He eventually married Pattie, and managed to stay friends with George. He’s not joking but it sounds like a joke, which helps him ease into his more literal policy suggestions: “All research and successful drug policy shows that treatment should be increased/And law enforcement decreased while abolishing mandatory minimum sentences,” he shouts repeatedly at the bridge to “Prison Song,” biting out every syllable of the last three words. “Chop Suey!” became a hit all the same, a nu-metal chimera that crashed unintelligible babbling into the chorus’s gorgeous vocal melody. Tankian’s language breaks down on “Aerials.” He gestures toward a spiritual unity among humans: “We’re one in the river/And one again after the fall,” he sings, rendering all of life as the few seconds between the top and bottom of a waterfall. The gray cat was called Sunday Man. This is the most intelligent post that I have read here so far! I don't think it has anything to do with fundamentalism or hate because science does nothing to fight that. "Making two possibilities a reality, Predicting the future of things we all know, Fighting off the diseased programming Of centuries, centuries, centuries, centuries." Hooker talks about transforming a Tony Bennett classic and why you don't have to be sad and lonely to write the blues. It’s as if their position as ethnic outsiders in one of the largest cities in the U.S. contributed to the atypical configuration of their sound. Best System Of A Down song ever ! Having wrestled through his share of abolitionist praxis and scatological humor, he falls, drained, to the reminder that the world still exists even after it’s been defined. Log in now to tell us what you think this song means. Good interpretation but I think the "diseased programming" is just about how vaccinations give your body the "programming" of a disease so you can fight it off. Their second album, Toxicity, succeeded, improbably, in a radio environment that favored simplistic formulas. Arto Tunçboyacıyan), Science (feat. We've heard of artists putting their hearts into their music, but some take it literally. It’s why Tankian twists his voice into a sneer when he sing-speaks, “We can’t afford to be neutral on a moving train.” He’s not a theorist, only playing at being one. “Toxicity” snaps off, leaving silence. It lives on as a punchline that itself has grown passé. Today, we revisit a slice of hyperactive, politicized nu-metal from 2001. Their families had survived the Armenian genocide under the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century; they grew up in the United States with ancestral scars from a massacre still officially denied by its perpetrators, which lent them keen eyes for political suppression and internal propaganda. Then, at the chorus, Tankian snaps into a scream and Malakian grinds between two chords, squeezing all the space out of the arrangement. Don’t have an account? The song houses a world sick with technology, cars, and apartments and the scourge of software updates, and still, the speaker is “eating seeds as a pastime activity,” like a paleo-vegan cruising the shoreline in a Tesla. “Toxicity” ends on a new idea. Come to it with political anguish and you’ll find an outlet for that pain. Have you seen "Paradise or Oblivion"? A song made by System Of A Down that's a testament to the disorder, confusion, and complexity of the world. Toxicity came out one week before September 11th, 2001. The three singles from Toxicity—“Chop Suey!,” the title track, and “Aerials”—represent a break from its two predominant modes of deadly serious politicizing and patently absurd joke-cracking. But SOAD’s compositions disoriented as much as they elucidated. Arto Tunçboyacıyan) song meanings. “When you lose small mind/You free your life,” he urges, a sentence that hints at psychedelic enlightenment, escaping predispositions through biochemical intervention—free your mind, man. To most younger MIIS students, the album elucidates memories of head-banging in your middle school friend’s bedroom with the volume cranked and the door shut. Malakian screeches behind Tankian, punctuating his lines and lubricating their blank seriousness; radical abolitionist viewpoints go down easier when accompanied by visceral nu-metal grunts. Arto Tunçboyacıyan) Lyrics. The weight of the instrumentation on “Aerials” captures a sense of exhaustion that spills over into Tankian’s delivery. Donna Summer's "Bad Girls" is about prostitutes, but it was still used in the movie Rugrats In Paris. He trills the “R” in the word “brutality” and swoops in and out of the melody. Malakian and Tankian forged a close chemistry on the band’s 1998 self-titled debut, whose cover image of an open hand referred to a World War II anti-fascist poster designed by a member of the Communist Party of Germany. Eric Clapton wrote "Layla" about his love for Pattie Harrison, who was married to George Harrison at the time. A talk with Martin Popoff about his latest book on Rush and how he assessed the thousands of albums he reviewed. It’s why, between “Prison Song” and “Deer Dance,” he breaks out a song whose chorus urges, “Pull the tapeworm out of your ass!”. This isn’t mind-expansion. At the chorus, he stresses every syllable and lapses into barely legible syntax. Why end there? No wonder the grammar’s bad. Max Martin had stamped popular music with his surefire songwriting brand, ushering in a cross-genre rush of structurally identical singles from the Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, and Britney Spears. Like RATM, SOAD interpolated West Coast hip-hop’s quick vocal clip into a guitar-driven metal milieu. Post-grunge incubated a strain of sincerity so obsequious that no amount of nostalgia has yet to rehabilitate it. The tension between the state and its subjects plays out more dramatically on “Deer Dance,” where riot police shove their guns into the ribs of peaceful anti-capitalist protesters. He points to that distant, abstract image of life without suffering, and then he falls back into disorder. Very well said... System of a Down – Science (feat. The awareness of music’s inherent failure as a political tool saturates Toxicity. "Toxicity" is also System Of A Down's second album that carries such singles as Chop Suey, Toxicity, and Aerials. The verse is like watching a riot on TV, with commercials breaking up the violent footage. “Minor drug offenders fill your prisons/You don’t even flinch/All our taxes paying for your wars/Against the new non-rich,” Tankian pronounces in a rapid sing-song cadence. After firing everybody up, they offer solace for the spent. There are diseases that had killed so many people for centuries (polio, leprosy, the bubonic plague) that aren't a problem now because of modern medicine. The Scorpions and UFO guitarist is also a very prolific songwriter - he explains how he writes with his various groups, and why he was so keen to get out of Germany and into England. It’s that rare artifact among commercially heavy music: a nu-metal band that gets tired, and funnels its fatigue into its most compelling performances. They’ve almost certainly directed a few inquiring minds to Howard Zinn and perhaps they’ve reframed the concepts of prison and policing for more than a handful of millennials. This may irk some people, but it’s been boiling in me for 15 years and I’m going to just come out and say it. Toxicity came out the same year as David Lynch’s surrealist nightmare Mulholland Drive, and both works feel prescient 17 years later, as if both Lynch and System of a Down … I really like your interpretation, especially the part about "two possibilities"! In them lies the dead air that rises when all the problems have been named, and the naming brings you no closer to a solution. Guitarist Daron Malakian didn’t drive home the beat of their songs so much as he threw it into disarray. That women only appear on Toxicity to play disposable nuisances (or, on “Bounce,” orgy fodder) makes “Psycho” a skippable extra at best, and at worst a perfect example of the left’s longstanding deficiency in gender politics. It’s a big idea rendered in fragments: man becomes sun, sun enlightens man. The lead singer on "Da Doo Ron Ron" and "Then He Kissed Me," La La explains how and why Phil Spector replaced The Crystals with Darlene Love on "He's A Rebel.". Its lead single, “Chop Suey!,” famously landed on a Clear Channel blacklist of songs to avoid broadcasting in the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center. This song brings back some memories of final years in college and I think to understand the song, you should understand the scene at that time. “Pushing little children/With their fully automatics/They like to push the weak around,” Tankian chants at the chorus, calling to mind any number of images from the past 15 years: mass shootings at high schools or concerts, demonstrations turned violent at the hands of the cops. The only cover of "American Pie" to chart is by Madonna, whose 2000 version was a minor hit in America but went to #1 in the UK. Raised in Los Angeles’s Armenian-American community, all four members of System of a Down were primed to see through the myth of American exceptionalism that would justify the coming warmongering of George W. Bush’s presidency. Tankian speaks in the past tense, like he’s already illuminated humanity, as if his work were done. System of a Down competed with the bros of Nickelback, Creed, and Staind on the alternative charts, bands that dressed up the Martin school of pop with power chords and ham-throated vocals. System of a Down practice their politics knowing full well its material limitations. There’s a light, playful quality to his voice throughout the verse. Most of their songs took the form of the confessional: Men apologized to women and to God for their sins, which tended to include substance abuse, emotional neglect, and general chauvinism. Tankien, Malakian, bassist Shavo Odadjian, and drummer John Dolmayan played with the weight of metal, but the quick pivots of their compositions also aligned them with L.A.’s hardcore punk heritage. Trees grow there, but they’re palm trees, which look the same in emoji or Lego as they do in real life. Create an account with SongMeanings to post comments, submit lyrics, and more. Into the vaults for Bruce Pollock's 1984 conversation with the esteemed bluesman. Laura Nyro talks about her complex, emotionally rich songwriting and how she supports women's culture through her art. There has never been a more prolific, barrier-breaking, innovative, and quirky album than System of a Down’s 2001 Toxicity. Their lyrics tended toward the surreal, the humorous, and the abstract, and the hairpin turns of their compositions kept them from marinating too long in a single mood. General CommentI think the meaning's a bit more nuanced than "uggg, science bad, me no like" judging by the opening. A monthly update on our latest interviews, stories and added songs, Writer/s: Serj Tankian, Daron V. Malakian, Shavo Odajian, John Dolmayan, Rush: Album by Album - A Conversation With Martin Popoff. The horn flourish at the beginning of "Jump Around" comes from Bob and Earl's "Harlem Shuffle"; the squeal throughout the song might be a Prince sample. It can only galvanize, and its effects are almost always invisible, subconscious, and slow. It’s super easy, we promise! Search for it on youtube, its about The Venus Project, and it's rather inspiring.. The lyrics, in my very humble opinion, is pure poetic genius, though very limited, compared to other bands of today. But more importantly, the album is restless, bounding from one idea to another before the first can sink in. Pitchfork is the most trusted voice in music. Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. "Sunday Girl" was written by Blondie guitarist Chris Stein to cheer up Debbie Harry after her cat had run away whilst they were away on tour. The album begins with a song that lucidly highlights the evil of the American for-profit prison system. Non-lyrical content copyright 1999-2020 SongMeanings, Javascript must be enabled for the correct page display, Science (feat. “Psycho,” sandwiched between the mournful title track and “Aerials,” cuts the mood with a sequence of complaints about, of all people, groupies. Buck Dharma of Blue Oyster Cult wrote "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" after he was diagnosed with a heart condition and started thinking about his own mortality. Tankian sings of “Flashlight reveries/Caught in the headlights of a truck” and “Looking at life through the eyes of a tire hub,” as in spinning, exhausted, disoriented. Except it’s not the mind that gets free: The mind falls away and the person who’s lost it rises away from needing it at all. Political without dipping into preachiness, they accumulated fans who could either tap into the radical messages of their music or easily ignore them. I understand the meaning of this phrase refers to the sequence of events that occur in the unexpected failure of a machine or system of machines. He skips the ritual fun and goes straight to rejecting the groupie for being “cocaine crazy,” an elision without improvement. Toxicity came out the same year as David Lynch’s surrealist nightmare Mulholland Drive, and both works feel prescient 17 years later, as if both Lynch and System of a Down could see California (and the rest of the country) about to fall into disarray. There’s a city in the chorus, and the mock Hollywood sign on the album’s cover suggests the song takes place in Los Angeles, a strange, dry place choked with smog and congested with traffic. It doesn’t trail off into the cold. Mitch from Ottawa, On I think it has something to do with opium, at least the line "eating seeds as a passtime activity" Attila from Dunavarsány, Hungary "Eating seeds as a pastime activity" might refer to the high level of drug use in LA, the USA or Earth in general System of a Down released their debut self-titled album toward the end of Rage Against the Machine’s tenure as rock radio’s crowning political agitators. The picture is clear but the path forward remains obscured. The lyrics to the title track call to mind the serene, lonely image of a barren highway on a midwinter night. The patriarchy and the police state are one in the same, but System of a Down only strike at one face of the enemy while ostensibly shielding the other. The chorus breaks the glass and transports you into the claustrophobic mayhem of the crowd. These songs, where System of a Down shift away from agitprop and plunge into numbing despair, comprise Toxicity’s gleaming emotional core. Redirecting attention and softening preconceptions are both forms of political work that music can do, but it can’t pass laws or free prisoners. “Chop Suey!” contained the word “suicide,” so it joined Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash Into Me” and Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” on a roster of tracks that might conceivably remind listeners of the recent national trauma. Come to it with more specific personal angst and you’ll leave just as satisfied. These songs are weighty and helpless. Tankian’s wild, flexible delivery spun out of control. One minute Serj Tankian’s shucking syllables like pistachio shells, saying nothing; the next he’s appealing to the Lord God Himself in a rich, reverent baritone, singing the words Jesus spoke to his father on the cross: “Why have you forsaken me?” The bait-and-switch between abrasion and allure makes the song irresistible, a songwriting tactic that would elevate System of a Down from the glut of hard rock that occupied a sizable portion of pop radio through the turn of the millennium. System of a Down let their motor run out. It’s mind-sloughing. Malakian plays a lunk-headed riff and Tankian repeats a new lyric: “When I became the sun/I shone life into the man’s hearts.” There’s the potential for a whole song packed into those quick measures—earlier in the track, he sings the word “disorder” for longer than he takes to sing that entire couplet. Toxicity is the second studio album by American heavy metal band System of a Down, released on September 4, 2001, through American Recordings and Columbia Records.Featuring the heaviness and aggression of their 1998 eponymous debut, it features more melody, harmonies, and singing than the band's aforementioned album.Categorized primarily as alternative metal and nu metal, Toxicity … These comic deflations balance the weight of Toxicity’s politics, though some of their humor pitches into the oppression they purport to resist. Toxicity is heavy, making abundant use of the juiciest guitar distortion in its class thanks to the density of Rick Rubin’s production. Though “Psycho” mars Toxicity’s tightly wound wit, it only emphasizes just how magnificent the album gets when it’s not distracting itself with petty sexism. With such a nimble hand, System of a Down could smuggle radical politics into the headphones of bored kids drawn in by Tankian’s carnival-barker screams. An example could be a agency or manufacture doing a study or investigation into events that lead up to the unexpected and/or the unknown failure resulting in the crash or failure of a system. Even when System of a Down quoted the literal Bible, they managed to sidestep the blunt impact of grunge’s sickly dregs.