Quoth Erin Lynn <badger@nwlink.com>:

This is about a girl who breaks up with her boyfreind and, despite how he says she can't live without him, does. Not only does she completely erase him from her life, she wouldn't particularly mind seeing him dead.

Quoth Creede Lambard <creede@eskimo.com>:

I can't possibly be the only person who noticed that "Twisting" is itself a play on words -- the beat and arrangement of the song fit the profile of a twist (you know, Chubby Checker, Peppermint Lounge and like that), but the twisting the song refers to isn't near as pleasant.

Quoth Andrew W Puckett <puck@tmbg.org>:

Anyway, I just played the song and this sent me hurtling off into a totally new dimension where Twisting actually makes sense to me! At first I just figured that the guy in this relationship had actually hung himself, and that the girl was closing up the loose ends in his life, like turning off his pilot light, setting his goldfish, etc. She couldn't bring herself to look through all of his old things to find her db's records or Young Fresh Fellows tape, so she doesn't need them. But then I realized that it is probably just a metaphor, as is all of Their stuff. The relationship is over, and she's mad at him so she blows out the pilot light, sets the goldfish free, etc. (BTW, I've always thought it was a cruel ex, but it gets better.) In fact, she's so mad that she wants to see him dead, hanging by his neck. And now I've got this amazing mental video for the whole song! Every time John is singing about what the girl is doing, they show her doing those things, or something, but then right before he sings "Slowly twisting..." there's this drum crescendo and then a sudden serenity, and I see the explosion at the end of the crescendo as a visual of the instant that his neck snaps in the noose. Then, amid all of that happy music, you see this guy's body swinging on a rope, with a slow twist, with a big blue sky in the background. Sort of a Western motif, in fact, with gallows. It fits so well with Their tendency to put sad stories on top of happy music, in fact, that I can't imagine that their mental pix were any different than mine. Anyway, that is all. As you were.