Thursday, July 20, 2006

God (Tori Amos)


Language: Portuguese

This is possibly the only song I've posted so far where I actually got out the CD and listened to it to get the words. Occasionally, I've listened over and over to a song here or there just because I enjoy listening to it (for example The Rabbet is in the Heart), but that wasn't to get the words, that was just to hear the song again.

My lyrics lined up just fine with those in the CD cover except for two places: one, there's a bit that's spoken, just barely loud enough to be audible, which I'm told on reasonably good authority is Tori quoting Proverbs 31:3 ("Give not thy strength unto women, nor thy ways to that which destroyeth kings," in the KJV) and which she declined to include in the published lyrics.

The other is that there are a number of occasions where it sounds to me like she's singing "God, sometimes you just don't come through" with a "babe" on the end. She may not be, but it seemed to me like an improvement on the original even if she's not saying it, so I included some possibly-extraneous "babes" in the choruses. Which were promptly swallowed and eaten by the Babelfish Gnome, (mythic beast which resides in the Babelfish code and eliminates potentially interesting things from the text that's returned.) but oh well. Possibly this is the origin of the "dribbling," which is otherwise inexplicable, though turning babes into dribbling is kind of inexplicable itself. We may never know.

-Jessi

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God, you don't only come through the time.
God, you don't come to complete the time.
You'll need a woman to look at that later.
God, you don't come completely; only in the pretty times.

You make pretty daisies, daisies. (Say that you'll come for the lower half of me.) You started to love to find me, to find, to find.
What you're making of the things (You, who make that.)
starts short, if I'm toasty.
Here – whom to burn? Some witches, while you're here? (What do you know of them?)
I started to find finding, for finding,
because you always go when she establishes the wind.

God, you don't only come through the time.
God, you don't come to complete the time; you dribble.
You'll need a woman to look at that later.
God, you don't come completely in time.

Perhaps you say that you are wild:
I'll understand that, then. (Say it low, that you'll come for me.)
You started its nine-iron in the back seat; nine
just in case the
South heard you. Oh, good: it dribbles.
I know you love their new four-wheel. (What they know of you: what you know.)
I started because you always establish the wind, when you find it's gone.

(Spoken: Until a woman forces your elasticity,
it will destroy your kings that way)

You decide if you make the sky fall: it says to itself, exactly that.
Now you will decide to make the sky, if it says "exactly" to you and to itself.

God, you don't only come through the time.
God, you don't come to complete the time; you dribble.
You'll need a woman to look at that later.
God, you don't come completely.
You'll need a woman to look at that later.
God, you don't come completely in time.

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