a query
Oh, I haven’t gone anywhere; in fact, I’ve been hibernating this winter in the warmth of the bassline from “Massive Nights.” While I’ve been here, I’ve been wondering what one Hold Steady lyric people are most struck by. It doesn’t need to be a favorite or one that you identify with – just the one that strikes you every time.
Leave me a comment, send me an email, I want to know and then I want to ruminate on it. I know only a few people read this, and half as sporadically as I post, but I have confidence in your abilities to touch upon the overlooked.
365 days with the hold steady 
“It started recreational.
It ended kinda medical.
It came on hot and soft and then it tightened up its tentacles.
And the band played “Screaming for Vengeance” and we agreed,
This world is mostly manacled.
It started ice cream social nice.
And it ended up all white and ecumenical.”
-Hot Soft Light.
I have spent many times trying to figured out what the “it” is in this song. Ambiguity is not often found in most Hold Steady songs, but this verse has a boatload of different meanings whenever I hear it. I once used it in a World Lit paper to describe the effects of romantic love in Virgil’s Aeneid; now my World Lit prof is a huge fan. A close second is “”Cause tramps like us & we like tramps.” from Charlemagne in Sweatpants.