Cat Power

Cat Power: ‘Ruin’

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Cat PowerI’m not very good at inter­pret­ing lyrics, but I’m pretty sure that the Pitchfork post doesn’t give a good expla­na­tion of what this new Cat Power song ‘Ruin’ is about. I think there must be more to it. I don’t know what exactly, but there are two hints that it’s some­thing more profound.

First, all the lines, except the intro, are repeated at least once with very lit­tle (if any) vari­a­tion. For me, it empha­sizes the notion that I should look for a hid­den meaning.

Second, Chan Marshall has been per­form­ing this song live for at least 8 years, but didn’t pub­lish it till now, when it sud­denly becomes the first sin­gle from her upcom­ing album. These facts sug­gest that this is an espe­cially impor­tant one.

So, what is this really about? I wish I had the answer but I don’t. If you do, please, let me know.

(via The Mad Mackerel)

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  • Kiah Dana

    This is just my own inter­pre­ta­tion, but it seems to me that she is crit­i­ciz­ing American soci­ety (and pos­si­bly many oth­ers at the same time). People are lost in their bub­bles mostly, other than vague impres­sions mostly unaware of the rest of the world. Perhaps in par­tic­u­lar her she is crit­i­ciz­ing her home­town, whether that be Atlanta or what­ever.. I think her point is that peo­ple waste their time com­plain­ing and always want­ing, when things are so much worse else­where. Rather than being proac­tive they are con­tent in sit­ting around while things decay and go to ruin. I do think it is mostly a crit­i­cism of American urban decay but also could be inter­preted to include other nations.