The View From Stow Hill

[amaitheanhorn]

This wasn't a song that grabbed me on first listen, but now I really am enjoying it a lot.

I think if you just focus that one line of the chorus "The misguided tweets, the sad facebooking", the lyrics sound a bit crap. But listen to the lyrics of the whole chorus and it's really good.

I think some lyrics need the context of the rest of the song (or at least the rest of the verse or chorus) to really get their meaning and impact, this being one of them.

The way James sings "but I'm not looking" in the chorus is just gorgeous. Love it

[Joel]

Massive grower of a song, even if the guitar reminds me of Everything But The Girl's 'Missing'.

[wireobsessed]

I love this track, the whole production, the lyrics, tone and the way James delivers it. I totally agree with the links to Lifeblood that other people have said but then I think theres a lot of Futurology that reminds me of Lifeblood.

[Jiminy]

In re "sad facebooking": it's amazing how much having James Dean Bradfield singing your lyrics can rescue them.

(Great song, but classic Nicky in making you shed a tear and then cringe in the space of a few lines . . .)

[hummingbird]

i love the misguided tweets/sad facebooking line. facebook has become a verb anyway.. *i'll facebook you* so why not facebooking

[Bathtub]

It's a fucking sad state of affairs when we're using brand names as verbs, so if that's what Wire is getting at then yeah I agree (although I suspect it's not).

[hummingbird]

I'll use it again as a verb … I don't facebook

[Takk]

Hoovering, anyone?

[Borderliner]

Xerox days

[Bathtub]

Originally Posted by Takk

Hoovering, anyone?

What about it? It's wrong.

[Porco]

Properly enjoyed this the last couple of times. Still hate the tweeting/facebooking line though. It's not that I don't get it, I just don't like it. But the rest of the song has grown on me.

[Takk]

Originally Posted by Bathtub

What about it? It's wrong.

Why is it wrong?

Anyway my point was it's not a new thing, that one must have been around for decades.

[beautifuldistortion]

Hoovering is fine - it's an accepted word/term

[Porco]

Originally Posted by Takk

Hoovering, anyone?

Originally Posted by Bathtub

What about it? It's wrong.
__________________
[....]

huge lol, just sayin'

Originally Posted by beautifuldistortion

Hoovering is fine - it's an accepted word/term

That sucks!

(sorry)

[Bathtub]

Originally Posted by Takk

Why is it wrong?

Anyway my point was it's not a new thing, that one must have been around for decades.

I know it's widely accepted, but I still think there are reasons to avoid it.

Hoovering only makes sense if you know what a hoover is (a brand of vaccum cleaner). I'd wager that plenty of English speakers in other countries would not be familiar with hoover in the way that we use it, i. e. to clean the carpet. (It's also confusing because the other widely accepted meaning of hoover as a verb is to eat something quickly. So if you say "I hoovered up the bread crumbs" it could mean you ate them or you vaccumed them. No such confusion if you say "I vaccumed up the bread crumbs.")

Same with other trademark nouns that have become verbs, like Photoshop. "I photoshopped our holiday pictures" only makes sense if the person/people you are talking to knows what Photoshop is. Same goes for Xerox/Facebook etc, it's not inclusive language. I don't see why you'd ever use a brand name that has become a verb when you can use an existing generic verb and be more widely understood. "I facebooked her" is far less clear in meaning than "I sent her a message on Facebook". In the latter you don't need to know what Facebook is to at least get some idea that you are communicating with the subject of the sentence. In the first example, unless you knew what Facebook was, you would assume that someone had been whacked in the face with a book.