Here’s my latest project – talking about songs lyrics and trying to teach you a thing or two from them 🙂
I hope you’ll like this new format of a mini-lesson.
If you don’t know it, check the song first:
My YT channel and lyrics breakdown
If you’re not sure you can follow, try to slow down the speed of the Youtube video. Here’s how you can do it: slow Youtube down.
If still, you’d prefer to read rather than listen or do both at the same time, check the section below the video – there’s the transcript for you.
Enjoy!
And do leave me a comment or smash that subscribe button if you liked it 🙂
Transcription
Okay, Piledriver Waltz, finally, the song by Arctic Monkeys – the one I promised to talk about and to teach you a thing or two from. All right, so this is it. That’s the title, let’s take a look at what it means. And already Małgorzata, in the previous comments section, said piledriver is a term that comes from wrestling. And we do have a picture from wrestling here. I guess it’s Hulk Hogan, I’m not sure. And yes, but originally that name comes from – the construction site – so the place where the building is going to be built. And as you can see nothing’s here yet, just a few… I don’t know, is it an excavator? Whatever this is. But we’ve got this big thing and this is the pile driver. As you can see, not very clearly but you can see that it looks like it’s loud. And I think that’s the referencethat Alex Turner, the lyricist and the frontman of Arctic Monkeys is making here.
But of course the wrestling piledriver comes from this heavy machinery thing and the thing they do have in common is – take a look – it’s this position. This guy is holding the other one and probably what’s gonna happen to him is his head is going to be hammered into the ground. Just like with this thing, okay?
So we can already guess the piledriver element in this, right? But it’s either this one or this one or both. There’s one more reference to a piledriver and it’s a sexual one. But you probably might guess looking at the wrestling picture.
And the waltz is a musical reference. So it’s about the rhythm and the meter in music. And I guess this is what happens here in the chorus of the song. So first, we have the first few stanzas – the first verses of the song – and we’ve got the chorus when the rhythm changes so to speak. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s get going step by step, okay?
What happens here is these are the lyrics, but what I would like you to do, and what I probably will do, is I will post this again maybe in the story or somewhere because it would be great if you could look at this and listen at the same time because that’s the point of learning from songs. The point is that you read the lyrics, you memorize the words and you sing along. And that’s how you memorize the phrases, that’s how you memorize structures. It’s the best way ever. Especially when you enjoy the song.
Okay, so I assume after this introduction you have already listened to the song with the lyrics on. So now you can follow me and my explanations.
Okay, let’s read a few verses:
I etched the face of a stopwatch /
on the back of a raindrop /
and did a swap for the sand in an hourglass /
I heard an unhappy ending /
it sort of sounds like you’re leaving /
I heard the piledriver waltz /
it woke me up this morning
Okay, the first word which is etching it’s not a great word to learn English from I guess because it’s all about this weird technique of, I don’t know, drawing, printing. It’s like very old pictures which have been done using this technique. It’s explained here that it’s a kind of printmaking. That you’re using some liquid and some special pen, I guess, on a metal and then, you print. You’ve got this plate and then you print it on a piece of paper.
So yeah we don’t really need that in life. It’s just to illustrate the metaphor. And the metaphor is I etched the face of a stopwatch… A stopwatch is a kind of watch you use to measure time. I mean any kind
a watch or clock measures time, but when you need to like… when it’s just a few minutes, you set the stopwatch and the time runs. And then it
alarms you when it’s over.
So yeah, the face of a stopwatch, when we talk about clocks and watches they do have faces. So this is the face of a stopwatch or a clock and these are the hands of this clock. So what he did he etched, so like printed, the face of a stopwatch with all the hours and stuff on the back of a raindrop – so it’s a terrible, miserable rainy day. And then, he did a swap for the sand in an hourglass. This is an hourglass. And we’ve got the sand and it just drops or drips from here, measuring time. But this is an ancient way of measuring time and then you see how time drags slowly. And I guess it’s even worse than looking at this (watch) but he somehow wants to swap the stopwatch for the hourglass. So I don’t know why – you tell me. So this is up for interpretation, I guess.
Let’s move on, maybe it’s gonna get clearer, I don’t know.
I heard an unhappy ending
You know we have this happy ending thing most of the time and here’s the unhappy ending.
It sort of sounds like you leaving
So okay, he’s talking about his relationship here. The unhappy ending would be her leaving, so his girlfriend walking away. That would make it an unhappy ending of this relationship.We already can sense that they’re having some trouble. It’s a kind of a rocky relationship, we would say.
I heard the piledriver waltz /
it woke me up this morning
So, I guess nothing good can come out of this. It’s the morning, you open your eyes because you were woken up by the piledriver – either this being the loud noise made by this machine, or something happened to him because they are fighting, like literally fighting.
And then, we move to the chorus which is a waltz, so it’s really pretty nice to listen to it and the change of the meter:
You look like you’ve been for breakfast at the Heartbreak Hotel /
and sat in the back booth by the
pamphlets and the literature on how to lose /
Your waitress was miserable and so was your food /
if you’re gonna try and walk on water make sure you wear your comfortable shoes /
This is a brilliant piece of poetry, but let’s get back to the beginning.
You look like you’ve been for breakfast at the Heartbreak Hotel
Of course this is a reference to Elvis Presley and his great song Heartbreak Hotel, which means everybody’s miserable because everybody is heartbroken. So it looks like you’ve been there. Like, it’s the morning already, we know that because he’s just woken up and he looks at his girlfriend/ wife/ partner and he sees something’s wrong, like, you look terrible, you look like you’ve been dumped. But you haven’t, right? We are here, together, still.
And he’s still continuing with this vision like
you’ve been for breakfast at the Heartbreak Hotel /and sat in the back booth – so somewhere in the back because you’re so sad
by the pamphlets and the literature on how to lose
And this is just purely beautiful! Literature – so books, pamphlets – so some important pieces of writing, which try to convince you to some ideas – and these pamphlets, those books areon how to lose. So they just tell you what… this ‘on’ means that that’s the subject, the topic of this particular book. So it just tells you how to lose – what to do not to win. To lose, right? they’re destined for losing.
Your waitress was miserable – you know, it’s a rainy day, everybody’s fed up.
and so was your food
So the waitress was terrible, and the food was terrible. It’s a beautiful structure. And then he… I don’t know. I don’t understand this last thing, but tell me what you think.
if you’re gonna try and walk on water make sure you wear your comfortable shoes
So, of course, it’s a reference to Jesus walking on water, but he says if you’re gonna try this, if you want to do this – make sure you wear your comfortable shoes. So don’t wear your high heels or something. I don’t know what she’s tried to do, like, do some miracles and stuff, but it seems as if she’s failed because she was not prepared well enough.
Tell me what you think, how you interpret this, okay?
Moving on, that’s too far… moving on to the second, I forgot the word, so the second part, let’s say.
Okay, so that was quite difficult for me to understand, so I had to google a lot. Finally, it started to make sense so let me share what I make out of this.
All right, so let’s read this:
Mysteries flashing amber /
go green when you answer /
but the red on the rest of the questioner never changes /
I heard the news that you’re planning /
to shoot me out of a cannon /
I heard the piledriver waltz /
it woke me up this morning /
I like this kind of closing thing which is kind of, you know, coming back to the same metaphor. Okay, so I had a big problem with this, but then I realized that the three words: green, red, amber are not some random things here, but they refer to the traffic lights and how they change. So you’ve got red, you’ve got amber, which is another name for yellow on traffic lights, and you’ve got green. Because first I thought: okay what’s going on, like is the ocean flashing amber or something? Amber is also this kind of stone, which is pretty pretty 😀
Okay let me show you what I mean. Yes not Amber Gold – no no no. That’s her name? It’s actually Heard, sorry. Okay, never mind.Yes yes, oh I don’t want to see her. How to do this? Okay, now it’s fine. That’s amber, right? Sometimes there’s a fly in it or something, you know, or a spider. You know what I’m talking about. So first, I thought that’s something about this and the beauty of an amber stone. But I guess, it’s not – because, take a look, mysteries – so some secrets, something which we don’t know, are flashing amber, meaning… Ok when the amber is flashing it means watch out, just get ready – something’s going to happen. So it seems like those mysteries were those points for him that made him realize something’s wrong. That he should be cautious with her, that lady. And he says:
mysteries flashing amber go green when you answer
All those questions I ask you – they go green like: Phew, she finally answered. I know what happened. I shouldn’t be worried.‘but the red on the rest of the questioner’- So, I have further questions, lots more questions. And they’re still red, you haven’t answered them. It never changes. You leave some things unaddressed as if you don’t want to talk about them.
So yeah, they have some problems, the couple, right?
And then he says:
I heard the news that you’re planning /
to shoot me out of a cannon /
And that’s a cannon. So a big, big dump. Or a big throw, I don’t know.
I heard the piledriver waltz /
it woke me up this morning /
So nothing good. He’s expecting nothing good out of this. So it all looks like a relationship on the verge of breaking, splitting.
And again:
You look like you’ve been for breakfast at the Heartbreak Hotel /
and sat in the back booth by the
pamphlets and the literature on how to lose /
Your waitress was miserable and so was your food /
if you’re gonna try and walk on water make sure you wear your comfortable shoes /
Maybe he just says that it’s hard to change people – to expect some miracles. So if you try and walk on water and perform some incredible things, you need to be ready, you need to be prepared and not just expect them to happen.
So yeah, it’s a funny song, but about a sad thing. But still… oh, that’s not it. That’s the worksheet for a teacher… But still, when you look back at the beginning, it’s like he’s being nostalgic, he’s being like in this emo kind of state. And I don’t know why he wants to swap the stopwatch for the hourglass, like, change this one for that one. What does he want? Prolong this suffering? I’m not sure, so you tell me what you think.
Thanks for sticking by. I hope that you enjoyed it and you can learn from this. I do believe that you can and actually I’ve prepared a worksheet for learning several things from this and I will upload it in a new post.
It’s gonna be for the teacher, but anyone else who wants to learn from it can also download it, because this one will be for free – just promoting this kind of learning. And you will see how much you can extract from a simple song if it’s a good song. If it’s written well, if it has lots of nice phrases, if it has lots of nice structures because what I look at in this worksheet for the student and for the teacher is not only the words themselves but practicing those things, and the students actually saying them and using them.
For example, present perfect structure when you see someone, when you feel something, or you know even this like ‘a book on some topic’, right? And of course giving advice using the phrase ‘make sure’ – make sure you do this, make sure to do something. So yeah, expect those things. I will put some details out there soon so you can take a look at it later on.
So thanks for listening. Bye!
The actual Teacher Worksheet is available in the Teacher’s Materials section. Contact me on social media, if you’ll have any problems with getting it.
Piledriver Waltz Teacher’s Worksheet
