Friday, December 10, 2010

The Winter Months: December

collective-soul1


Collective Soul: December

[purchase]

Okay, let's get this out of the way: This song is not about oral sex.

Collective Soul songs have a background allusion of Christianity to them---the lead singer, Ed Roland, and his band-mate brother were PKs (preacher's kids). They don't consider themselves a Christian band, but they're definitely classier than that simple (wrong) reading of the lyrics. The song uses December as an image of coldness, distance, and rejection to describe a relationship gone sour. "Turn your head…and spit me out…" is an oblique Biblical reference to a personal rejection.

Collective Soul was big in the 90s (and still together), which means I didn't discover them until the 00s. My 90s ended up focused on Raffi and Disney, and I missed a lot of the post-grunge bands until much later. I made up for my tardiness, though, with increased enthusiasm.

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