Genius | Song Lyrics & Knowledge

Always rain the most in April
Every scale needs to be stable
Earth keeps spinnin' around, we're breathin'
So thankful Justin Bieber – Habitual

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Justin is joining a long literary line of reflection on spring rain (there’s also the well-known proverb, “April showers bring May flowers”).

Back in the 1380s, Geoffrey Chaucer opens his Canterbury Tales:

Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,

Some centuries later, T.S. Eliot would start his poem The Waste Land with these lines:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

Like Justin, Chaucer and Eliot realized that the hardships of April rain could also make for a new start, however soggy.

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Marked this as a stretch ?

2 years

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4 years

One of the biggest reaches of all-time. There is no evidence that Justin is as deep of a thinker or as skilled as a songwriter to ever think he meant something this deep with his lyrics.

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I didn't know that you were lonely
If you'd have just told me, I'd be running down the hills to you FKA twigs – home with you

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These lyrics call to mind the chorus from Kate Bush’s 1985 track “Running Up That Hill”, which also focuses on the possibility of understanding in a relationship:

And if I only could
I’d make a deal with God
And I’d get him to swap our places
Be running up that road
Be running up that hill

While Bush’s song thinks the way to get to real understanding between men and women is to literally switch places, Twigs proposes that more open communication could get us there too.

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I didn't know that you were lonely
If you'd have just told me, I'd be home with you FKA twigs – home with you

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These lyrics have an echo, intended or not, of lines from “Two Weeks,” the song that first brought FKA Twigs to fame:

You say you’re lonely, I say you’ll think about it

In “Two Weeks” the shared loneliness was part of a seduction at the start of a new (forbidden) relationship. In “Home With You,” the unknown, unshared loneliness is a sign that the connection between two people isn’t what it once was.

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mary magdalene FKA twigs – mary magdalene

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FKA Twigs' most explicit exploration of the Mary Magdalene story in the Bible, which also gives the whole album MAGDALENE its name. Mary Magdalene was a close follower who traveled with Jesus and was present. Due to a misreading by Pope Gregory I in 581, for a long time Mary Magdalene was confused with a “sinful woman” in Luke 7:36. Though this misreading was addressed by Pope Paul VI in 1969, the view of Mary as a prostitute persists in pop culture. Twigs plays with all of these different views of Magdalene, and the notion of intimacy.

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127

4 years

Mary Magdalene is mentioned 12 times in the canonical gospels, more than many of Jesus disciples.

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565

4 years

is it a misreading or just a different interpretation?

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146

4 years

“I used to laugh to myself about how, as a woman, your story is often attached to the narrative of a man. No matter what you’re doing or how great your work is, sometimes it’s as though you have to be attached to a man to be validated. I’d felt like that at times. And then I started to read about Mary Magdalene and how amazing she was; how she was likely to have been Jesus’s best friend, his confidante. She was a herbalist and a healer, but, you know, her story is written out of the bible and she was ‘a prostitute’. I found a lot of power in the story of Mary Magdalene; a lot of dignity, a lot of grace, a lot of inspiration.” – FKA Twigs via i-D Magazine

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1,826

2 years

In the apocrypha Mary Magdeline was married to Jesus, I believe it personally.
It brings a beauty to her beauty to her relationship with Jesus.

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A woman's work FKA twigs – mary magdalene

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This opening line calls to mind the classic 1988 song “This Woman’s Work” by Kate Bush, another artist who, like Twigs, found success even as she explored more avant-garde sounds and had a strong falsetto.

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1,983

4 years

I LOVE THIS PRELUDE BECAUSE OF THIS

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I want you to cry for me, cry for me
Say you'd d-d-die for me, die for me Camila Cabello – Cry for Me

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These lines, and the song’s title, reference lines from Lauryn Hill’s 1998 classic “Ex-Factor”:

(Cry) Cry for me, cry for me
You said you’d die for me

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(Cry) Cry for me, cry for me
You said you'd die for me Lauryn Hill – Ex-Factor

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“Ex-factor” samples and interpolations are nearly a genre to themselves, and Camila Cabello also references these specific lines on her 2019 single “Cry For Me.”

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9,055

2 years

Idk why people are downvoting this annotation. If you read it carefully it says that samples from this song are a genre of its own. They never said that Lauryn Hill sampled Camila Cabello lmao.

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Marked this as a stretch ?

2 years

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3 years

Drake also sampled this in nice for what

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193

4 years

this line stands independent from camila cabello and existed nearly two decades before camila cabello’s song.

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I ain't playing tag but your new shit is not it
Nah, your new shit is not it Jack Harlow (Ft. EST Gee) – ROTTEN

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Often kids kick off a game of Tag by calling out “Not it!” Harlow turns the phrase to establish that his opponent is lame.

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"I rent a place on Cornelia Street" Taylor Swift – Cornelia Street

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Taylor Swift really did rent an apartment on Cornelia Street in New York City. She moved to 23 Cornelia Street in June 2016 while doing renovations on her Tribeca apartment.

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Julia

Marked this as missing something ?

4 years

This lyric also seems to suggest Taylor is inviting someone back to her apartment after meeting at the bar.

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54,235

4 years

maybe i’m just misinterpreting the vogue article

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4 years

is cornelia street a meme? it seems like some sort of classic new york real estate thing

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Cornelia Street Taylor Swift – Cornelia Street

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“Cornelia Street” focuses on the central role the Manhattan street played in Taylor’s memories of an early relationship. Taylor really did rent an apartment on the street in 2016 and 2017 while she was renovating her Tribeca apartment.

The end of the song features the sound of a windshield wiper, to bring the scene in “the backseat” of a car to life.

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1,026,737

4 years

@BarelySara at the end of the song there’s a windshield wiper noise since they’re in a car, is that what you’re referring to?

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