds, I idea I was being actually honest, merely now I think I'1000 being a lot more than honest by writing things downward and then singing it." [Lime Cadger Magazine, 1993].

"I've simply recently realized that I'm a very secretive person, that I'k constantly roofing up for myself. I'm but just realizing how much. I don't really know what's happening. I hope information technology doesn't hateful that I won't allow myself to do more than things like Blue Bell Knoll. I'd like to be able to practice everything. You see, on that album, I was withal expressing the aforementioned things. I was still feeling the same feelings, but I wasn't getting caught up in them. I was just feeling into a fucking microphone. I really was getting defenseless up in them on [Four-Calendar Café]. It was very painful. And the lyrics aren't even that explicit."

"What I've got to do is become honest, to stop doing what I was doing. Unfortunately, and this is typical of me, I tend to become from one farthermost to the other. To go from an album similar Blueish Bong Knoll, which is so heavily disguised and removed from reality, to Heaven or Las Vegas, or even more to this one, where everything on it is in English and it's all aural…it is extreme, I remember. But information technology seems important for me to do that." [The Wire, 1993].

"Information technology's amazing though, yeah, I hateful that's—I mean really the records are—a representation of our coping skills, and I think I was very much in denial, and I recollect that you tin hear that on [Blueish Bell Knoll]. You know, not one give-and-take can you lot grasp. Giving anything away…it merely wasn't allowed."

"What they are, are words that I've taken from maybe seen written downwardly in a linguistic communication that I don't sympathize, and liking them and possibly making new words equally well out of them. I hateful I've got reams and reams of words that I don't take a clue what they mean, merely I wanted them considering, I knew I'd be able to limited myself without giving anything abroad." [NPR Interview, 1993].

"The catch is I tin can barely talk English, isn't it? I quite like that. Combining words in unlike languages that I couldn't understand merely meant that I could concentrate on the audio and not get caught upwards in the pregnant."

"Encounter, I observe that [my lyrics] don't have whatever meanings. They're non proper. Although I've got a great lexicon of them. It's similar the Cockney rhyming slang or something. Writers like John Lennon. Writers that just kind of made up their own portmanteaux that caught on and people still employ them. They don't mean anything, though, that'southward the thing. Yous know all the transcendent sounds. It's all sound all the manner through."

"…[the dictionary] is how I got some of the words. And and then I got to the stage where, I don't know, something just came in. My life was a fucking mess…and I just couldn't behave on. I mean, information technology would have been so like shooting fish in a barrel to do that. 'Cause after Blue Bell Knoll, which was really the easiest, the easiest I've ever washed to make a record, I just couldn't keep going that way. I guess that was the offset of learning to be enlightened of what was going on and what I was responsible for."

"I went to see someone this time 'cause I really got into trouble on this anthology. I was but freaking out all over the place. I stopped making a lot of sounds, y'all know. I was talking very quietly. I was just so afraid of getting loud again. 'Cause I'1000 not really very loud on Four-Calendar Café. I just feel like I've lost touch on with that side of me and I wanted to go back in touch with information technology and then that I tin have my tranquillity moods and I tin can take my moments when I can express myself in a very loud way, as well. 'Crusade that'southward good for other emotions." [Mondo 2000, 1993].

"It depends where I'm at in my caput… The lyrics are words that I've found past going through books and dictionaries written in languages I don't empathise. The words don't have any significant at all until I sing them… I did information technology so I could sing something… My firm is full of this stuff. It's just full of it. I go a problems. I get a issues for words. But I don't know what any of them mean. I simply pull them out of strange languages books and stuff like that. The music and the singing and the words created a feeling, and I had a freedom doing this that I didn't have singing English. I but didn't have the courage to sing in English.

"I felt similar I was shark bait. I felt inadequate. I didn't experience adequate equally a lyricist. It'due south a coping skill, really… I may resort to this again. This stopped working for me. It only did. And I institute that when I tried to do this I wasn't singing from my gut anymore, I wasn't… I only had to move on. And then I began to sing lyrics again that people would understand. In that location was still a bit of this kind of stuff going on then [on Sky or Las Vegas]—sound, rather than meaning.

"I don't wanna know what they mean because it's gonna be ridiculous. I might be singing about plum pudding or god-knows-what-else, you know? But it served a purpose. I really got a freedom from it. And it worked. Information technology did work for me.

"With 4-Calendar Café, I knew I was at a place where I needed to be really honest with myself, so I immediately knew I was gonna exist singing lyrics. A vocal like "Bluebeard," the title is patently very angry. At the time I felt very trapped, and I was… feeling my feelings for the start time, basically. I was experiencing old anger and new anger. Xxx years of information technology, actually, all at the aforementioned fourth dimension, all at once. I affirmed myself on that song. I was writing the mode a responsible developed writes. Information technology's about waking upward. I was doubting and questioning, and… I even made my declaration." [From 1FM Radio "National Poesy Day" Interview, 1994]

"We have had people on the Cyberspace who take written translations and they obviously take a natural talent for writing. Their interpretations are and so cute that sometimes I have preferred what they accept written to what I actually sang, it has been much more eloquent. Those people are not and then precious about [Cocteau Twins] and just enjoyed using their talent and information technology is lovely to witness. But some people are very…It seems that some people are convinced they know u.s. better than we know ourselves, and that we ought to heed to them. They want to steer us and they are very precious about us and they do not want other people to accept us. If you really love something, then yous take to allow information technology go and endorse everything about information technology that attracted you to information technology in the first identify. It'south just like a honey thing or any human relationship: you lot have to treat it in the same way or you'll but suffocate and destroy it in the end if you don't." [BOYZ, 1995].

"I gained so much from [inventing language]. I didn't expect it to be such a fulfilling feel, at showtime information technology was an avoidance tactic. More than that. But I must take given myself permission along the way that I was really gonna go for information technology and not worry near people's opinions."

"I oft become into problem with lyrics in a way that wasn't happening with Blueish Bell Knoll. I ofttimes get stuck with lyrics, I go into old habits and keep doing the same affair. Writing Bluish Bell Knoll I had a wonderful liberty to put lyrics bated and non to worry."

"['Athol-brose' is named afterward the Scottish beverage] "whiskey and love… I'd had quite a lot of that. [On] 'A Kissed Out Cherry-red Floatboat,' I think I felt love, a actually intense dearest, I was romanticising about it, a romantic image of being open up and having your heart open."

"[Robin Guthrie's mother] was quite a big woman, in terms of personality also as physique, and she was very jolly and nimble; even though she was a big lady in that location was something very delicate about her. [On 'Ella Megalast Burls Forever'] I just had this image of her revolving, and this going on and on forever and ever, eternally. And and then she should!" [Elizabeth in conversation with John Grant, discussing Blueish Bell Knoll, 2017]

Clearly at that place are few, if any, absolute answers to the question of Liz's lyrics (other than what'due south in her caput or written in her journals). At the end of the day, nosotros may all exist better off merely listening and enjoying, rather than searching for whatsoever subconscious meaning, although at that place ofttimes is some meaning to information technology all. According to Liz, Robin, and Simon, she never sang "gibberish" and was not actually an improviser, either—what she sang was advisedly worked out. She did occasionally resort to using foreign words or a "cutting and paste" approach to lyrics. Nevertheless, fans have managed to coax some interesting interpretations (but read them at your own risk!)

What nosotros know

Here are the few lyrics that have been written downwardly, either on a record sleeve or elsewhere (including for closed captions on tv set for music video broadcast). They run the full gamut from metaphorical to playful slang to straightforward prose and back again.

Garlands

Merely I'm Not

Things from the forest die here

But I don't

Dead woods things are offered here

Merely I'm not

Bullheaded Impaired Deaf

My mouthing at y'all

My tongue the stake

I should welt should I hold you

I should gash should I buss y'all

Shallow And so Halo

The and so shallow she

Earth as nosotros know it

The then halo she

A sky for the sacred

Stars in my eyes

Stars at my anxiety

Womb in the belly

Capital identify

Garlands

Garlands evergreen

Forget-me-not wreaths

Chaplets see me drugged

I could die in the rosary

Die in the rosary

Grail Overfloweth

Grail Overfloweth

In that location is rain

And there's saliva

And there's you lot…

Lullabies

Feathers Oar Blades

Bare in foot and hide

Barefaced bareheaded

Bare in foot and hibernate

Blank in pes and hide

Crestfallen, weeping

The cripples though crestless

Are crestfallen weeping

Feathers oar blades

Splitting hair feathers

Spitting out oar blades

Spitting out oar blades

Crestfallen, weeping

The cripples though crestless

Are crestfallen weeping

All in teetotum

Widdershins every'southward body

Is all in teetotum

Is all in teetotum

Spitting out oar blades

Alas Dies Laughing

Flaxen the tresses / Both

Flesh and fleshings / Tongue-

Tied and stuttering / Was

Quick accept to mummering

Flaxen the tresses All

Fingers and stresses / Tongue-

tied and stuttering / Was

Quick take to mummering

Information technology'south All Simply An Ark Lark

Kicked all from my curtsies

Barking biting amongst ourselves

Heel to toe to heel to caput

And it's caput over heels

And it'south all just an ark-lark

Heel to toe to hair and hoof

And it's head over heels

And it's all but an ark-lark

Kicked all from my curtsies

This mockingbird

My lullabies

And information technology'due south head over heels

And it's all merely an ark-distraction

Head Over Heels

When Mama Was Moth

Sunburst and snowblind

…

When mama was moth

I took bulb form

Glass Candle Grenades

Glass candle grenades

Are popping

However we'll not keel over

The Tinderbox (of a heart)

The tinderbox of a middle

Left a vanquish is all

My Love Paramour

Fig up, my love

Ooze out and away, onehow

Heaven or Las Vegas

Cherry-Coloured Funk

You'll hang the hearts

Black and dull every bit the night

You hanged your by and first being

As you in ecstasy

Still being cried and laughed at before

Should I exist sewn and hugged?

I can by not saying

Still being cried and laughed at

From light to blueish

I should I be hugged and tugged down

Through this tiger'south masque?

Wolf in the Breast

Laughing on our bed

I pretended us newly-wed

Especially when

Our rough angel unleashed that head

I experience perpetual

Four-Calendar Café

Bluebeard

Aliveness, exploration

Aliveness, energy

Are you the right man for me?

Are you lot safe? Are yous my friend?

Are you the right homo for me?

Are you prophylactic? Are you my friend?

Aliveness, exploration

Fulfillment, creativity

Are you the correct man for me?

Are you safety? Are yous my friend?

Or are you lot toxic for me?

Will y'all betray my conviction?

Are you the right man for me?

Are you safe? Are yous my friend?

Or are y'all toxic for me?

Volition you betray my conviction?

Naming things is empowering

I balance, walk and coordinate myself

I'one thousand live

Aliveness energy

Are you lot the right human for me? Are you safe? Are you my friend?

Or are you lot toxic for me? Will you mistreat me or beguile my confidence?

Are you the right man for me? Are you rubber? Are you my friend?

Or are you toxic for me? Will you mistreat me or betray my conviction?

Are you the right man for me? Are you safe? Are you my friend?

Or are you lot toxic for me? Would you lot mistreat me or betray my confidence?

Evangeline

Sorrow for letting someone else define you

Know who you are at every historic period

What impression am I making?

I see me as other people see me

There is no going back

I tin can't end feeling at present

I am non the same, I'thousand growing upwardly again

I am not the same

I'm growing upwardly again

There'due south no going back, I can't stop feeling at present

I had to daydream

I was a princess, Mum and Dad were Queen and Rex

I ought to have what feeling?

I see me as other people come across me

At that place is no going dorsum

I tin't stop feeling now

I am not the same, I'm growing up once again

I am not the same

I'm growing upwards again

There's no going dorsum I tin't stop feeling at present

Feeling now

There is no going back

I tin't cease feeling now

I am not the same, I'm growing up again

I am not the aforementioned

I'grand growing up once more

There's no going dorsum, I can't stop feeling now

I had to fantasize just to survive

I was a famous artist

Everybody took me seriously

Even those who did, never understood me

I had to fantasize but to survive

Twinlights

Rilkean Heart (Audio-visual Version)

Rilkean heart

I looked for y'all

To give me transcendent experiences

To ship me out of self and aloneness

And breach into a sense of oneness

And connection ecstatic and magical

I became a junkie for it

I came looking for the next high

And I'm sorry

I've been putting the search on the wrong identify

I sympathise that you're confused

Feeling overwhelmed

Well that's a feeling state from and so

The reality

I'grand becoming truly cocky-reliant and

Becoming connected with something across me

That is where I have to go

I'm so deplorable

I've been putting the search on the wrong place

You're lost and don't know what to do

Only that's not all of you

That's the reality today

And that is all okay

Half-Gifts (Acoustic Version)

It'due south an old game, my love:

When you lot tin't have me, yous desire me

Because you know that you're not risking anything

Intimacy is when we're in the same place

At the aforementioned time

Dealing honestly with how we experience

And who we really are

That's what grownups do

That is mature thinking

Well I'm however a junkie for information technology

It takes me out of my aloneness

But this relationship cannot sustain itself

Intimacy is when we're in the same place

At the same time

Dealing honestly with how we feel

And who we actually are

That's what grownups do

That is mature thinking

I simply have to know

How to exist in the process

Of creating things in a ameliorate mode

And it hurts, only it'south a lie

That I tin can't handle information technology

I yet have a globe of me-ness to fulfill

I notwithstanding care about this planet

I am still connected to nature

And to my dreams for myself

I have my friends

My family

I accept myself

I however accept me

I have my friends

My family unit

I have myself

I all the same accept me

Milk & Kisses

Violaine

(Hint: read the lines correct-to-left, backwards.)

Ectefamof oitavito fles eth yll-anif

snoitatimil noitae chus sec-cus

namukadnu itnemavom lacigolochysp

Tishbite

Is information technology like a dream?

Or does it seem grounded and real?

I feel a connection

A deep connexion

Just information technology'southward not reflected

In time spent together

Information technology's reflected psychically

Emotionally

Is it similar a dream?

Or does it seem grounded and existent?

This mountain of pleasance

I desire to get lost in it

Sleep like a baby

All the same shut

Still shut

Until I don't know where y'all end

Or I begin

Until I just bear information technology in me

Calfskin-Smack

And when I had you

I didn't always desire you baby

Ups

Being here at present in the moment

Please delight let that be

The identify where I am

Eperdu

In a higher place day property nest

Both that sheltering and

Taking possession paw, outstretched,

Trembles its echo

Treasure Hiding

Burn hairs had no belly focus

Light the discards

Purified love

Constancy purifies mistakes

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