Posted by kirsten on September 24, 1998 at 05:20:30:
In Reply to: Re: Meaning behind "Quitting Time" posted by Rodney Welch on September 23, 1998 at 10:36:20:
: It's weird how you can occasionally find the perfect space on the Web to discuss the one thing in the world only you and you alone are, perhaps, interested in. Today, this minute, that thing is "Quitting Time," which I think is one of the greatest songs ever written.
: Overpraise? I don't think so -- every time the song starts the hair stands up on the back of my neck -- I love that opening with the three voices; it's like an epiphany or something. Those voices are the sound of some deep realization that is good and meaningful.
: So what does the song mean? It's easier for me to discuss what it makes me think of -- it makes me think of someone -- a young woman, I guess -- who doesn't much like herself, and who is stuck in this really shitty upscale job that is just murdering her soul, murdering her dreams, bloodying her own idea of what she wants to do with herself. And what does she want to do? Well, to use the imagery of the song, this woman's destiny is to be a goose, by which I can only take to mean she is meant to follow her own silly destiny. And that is what she should do, and that is what the song -- the voice of her own heart -- is urging her o do -- drop it, get out, take the nearest plane and fly. One of the marvels of the songwriter's craft is the way the image of a plane becomes the image of a goose.
: I love these lines:
: Honk all the moon
: From out the ocean
: Your clothes can fit you loose.
: It always mkes me think of a woman -- divorced, fortyish, fattish -- standing at a lake in her outsized Land's End clothes, dreaming of the future that is hers to seize.
: It's a hopeful, life-enhancing song.
Quitting time is one of my favorite Roches song as well simply because the singing is so unbelievably beautiful and because the lyrics are so poetic. But then again, Maggie is a real poet in my opinion. I've never really tried to interpret what exactly the song "is about." I mostly think of its effect as being that of a really good poem - e.g. amazing alliteration, repetitions, etc.
As an example, consider the verse in one of Maggie's songs (I can't remember the title)
Prized fighter with bruised pride
A fuse blew when you tried
To fixed the worn out wire
And set the house on fire
It blows my mind.