What does My Rival mean?

Steely Dan: My Rival Meaning

Tagged:   No tags, suggest one.
Album cover for My Rival album cover

My Rival Lyrics

We don't currently have the lyrics for My Rival, Care to share them?

  1. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Mar 15th 2023 !⃝

    Dad is coming to terms with sharing his affection for a child (holding your tiny hand in mine) with a stepdad, or perhaps that child's biological father. ("Milk truck easing into my space" is a play on the idea of a wife sleeping with the milkman.)

    Begins with the cliche of a hardened criminal ("scar across his face"), which then becomes an image of an ineffectual person: "he wears a hearing aid" = he's just a guy.

    The idea of 'rivalry' is melodramatic.

  2. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Jun 8th 2019 !⃝

    A cuckold, aware that his wife is cheating on him, is determined to find out as much as he can about her lover. He lurks in his own neighborhood and watches the traffic on his street. He hires a detective to get pictures, which discloses that his wife's lover is not exactly Adonis. He remembers the love he and his wife originally had together, and feels betrayed. He plans to beat the fellow up real soon now.

    I've always felt that the clever use of the lyric "I'll match him whim for whim now" Is a clever play on the stereotype threat one would expect at this point, "I'll tear him limb from limb now."


More Steely Dan songs »


 


Latest Articles

 


Submit Your Interpretation

[ want a different song? ]




Just Posted

All The Good Girls Go To Hell anonymous
Wingriddenangel anonymous
This Woman's Work anonymous
Action! Not Words anonymous
Everybody Loves Me, Baby anonymous
Fall in to Sleep anonymous
Lemon Boy anonymous
Drama Club anonymous
Gravity anonymous
Our First Time anonymous
Nymphetamine anonymous
Liquid Smooth anonymous
Teddy Bear anonymous
New Divide anonymous
BOP anonymous

(We won't give out your email)