I'm Clifford Stumme, and I use literary analysis and research to explain the deeper meanings of pop songs. Feel free to leave a comment or to email me at clifford@popsongprofessor.com with questions or ideas!
All tagged beneath the skin
"Organ" is the eighth track on Beneath the Skin by Of Monsters and Men, and the song is a departure from the much of the rest of the album. Not only is the music more like a ballad style than any other song, but the lyrics rely much less on abstract references to nature than other songs do. Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir leads the vocals single-throatedly on this song with a soft and airy style that reminds one of Ingrid Michaelson more than of the Norwegian singer's usual style.
"Slow Life" is the seventh track from Beneath the Skin, and it's infuriatingly difficult to puzzle out. The lyrics are vague and HEAVILY symbolic of something. Even if one understands the basic storyline, the event or thing being symbolized may still be beyond reach until Of Monsters and Men spills their secrets on their own. In the meantime, listeners will have to do the best they can to understand what's going on here. While the title is "Slow Life," the music of the song only halfway manages to accomplish the adjectival half of it. The song isn't especially slow; it's fairly quick and is engaging for that quickness. Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir is Of Monsters and Men's only singer on this track (apart from some punctuational background vocals), and her voice, as usual, is wonderfully eerie and haunting. Anything she sings takes on a whole new meaning and idea, giving a powerful mythos to "Slow Life" in particular.
"Human" by Of Monsters and Men is probably the oddest song that I've explained so far. At times, the lyrics seem like nonsense, but they do mean something. The song is the second track from Beneath the Skin which released on June 9th. The album is Of Monsters and Men's second album and sounds similar to the music written for My Head Is an Animal. Interestingly enough, this one song may have the most to do with the title of that first album.
The title "I of the Storm" forecasts an intriguing song about a person caught alone in a large and terrible battle of the mind. It's the eleventh track from Of Monsters and Men's new album Beneath the Skin which drops in the U.S. tomorrow! The album will have 13 tracks, 4 of which have already been released and explained ("Hunger," "Empire," "Crystals," and the one you're reading about).
The establishing process may take him a while, but he's dedicated: "As the hills turn into holes / I fill them with gold." A user on Genius suggests this means that when his efforts are flattened, he finds ways to turn failure into success. Whether true or no, putting gold in the holes instead of mining it out of them may seem odd. Perhaps he is trying to save his money and his success from complete failure by hiding it away. Or perhaps doing this is his way of becoming like the "[h]eavy stones" that "[f]ear no weather"; he's got reserves of gold and accomplishment backing up his next risks.
Over the past month, Of Monsters and Men has been putting out singles from their upcoming Beneath the Skin, which will be released on June 9th. The album has 13 tracks, and the third is “Hunger” a powerful anti-ballad about what sounds like a suffocating relationship that needs to be ended. Four singles (“Empire,” “Crystals,” “Hunger,” and “I of the Storm”) have already been released.
Of Monsters and Men is really good at being cryptic and symbolic, leaving listeners to puzzle songs out on their own. Luckily, in their most recent single "Crystals" from their upcoming album, Beneath the Skin, they give readers a few clues that make the difficult meaning not impossible to decipher.
