On My Own

Lyrics

(1)

All the streets are blue and beshadowed today
On my own, walking in sub-rain the street looks good today
Good luck to all that sail on the buses going the wrong way

I’m on my own
On my own

Sat in the street
All the advertisements
Walk round a corner
Padded junk mail and bills
In a big pile "Delay"
The blue street is looking good on my way

What do I see?


Cause I’m on my own, again
And I’m on my own
I’m on my own
On my own

The steps look different today

On my own
On my own

The government
The government is Blair’s (2) 

But I’m walking... down... street
And the web feather sound  
Too red... [obscured]
I'm on my own
I’m spoken for, not
Cause I’m on my own again
Take a left to street of dark and blue
Cos on my own again
I’m on my own
Streets filled with foam (3)

And they say "It’s a great day today, in the city of the quiet"

Notes

1. This is a reworking of "Everybody But Myself" from Levitate. The piano intro is uncharacteristically jazzy, and sounds a lot like "Strings of the Strings of Life" by Derrick May (thanks to Connell).

^

2. Tony Blair was Prime Minister of the UK from 1997-2007.

^

3. Danny suggests this could be inspired by a phenomenon in which strong winds carry water inland as sea waves break, which causes streets to fill with sea foam (check his links below, it's a remarkable thing). He also points out that foam or rubber is sometimes included in paving materials to dampen sound, hence "the city of the quiet."

^

 

Comments (7)

Martin
  • 1. Martin | 27/02/2014
"The government is Blair's" presumably refers to Tony Blair's position as Prime Minister of the UK, which he held from 1997 to 2007.
dannyno
  • 2. dannyno | 24/04/2014
"Streets filled with foam".

I wondered if this line refers to this unusual phenomenon:
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/australia-floods--sunshine-and-gold-coast-covered-in--sea-foam--125210840.html#z3F3btE

That's just one example, if you google "coastal foam" or "coastal froth", there are others.

Such as:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BajCLBx_-Vc
dannyno
  • 3. dannyno | 25/04/2014
Or, alternatively:

"Streets filled with foam
And they say "It’s a great day today, in the city of the quiet" "

Streets filled with foam certainly would be a recipe for a quiet city, wouldn't they? So I did some looking around, and it turns out that there is a rubber/foam recipe for paving which is indeed intended to reduce noice in cities.

But I'm still struggling for a concrete (clever, cheers) link.
dannyno
  • 4. dannyno | 30/05/2014
This isn't the only place the streets are described as blue.

There are "blue shiny lit roads" in Garden;
rik
  • 5. rik | 30/07/2014
always thought it was "streets filled with phones"
Connell
  • 6. Connell | 18/01/2015
This has nothing to do with the words, but it needs be noted somewhere that musically "On My Own" is nearly identical to Derrick May's "Strings of the Strings of Life" (a contemporary remix of his 1987 "Strings of Life", one of the sacred texts of Detroit techno)
dannyno
  • 7. dannyno | 04/06/2015
"I'm stepping through the door
And I'm floating
in a most peculiar way
And the stars look very different today"

Space Oddity, David Bowie

Echoed, perhaps, in "the steps look different today"

See also Alton Towers.

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