Katherine Kiss Me Lyrics
Slippy little lips will split me
Split me where your eye won't hit me
Yes, I love you, I mean I'd
I'd love to get to know you
I mean I
Sometimes I think the stupidest things
And do you ever wonder
How the boy feels
Flick your cigarette, then kiss me
Flick your eyes at mine so briefly
Your leather jacket lies
In sticky pools of Cider Blackberry
From every alpha male behind me
Eyes
Like marbles on a washing machine
I wonder
How the boy feels
In the alleyway
By JQ's
Jacket in the sodium light
Yes, I love you, I mean I
I mean I need to love
Upon the overflowing pipes above me
Tonight
I don't mind
Because I never wonder
How the girl feels
While I do agree that it's a parallel to "No You Girls", it seems to be from another point of view. The earlier song seems to be from the perspective of a guy on the prowl just looking to get some. In "Katherine Kiss Me", it's from the from the point of view of a nice guy who's shy and is making himself out to be a bumbling idiot in an endearing kind of way. He's nervous and can't say the words he's trying to convey. The second guy actually sees the girl, whereas the first has a more condescending view.
This song seems to be an acoustic amalgam of lyrics from No You Girls, is this No You Girls in another incarnation?? He mentions her eyes hitting him, her cigarette, how he'd love to get to know her, how he needs to love and how both the boy and the girl feels. It's a sweet song, much softer than No You Girls, am I the only one to draw this parallel??
The song is a continuation of a theme that plays it out through a lot of Franz Ferdinand's music. There's this image of the main character--presumably Kapranos--fighting these conflicting urges, one to be strong, stoic and hedonistic and the other to give in to his desire for emotional closeness. Songs like Walk Away and Come On Home give us lyrics like,"I must be strong, stay an unbeliever, and love the sound of you walking away," and "Don't forget, we are so strong, so bloody strong." The two versions of the same lyrics play the duality out perfectly. No You Girls is a dance track. It's sexual and electric, and quite frankly, sounds like exactly the kind of thing you'd listen to on a night out like the one the album is supposed to portray. It's all about sex with no emotional connection, thus, "Kiss me where your eye won't meet me/Meet me where your mind won't kiss me." But the song is upbeat, which means that in this case, no one really minds.
By the end of the night, though, Kapranos is drunk, tired and lonely. The dance track has turned into a sweet, crooning love song. He tries to connect with her ("Yes I love you, I mean I--I mean I need to love.") It's sad and beautiful. With all the emotion in his soul, he professes his love to some girl distractedly jacking him off in a dirty alleyway somewhere in Edinburgh, with a bunch of bar-goers looking on. He's satisfied his sexual urge, but he still longs for someone to care about him. In the end, no matter how hard he tries to disconnect himself emotionally in order to conform to a world that makes the random fuck and the midnight dance floor connection a logical way of life, he's needs to love.
Yep, those two song are definitely a combo. Two of my new favorites, I must say.
I think I love them both just because there's absolutely no pretense on their lyrics. They are not misleading, and very introspective. Let's you get into the mind of this boy on the prowl. Love the ending. lol
"Yes, I love you I mean I need to love"
That's both songs condensed into two lines. Franz Ferdinand are saying that the need for love is greater than the act of love, so it becomes trivial, no one thinks about the other person involved.
At least that's what I get from the songs.
This is my favourite song on the album, well its competeing with Ulysses and Lucid Dreams but it is definatly a great song.
This is my favourite song on the album, well its competeing with Ulysses and Lucid Dreams but it is definatly a great song.
It's not that hard to under stand this song as a guy and actually this song 100% related to a part of my life in this past october. I got a new job and slowly fell in love with this girl named Katherine and this song is a 100% showing of how i felt. I felt like a love sick fool that wanted to tell her but just couldn't quite do it. She was older and the...
It's not that hard to under stand this song as a guy and actually this song 100% related to a part of my life in this past october. I got a new job and slowly fell in love with this girl named Katherine and this song is a 100% showing of how i felt. I felt like a love sick fool that wanted to tell her but just couldn't quite do it. She was older and the relationship to her was that i was just another guy. I never really took the relationship farther then what it was which bummed me out. But i never really did think about how she felt about dating a younger guy. We now have a mutual relationship with nothing special. But when i got this album and heard this song i played it for her and told her that this song was how i felt when i was with her at the start, and i swear she had a tear in her eye.( bin a long time since relationship ended, like 5 months since)
This is a great song that was very well written in the perspective of the nice guy.
I read in an interview with Kapranos that this song and No You Girls are two different versions of the same event. Supposedly it's about kissing someone for the first time (fairly obvious from the lyrics). In this version, it's told from the perspective of how it "actually happened"--being nervous, and sort of emotionally fragile. Then No You Girls is supposed to be how you might tell the same story to your mates later, sort of exaggerating things and making yourself out to be the hero of the story, and not scared or nervous at all.
I love this song--it's weird, whenever I listen to Tonight: FF on shuffle, my ipod puts these two songs back to back like 90% of the time.
To me, this song is about a man who is uncertain/uneasy about a relationship with a woman. The song has an air of sadness, but with some hope still. He loves this woman ("Yes, I love you..."), but questions himself ("Sometimes I say the stupid things i think/ I mean I sometimes think the stupidest things"; "I wonder how the boy feels") while downplaying the importance of his emotions when he says "Yes, I love you/ I mean I need to love." It seems like he is implying that he thinks any woman would do because he is insecure alone, and needs to have someone to love to feel secure. But this woman doesn't seem to love him back:
"Flick your eyes at mine so briefly" - she won't maintain eye contact with him (or anyone really): "Eyes like marbles on a washing machine" - she seems to be looking around, interested in everything in her environment except for him. This is more obvious in the last verse: "And though your open eyes/ They're bored upon the overflowing pipes above me." All these references to her eyes/eye contact makes me think he is extremely interested in her and wants badly to look her in the eyes and say something to her (Perhaps tell her out much he really loves her?)
He also mentions that other men mind her attractive: "You glance a ricochet from every alpha male behind me." However, he never makes a reference to her being interested in any other man - just interested in the things in her environment. She won't even kiss him until she addresses her own needs first: "Katherine, kiss me/ Flick your cigarette then kiss me." This leads me to think that she is so absorbed in her own world that attention from all men (not just him) just isn't tremendously important in this particular moment (or perhaps in her life at all). It doesn't seem like she cares about material things that much either ("Your leather jacket lies in sticky pools of cider blackberry"), so her mind must be elsewhere. Perhaps she has something else on her mind or maybe there's something about her that he doesn't know yet - that he hasn't figured out.
However, he sees tremendous beauty and in her, and she sparks his curiosity. He is absorbed in her, yet has a strong feeling that she isn't the least bit interested in him. ("And do you ever wonder how the boy feels?")
He realizes that she has the ability to break his heart, splitting him right down the middle, without even realizing it:
"Katherine, kiss me/ Slippy little lips will split me/ Split me where your eye won't hit me"
In this scene, they're in a neon-lit allyway ("in the allyway, by Jackies...in the sodium light"). It seems like they're doing something sexual "Jacking in the sodium light" - maybe she's giving him a handjob? Or maybe "Jacking" references someting else I didn't think of... Anyway, she is half-hearted with everything she does when she's with him (with the references to her flicking her cigarette, looking everywhere except at him ("eyes like marbles on a washing machine")). Even while they're doing something intimate with each other, she's bored. Maybe she's just with him because PDA turns her on? Or maybe it's just something to do? Either way, he's not important to her. He protects himself from being hurt by her though when he says "Tonight I don't mind/ Because I never wondered how the girl feels." By purposely avoiding the topic of their relationship, he avoids letting her know how much he loves her, therefore avoiding being visibly hurt by her. He's enjoying every little bit of time with her before it inevitably ends.
No, you're not the only one who thinks that haha xD It's clearly related to No You Girls, like an alternative version or something I really like it too, and its sounds are quite relaxing too :)
shouldn't the lyrics read "in the alleyway by jakies"
In scotland, jakies are like chavs that hang out in alleyways. You get the picture :)
i have to say i just listened to the whole album and was feeling a bit disappointed till i came across "no you girls", then "live alone" (my favorite). i really like what they did with "katherine kiss me", as a matter of fact while i listened to "no you girls" i did think "well we'll never know how the girl feels either". it was nice to see that in the end we agreed.