so don't give me respect don't give me a piece of your preciousness
flaunt all she's got in our old neighbourhood
i'm sure she'll make a few friends
even the rain bows down let us pray as you cock-cock-cock your mane
no cigarettes only peeled HAVANA'S for you i can be cruel
i don't know why
why can't my ba.ll.oo.n stay up in a perfectly windy sky
i can be cruel i don't know why
dance with the sufi's celebrate your top ten in the charts of pain
lover brother bogenvilla my vine twists around your need
even the rain is sharp like today as you sh-sh-shock me sane
no cigarettes only peeled HAVANA'S for you i can be cruel



does this song make any sense to anyone else?

I always reference toriphoria for information...

“I played the percussion of Cruel in the shower on my excess fat. It sounded really good—it made me feel good when I’d have that next bag of potato chips. I’d say ‘Look, Cruel sounds great in the shower. You eat those chips, girl!’” [Wall of Sound - April 1998]

“When you start talking to people who have that kind of loss [miscarriage], somebody piping up, going, ‘Well, the angels were there for us during this time,’ well that’s beautiful. But people have to understand that they’re not there for everybody all the time. They get lost on the way. That’s why in Cruel when I say, ‘I don’t know why,’ I really don’t know why I can be cruel. I don’t know why the angels aren’t there for everybody, but they’re not.” [Alternative Press - July 1998]

“There exists such a thing as boasting about misery. One sentence in ‘Cruel’ deals with that: ‘Dance with the Sufis celebrate your top ten in the charts of pain’. When I had a miscarriage, there were people who said: ‘Yes, but you only lost an unborn child. Our son was murdered!’ For some people things aren’t bad enough as it is. And some hang on to the fact that The Most Terrible Thing happened to them: they entered at #1 in the charts of pain. And then others are secretly jealous because they’re only at #6.”

Was the reference to celebrating your “Top Ten in the charts of pain” an ironic sideswipe at the “Professional Widow” remix?
“No, it’s about when you hear people listing their griefs, it can be become a bit like a Billboard chart. ‘Hey, only your uncle abused you? I had 17 sailors and then my uncle!’ That’s what that was about.. I get a lot of letters from girls who don’t talk about what happened to them because they feel they have no right to speak up. So they become victims anonymous.” [Vox - June 1998]

Tori describes Cruel as “very much a dark angel- very primitive, pig-Latin ghetto feminism.” [San Francisco Chronicle - May 4, 1998]

Just seems like a bitter X.
She feels disrespected because he's taken his new girl to the old neighborhood.

She's bitter because everything seems to go his way...
even the rain bows down let us pray....

Even in his vanity
...as you cock-cock-cock your mane

...No cigarettes only peeled Havanas
maybe suggests he feels too good for the ordinary/mundane.

Sufi's are Islamic mystics. Not sure of the connection. Google turned this up.
This might suggest that while she suffers, he is immune to pain because he's danced with the Sufi's

lover brother bogenvilla my vine twists around your need
Bogenvilla is a plant.
If he's the Bogenvilla, then it might mean she can cut off his "need" whatever that is. Maybe that's what the "cruel" part is about.

GangstaFam said:

man, i can't stand those people! and you do feel cruel when you shoot them down, ya know? its like, you try to be cool and sympathetic but then you're like "hey, i have some shit too and right now i don't need to hear about how you've had it worse than me. fuck off!"

i think that's the basic gist behind cruel. and thanks heeps for those quotes...damn, i love her!

thank you guys for the info. i feel loved at the org..

"Such simple chants and dances can open hearts to the unity of being."

Right site, wrong page. Correct link

Based on that, if he's not immune to the pain he may simply be at peace.

While the elements "bow to him", she asks "why can't my ba.ll.oo.n stay up in a perfectly windy sky?"
She seems to be the one that has the problem.

GangstaFam said:

Does that make sense?

This is the one part that's still lingering...and it doesn't add up.

Is she the "dark angel" (in this song)? Is it her "primitive"emotions of bitterness and jealousy that she speaks of?

Cause even as a metaphor, I don't see how it ties in with "ghetto feminism".
Maybe she threw that in there to throw people off, when it's really more personal than that.

This is obviously from the perspective of one, ultra-sensitive to the pain (even from the rain drops).

What am I not seeing?

anon said:

break it on down!

GangstaFam said:

I can't.

When I asked "what am I not seeing?", it wasn't rhetorical.
Was there more to her quote? because what I'm getting doesn't match her explanation of it, and she did write the song.

Only thing I can think is that she was having fun with those that would try to fit this "ghetto feminism" into a song that's not about that at all.

But then, what if this is Tori's way of saying that she's gonna get "ghetto"(Cruel) on the X?
That she could cut off his "need" (cell phone, car payments, whatever).
Maybe that's her take on feminism, ghetto style.

Really, that part baffles me.

I can't explain why, but this song makes perfect sense to me. It's actually one of her most accessible songs, imo. Maybe because I get the emotion of it, and it seems spot on. We can all be cruel and I like to hear that acknowledged.

Given what we know about Tori's history and that she had a miscarriage shortly before this album was made, some of the lines can make sense in that context. She had 3 miscarriages total and it wasn't until a few years later that she found out that she had a nutritional deficiency that was preventing her from coming to term. Until then, doctors had given her a clean bill of health. The line "why can't my ba.ll.oo.n stay up in a perfectly windy sky" in my mind translates to "why am I unable to carry a child in what I've been told is an otherwise healthy body?"

But in a very simplistic way, she could be asking "Why am I so cruel/pissed/depressed when there is so much good in my life."

GangstaFam said:

I didn't know about the miscarriages. You're probably right on the balloon metaphor.
That explains why the imbalance in her life would be magnified.

heartbeatocean said:

I agree. She could be singing a nursery rhyme in this song and still communicate thru the music/performance because it's honest. The rest matters less. It is interesting, though, when you have the lyric printed before you because that's another layer to consider.

Tori =