just wondering if anyone knows what this song is about. it's such a beautiful song, but i just have the hardest time figuring out what she's singing about.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: mod,

this is talked about on that somgmeanings.net

have look on there.

You know what i Just noticed??!

On the Music Player on this Site, under Songs, Samson is spelled "SamPson" TYPO!!!

Wow, I just read the lyrics to samson on that site and where it says "beneath the stars keep falling on our heads, but thier just soft light, their just soft light" Well I have always thought that she said "but they're just out late, they're just out late" and it really made sense, in that weird doesn't-really-make-sense poetic kinda way. No one else seems to have heard it that way though

I almost like that way better. Almost...?
I'm going to listen to it now, just to see.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: the monster in your closet,

I thought is was :"Just old light, theyre just old light."


i think

I agree, it's "old light", referring to the fact that stars are just light we see millions of years after a star has died (due to the fact that light has to travel so far to reach Earth, there's a bit of a delay).

samson's about the story of samson and delilah, which is, despite the lyrics saying the bible didnt mention us, in the bible, in the prophets section of the old testament. get your bibles out and start reading where reg tell you about her fave jewish story

steve
www.myspace.com/abandondrugs1 (samson remix)

she does say 'old light'.

and its obviously about samson and delilah, i figured the reason she says they arent mentioned in the bible is meant to mean the bible didn't portray them in the way they really were.


some1 on songmeanings said that they thought it was written from the perspective of some1 who was with samson before delilah, i dont exactly agree but i thought it was a nice take on it.

It is a "love" story about Samson and Delilah from the bible. Delilah keeps trying to find his weakness..it ends up being that when she cuts his hair he loses his strength. I can't remember the whole thing now.. But there is also something about the columns too. I thought that was very interesting that I thought the song was so sweet and I found out the story behind it--it was sort of sad. I love that Regina does this in a lot of her songs. She seems to mention quite a few interesting people in her songs..

quote:

Originally posted by a_secret_chord:
she does say 'old light'.

and its obviously about samson and delilah, i figured the reason she says they arent mentioned in the bible is meant to mean the bible didn't portray them in the way they really were.


some1 on songmeanings said that they thought it was written from the perspective of some1 who was with samson before delilah, i dont exactly agree but i thought it was a nice take on it.

no, that really wouldn't work if it was from a perspective of anyone besides delilah..cause then why would she cut his hair? anyway, I agree with the first statement you made, cause I was wondering what she meant--cause they obviously were mentioned in the bible.

yeh i said i didn't agree with it, i do think its a good take on it tho, and i think songs (like any other art) are best left open for interpretation, i dont think its fair to say some1 is flat out wrong, cos they are finding their own sense of it..

even if the artist herself came forward and said 'thats not what i was writing about', i still wouldn't back down, i think anybody who takes it all too literally is missing the point.


i find it interesting to hear other peoples takes on things cos its weird to think whoever posted that one about it being some1 who was with samson before delilah obviously has a different way of seeing the world, like it dont all have to make perfect logical sense for example. you can learn about the different ways in which people think just by readin their take on stuff like song lyrics.

its hard to explain what i am getting at, but i ahd a go haha

The biblical topic you brought up is the direct application of that song, but topics of this nature, especially ones from powerful books such as the Tora, Bible, Koran, Mikhail Afanasyevich's works, Shakespeare, Pasternak, Tolstoy etc., ALWAYS have extended applications...very major applications.

For example, the lines: "And the History books forgot about us, and the Bible didn't mention us, not even once" can be expanded on many different dimensions (exactly like the following picture:


)

You see, you can take "us" to be the characters she is talking about, OR you can take a different US that the History books (at least the school books) ALWAYS forget about (such as the MILLIONS of people who were forgotten about and left to starve in the Ukraine and her vicinity in the 1920's (and after)), but then again you could expand on a much more global scale and look at how the History books forget about people in general...those history books generally concentrate on animals...not humans, anyway enough rambling on that topic.

These are one of the things that make Regina's poetry so beautiful...the way she presents her thoughts...the words she uses, provide a straight-forward expansion of that idea to many different scales...in other words her words are not empty and are not located at a dead end.

Her style and "topics" are very similar to the styles and "topics" that bards use...and bards generally do not have any empty words.

And that "old light" interpretation that was mentioned...I love that.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Volodya,

I think it's about how Wonderbread™ can affect a relationship. Maybe just how sliced bread changed the world.

Oh, and just so you all know, I actually live in the house that sliced bread was invented in. I'm not lying! I will now go peel the crust off a slice of bread, squeeze the doughy part into a ball, and savour that delicious ball of bread.

Betcha Samson never did that.

I agree with you. The song isn't called "Samson and Delilah", it's just called "Samson", so it's not necessarily the obvious.

Hello Stepped..I was just wondering if there are any DVD's of Regina's songs? Check out my multiply site..maybe there's a song or 2 for you....

quote:

Originally posted by Stepped On A Syringe:
You know what i Just noticed??!

On the Music Player on this Site, under Songs, Samson is spelled "SamPson" TYPO!!!

http://doreesky.multiply.com/

as pertaintaining to "the bible didnt mention us" i think shes talking about a relationship tht reminded her of samson and delilah and was saying that they (her relationship) wasnt mentioned or seemed as important to the world as the one that was mentioned.. just an idea

hmmm yes kittykat...i think that also for a few reasons: 1)I don't think they trusted anyone else other than each other(so how could anyone else truly know them? if no one really knew them then how could anybody truly write anything about them that wasn't fiction?and 2)ok,here goes...How about Samson is Jack and Regina is Delilah!?! didn't jack have long hair?.lol good night

quote:

Originally posted by kittykatxoxo:
as pertaintaining to "the bible didnt mention us" i think shes talking about a relationship tht reminded her of samson and delilah and was saying that they (her relationship) wasnt mentioned or seemed as important to the world as the one that was mentioned.. just an idea

hair :3

quote:

Originally posted by abandondrugs:
samson's about the story of samson and delilah, which is, despite the lyrics saying the bible didnt mention us, in the bible, in the prophets section of the old testament. get your bibles out and start reading where reg tell you about her fave jewish story

steve
www.myspace.com/abandondrugs1 (samson remix)

Almost NOTHING in the bible is portrayed as it really was... except for some little pieces in the old testament here and there. Besides, the Gospels are grandiosely manipulated by the Byzantine Emperors.

yea...i always thought it was about samson and delilah. because the bible mentions samson and delilah, but maybe incorectly and i think its a really sweet song, because biblically samson was such a trusting indidvidual and even after she came out and said, how can make you weak" he told her, granted after a few times of dishonesty, but none the less he finally told delilah to cut his hair, leading to his capture, death and inevitabley delilahs "downfall" and her peoples.
i thought "beneth the sheets of paper lies my truth" meant that the bibles words arent really true.

HAHA! Anybody seen the movie Duplicity? The song, Samson, was referenced in the movie. I had a good chuckle when I heard it.

quote:

Originally posted by juicytangerine:
HAHA! Anybody seen the movie Duplicity? The song, Samson, was referenced in the movie. I had a good chuckle when I heard it.

awesome! i'm gonna have to watch that sometime..

i don't think this song is very open-and-shut. you have to develop your own thoughts on it, because no one interpretation is going to be so "right" that others will flock towards it and drop their own interps., because samson is too all-over-the-pace to be taken literally. personally, i don't think it's totally about samson and delilah, nor are those two irrelevant. but that's just me!

I'm going to include the official lyrics from this site with my post because I will reference them often:

You are my sweetest downfall
I loved you first
I loved you first
Beneath the sheets of paper lies my truth
I have to go
I have to go

Your hair was long
When we first met

Samson went back to bed
Not much hair left on his head
He ate a slice of wonderbread
And went right back to bed

And history books forgot about us
And the Bible didn't mention us
And the Bible didn't mention us
Not even once

You are my sweetest downfall
I loved you first
I loved you first
Beneath the stars came fallin' on our heads
But they're just old light
They're just old light

Your hair was long
When we first met

Samson came to my bed
Told me that my hair was red
He told me I was beautiful
And came into my bed

Oh, I cut his hair myself one night
A pair of dull scissors in the yellow light
And he told me that I'd done alright
And kissed me till the morning light, the morning light
And he kissed me till the morning light...

Samson went back to bed
Not much hair left on his head
He ate a slice of wonderbread
And went right back to bed

“Samson” qualifies as one of Spektor’s greatest songs, no less for its beauty than for its literary merits. Consequently, I have always wanted to write about it. It has a veneer of simplicity, as does many of her songs, but--though the meaning is easier to get at than with some others--it is still a difficult piece.

However, I must disagree with BLTW where she posted that the song is not to be "taken literally." "Samson" is perfectly valid for literal (non-allegorical) interpretation, and you should consider your interpretation, if it is well-formed, to be perfectly valid. The words of "Samson" should be taken just as literally as the Biblical story --who was Samson, anyway? Did he really even exist? Take the song "literally" with the entirety of its meaning--just because it is not realistic but imagistic does not mean it should not be given as serious a hearing as a book of history. In the end, even histories are vague, because our language does not convey everything we mean. The difference is that histories intend to relate facts while poetry intends to make you feel something. The latter is accomplished here, so analysis should strive to explain how it is done so well.

There has been significant discussion on this site, and in this thread particularly, of the way RS's lyrics attempt to resist being fixed into one particular angle. There is a good term for this--polyvalence. For example, the narrator could be Delilah, the prostitute Samson meets in Gaza* before he falls in love with Delilah, or it could be RS herself; cf. the lines "Samson…told me that my hair was red**." Samson could be the Biblical Samson, a symbolic character, or the speculated "actual," living, breathing Judge of Israel, an ordinary man who inspired a rather fantastical story. This latter Samson we will never know much about. The story survived.

The narrator begins the first chorus with "you are my sweetest downfall." The first time I heard this song all the way through, I was confused. It would seem that Samson, not Delilah, would say this because, in the story, Delilah turns out to be Samson's downfall. The line "I loved you first," which is repeated several times, was similarly puzzling. In Judges 16:4, Samson "fell in love with a woman in the valley of Sorek, whose name was Delilah." It is never indicated in the story that Delilah loves Samson. The Philistines use her to find out what can weaken the superhuman Samson; after three trials she finds out. Samson falls asleep on her lap, she calls a man and has him shave off Samson's seven locks, and the Philistines take him away, gouge out his eyes, and bind him in bronze.

After the first verse comes "and the Bible didn't mention us, not even once." There are two possibilities for the narrator: either she is Delilah, albeit one whose actual individual experience is quite different from the fantastical one which makes her the antagonist and Samson a virile hero who can kill a thousand men with the jawbone of a donkey, or the narrator is a different lover entirely, one who exists outside the Biblical narrative. In part, the narrator is actually the singer herself, as complicated as that notion may seem. She is using the character Samson, one so frequently entangled with female characters, to sing about the way she views personal experience. Simultaneously, however, she blends in suggestions of Delilah (i.e., the cutting of the hair). Her method of retelling involves the insertion of herself in subtle ways into the old story, and making it entirely her own.

The following points separate the narrator from the biblical Delilah, while simultaneously obscuring the narrative center between the two worlds:

• “You are my sweetest downfall”
  
• “I loved you first”
  
• “The Bible didn't mention us”
  
• The narrator speaks [sings] in first person
  
• By depicting Samson eating wonderbread and having his hair cut by scissors, the poem brings Samson into the writer’s modern world.
  

The writer brings Samson into her own love story. She found Samson "beneath the paper"--he does not exist on the paper of books any more materially than he does in Regina's mind, or yours—in fact, less so. The narrator is a docile compliant to love no less than Samson. To say that the femme-fatale scheme is reversed is an oversimplication.

I like the mention above by The Monster in the Closet of the line “But they’re just old light.” The “old light” here is the storyline, which may or may not accurately reflect the real events millions of light-years away. We look upon the past through a glass darkly. RS’s “Samson” is a new refraction that incorporates the clarity of the present into the dim view of a love long past.

*Judges 16:1-3
**However, Delilah has been depicted with red hair in several paintings. cf. Samson and Delilah, by Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), Samson and Delilah by Tintoretto (1518-1594), and Samson and Delilah by Gioacchino Assereto (fl. 1630s)

All I know is that this song is so beautiful especially when the violins kick in......ahhhhhhhhhh

Excellent post, Me Myself! Thank you for sharing that. I am very interested by the interpretations suggesting that the song is not necessarily about Samson and Delilah in a literal sense.