This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
Sinking through dark black holes
It's never gonna end
Open gash in my rib cage
It's never gonna mend
Take another picture of the wall
Sinking deeper every time I fall
Each day ends quicker
And my mind gets slower too
As my life just fades away
I wouldn't have a clue
Take another draw out from the shelf
I'm too weak to do it by myself
Though you had the world at your feet
You could see it I was blind
Had the perfect job called life
You didn't like it you resigned
Brain's a square of grass
Growing on petrol and chlorine
On petrol and chlorine
You know just what I mean
It's never gonna end
Open gash in my rib cage
It's never gonna mend
Take another picture of the wall
Sinking deeper every time I fall
Each day ends quicker
And my mind gets slower too
As my life just fades away
I wouldn't have a clue
Take another draw out from the shelf
I'm too weak to do it by myself
Though you had the world at your feet
You could see it I was blind
Had the perfect job called life
You didn't like it you resigned
Brain's a square of grass
Growing on petrol and chlorine
On petrol and chlorine
You know just what I mean
Lyrics submitted by awake&dreaming, edited by UniQueLyEviL
Petrol & Chlorine Lyrics as written by Daniel Johns
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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The Night We Met
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“I overthink and have trouble sleepin’ / All purpose gone and don’t have a reason / And there’s no doctor to stop this bleedin’ / So I left home and jumped in the deep end,” Ed Sheeran sings in verse one. He continues by adding that this person is feeling the weight of having disappointed his father and doesn’t have any friends to rely on in this difficult moment. In the second verse, Ed sings about the role of grief in his friend’s plight and his dwindling faith in prayer. “Saturday night is givin’ me a reason to rely on the strobe lights / The lifeline of a promise in a shot glass, and I’ll take that / If you’re givin’ out love from a plastic bag,” Ed sings on the chorus, as his friend turns to new vices in hopes of feeling better.
I think it's about suicide
the
"had the perfect job called life you didn't like it you resigned"
makes it sound like suicide. the person resigned from life, and perhaps chemicals were involved. or maybe the person didnt kill themselves, maybe they just messed up their life with chemicals, like drugs and stuff....
and perhaps the lead singer, daniel, can't stand to see a picture in which the person who "resigned" is in, so takes it down, and is just feeling really low and depressed.
I just noticed I said pretty much what "in red weather" said...sorry about that, i should read what other people have attributed before i say something.
i think with the "take another picture off the wall" is about memories that keep him alive and slowly he is to sad and he keeps taking away reasons for him to live
This song is about someone close to Daniel killing themself. My father killed himself and this song really spoke to me and hit close to home. The Indian guitar is very melodic. This is one of the most underrated Silverchair songs.
@Grohlage i’m so sorry.
i agree. its VERY underrated. its deffinatly a song about numbness and apathy. maybe the "resigned bit" isnt resigning from life itself. but more resigning from the emotion of life, the things that make it worth living. .. i dunnnooo..
take another draw out from the shelf i'm too weak to do it by myself
this line really relates to me as im too weak to take another draw out from the shelf myself
I agree with most of you, but all I can say is that this is one of my fav ones, the hindu sounds and all that... just awesome!
This is another depressing one. I guess it's about how you're apathetic and numb, like; "why take another picture of the wall, while ur silently staring into it", sinking through deep black voids of depression, feeling that seconds, minutes, hours, days just melt together and fades away into a nothingness and your just sinking headlong down deeper and can't do nothing about it. And I like the indian instrument in the song....
Anyone know what he means with Petrol and Chlorine? Is it that Chlorine and Petrolium produces dioxins that are dangerous for the environment and causes cancer, and that brain is a pure square of grass, and therefore growing on crap and such? Does anyone know? thank you...
I think in this song he's mourning the loss of a friend who killed themselves, possibly by inhaling petrol, or drowning in a pool (chlorine), somehow abusing his body in some way...and daniel can't seem to pick himself up after his friend's death...so he sinks into depression.
Combining two ideas that said Daniel referred to the song's meaning. I can see it being about someone who doesn't believe in them self and considers suicide as a way out.