Bull In The Heather is a pretty cool song on many different levels. I love the distortion of the guitars on the aural side, the use of maracas to provide additional percussion, and plus Kim Gordon’s voice is really fun to listen to, as she oozes sensuality.
I’m not going to bother trying to figure out exactly what the song is about; it’s obviously about a relationship, but past that the parameters get murky. Besides, the folk at SongMeanings are more than willing to provide all sorts of unique and interesting theories.
And of course, the lyrics:
10, 20, 30, 40
tell me that you wanna hold me
tell me that you wanna bore me
tell me that you gotta show me
tell me that you need to slowly
tell me that yr burning for me
tell me that you can’t afford me
time to tell yr dirty story
time f’r turning over and over
time f’r turning four leaf clover
betting on the bull in the heather
10, 20, 30, 40
tell me that you wanna scold me
tell me that you a-dore me
tell me that you’re famous for me
tell me that yr gonna score me
tell me that you gotta show me
tell me that you need to sorely
time to tell yr love story
time f’r turning over and over
time f’r turning four leaf clover
betting on the bull in the heather
March 29th, 2008 at 7:41 pm
Aren’t relationships murky and in secret code to begin with, anyway? You can dig someone else’s rhythm, but it’s just the two of them who get all the sub rosa messages and nuances. Pretty awesome song…
March 29th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
Yeah, that’s why I chose not to attempt to interpret this one. There’s a lot of things you can read into the song, but I don’t really feel like it’s that deep.
It does rock, though!
June 1st, 2008 at 3:39 am
Here is what I think.
About the title of the song that puzzled me because I am not english so I intented to understand it with the “bet on the bull’s eye” expression.
I rode that Bull in the heather is the name of an underrated horse that won a race. So I believe that it siginifies that the end of a love relationship is inexorable, all seem easy and sure at the beginning but with time nothing can avoid it from finishing, so you will have to rely more and more on “luck” to save the couple which can only work a few times (it’s a matter of decreasing probability).
Then the “turning over and over” is related and means sexual relationships in my pov whereas the “turning four leaf clover” means that this won’t keep the two people in love eternally and the magic of sex will fade then disappear in a glimpse after having made love a last time like if it was only bad luck. Instead it is solely explained by time and decreasing desire. I believe in english there are also the expressions “wheel of fortune”, the luck turns as a wheel, human fate is sometimes seen as a wheel, well in french we have them all and even fortune means luck or fate or money, so we’re really lucky :)
Almost each sentence is closely related to the images of the video clip :
hold : childish rope play
bore : laying on the bed picking a paper
show : strip-tease
need to slowly : banana peeling / sexual
burning : horse wants to eat the banana
afford : provocative prostitute
tell story : whispering at the ear of the other girl
over and over : bedroom
clover : the man leads the horse, all is working
betting : horse race (the 7 (Bull ?) is leading/winning whereas he was behind another horse previously)
scold : push the annoying little girl
adore : kiss
famous : parisian cabaret
Then it’s not so clear except the last clover one :
score : tummy dance
show : tell
need sorely : hotel
clover : nail varnish flow out on the ground : bad luck, lack of attention even if intention doing something nice for the girl may remain
bored girl turning a vegetal, horse in the background : end of the sexual magic, end of the relationship -> Kim no more on the bed then rests on it (last image), dancing employee no more attractive that is to say end of her show.
betting : the 7 is not first again, back to square one
Kim and the brunette girl stands for the same woman but at the two different states of their love affair.
At the beginning they’re smiling each other like they are well knowing each other, and that is enhanced when the little girl kiss the other like her mother, that is to say their intimacy is high, in fact they are the same person.
Kim is serious, bored, sad, older the brunette is childish, playful, cheerful, careless. Kim whispers at her ear what will come next (dirty, love story, gotta show = explain) but the little girl repeats mechanically without wanting to understand what it means.
At the end they’re reunited in their minds as you see the brunette girl has become serious and is watching the camera with connivance, like she’s wanting to mean to you she knows you understood she was just playing a game that is over now.
[they’re could be also daughter and mother, Kim was pregnant, so the mother teach the little girl she had with a man about life, love, sex, procreation, manhood]
The count 10 20 30 40 are maybe like the odds for an horse, or time periods that are passing, well I’d say it implies something that increases (or subsequantly decreases) with time, but it’s tautological !
Well, there were my ideas !…
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June 1st, 2008 at 3:44 am
I have not a songmeaning account, maybe someone could post the above text.
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June 1st, 2008 at 12:36 pm
Hi Angelotique, my apologies. Your comments were marked as spam for some reason, and I hadn’t noticed them.
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