What You Really Mean

Album: We Can Do Anything (2016)
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Songfacts®:

  • This was written back in the 1980s by Cynthia Gayneau, the sister of Violent Femmes frontman Gordon Gano. He told Q magazine: "She wrote it, recorded it at least 30 years ago, and at one time I tried to get somebody to record it without any success. And then I thought, why don't I do it? And it's one of my favorite songs on the whole album, maybe my favorite one. I think it's the most beautiful-sounding thing that we've ever done in Violent Femmes."

    Gano added: "I think I missed the emphasis of the end where it flips it around and the narrator is saying that you'll see what I really mean. I didn't emphasize that enough in how I sang it and how we arranged it."

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