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"
There are many things to talk about
Be constructive
There are weapons we can use
Be constructive with your blues
Even when it's only warnings
Even when you talk the war games
Oh why don't you quiet down? (maybe I want peace and honesty)
Why don't you quiet down?
(Maybe I want to live in the children's land and you know maybe, maybe I)
Why don't you quiet down?
(Maybe I'll wander the promised land I want peace and honesty)
Why don't you quiet down?
(I want to live in the promised land and maybe wander the children's land)
Quiet down (yeah, and there, there we can free)
You don't live in a business world and
You never go out and you never stay
We won our goals in a liberal world
Living in times when I could stand it, babe
All over, baby's crying
It'll all be, baby, I can see out of here
All over the planet's dead
All over the planet, so let me out of here
All over the, all over the, all over the, all over the
We are the dollars and cents and the pounds and pence (quiet down)
And the mark and the yen, and yeah
We're gonna crack your little souls (why don't you quiet down?)
We're gonna crack your little souls (why don't you quiet down?)
We are the dollars and cents and the pounds and pence (why don't you quiet down?)
And the pounds and pence, and yeah
We're gonna crack your little souls
Crack your little souls
We are the dollars and cents
Be constructive
There are weapons we can use
Be constructive with your blues
Even when it's only warnings
Even when you talk the war games
Oh why don't you quiet down? (maybe I want peace and honesty)
Why don't you quiet down?
(Maybe I want to live in the children's land and you know maybe, maybe I)
Why don't you quiet down?
(Maybe I'll wander the promised land I want peace and honesty)
Why don't you quiet down?
(I want to live in the promised land and maybe wander the children's land)
Quiet down (yeah, and there, there we can free)
You don't live in a business world and
You never go out and you never stay
We won our goals in a liberal world
Living in times when I could stand it, babe
All over, baby's crying
It'll all be, baby, I can see out of here
All over the planet's dead
All over the planet, so let me out of here
All over the, all over the, all over the, all over the
We are the dollars and cents and the pounds and pence (quiet down)
And the mark and the yen, and yeah
We're gonna crack your little souls (why don't you quiet down?)
We're gonna crack your little souls (why don't you quiet down?)
We are the dollars and cents and the pounds and pence (why don't you quiet down?)
And the pounds and pence, and yeah
We're gonna crack your little souls
Crack your little souls
We are the dollars and cents
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I think this song is fairly obvious. It seems to me, that Radiohead is directing this lyric towards the record executives. "Be constructive with your blues, bear witness we can use".
Essentially, he's taking the role of the record companies, who are more interested in squeezing the creative juices out of depressed and screwed up people than they are about the souls of the people who are producing the music for them.
How much great music is created by depressed, upset people, who use music as their outlet? If Jeff Buckley had been a happy-go-lucky kind of guy, his music wouldn't have been as recognized as it was.