Road to Joy

This song is meant to cite all that Oberst sees wrong with Americans in general. It's his take on the American dream and the road that most Americans take to receive "joy." We (Americans) avoid the things that we should be addressing like wars and our faulty leadership, yet we preoccupy ourselves with work, irrational spending, drugs, religion and failed relationships. He focuses in a lot on war specifically. We can do so much to avoid these wars but our current administration would rather just engage in a war even when history not only provides a way to get avoid war (communication/telephone) and pictures (camera lens) of the destruction (machine guns) war can cause to mankind. The last stanza is a synopsis of the typical American life. "I could've been..." He could have put anything there. He decided to put singer because he could relate to it more personally. But what he's trying to say is that we choose the road of apathy and indifference when it comes to things that matter most and raise hell (make some noise) about issues that are not even close to what we should be focusing in on.

By the way, this is my favorite BE song. He couldn't be more right on and this is a perfect example of the Delillo influences in Oberst coming through.

For the record, jvenrick made the following grammatical errors in his post: -He missed a semicolon before however. -He missed a comma after Bright Eyes. -He missed a space between "at" and "least." -"whom of which" makes no sense at all. It should've been "who are capable."

I don't mind people correcting others' grammar, as long as they do it well. It's still a bit aggravating, though.

Such a good song. He's only played it live but it has the great lines "I have my drugs I have my woman they keep away my loneliness My parents, they have their religions But sleep in seperate houses" Sooooo brilliant And at the end of the song they always rock out like crazy. I'ts fucking amazing!!

Road to Joy, thanks for your idiotic, anti-intellectual sentiments. With your guidance, American will run itself headfirst into a cesspool of "stupid" in no time at all.

My favourite part of this song is: "No one ever plans to sleep out in the gutter Sometimes that's just the most comfortable place" ... To me that reminds me of being drunk. Like, so drunk that you can't be bothered moving somewhere else, and you're perfectly happy staying there. And then take the human race - we could do so much better as people, but we just can't be bothered, so we're just staying where we are. [I really hope that makes sense, lol.]

And for the rest of the song I totally agree with 'snortingmercury'.

Flowers sleeping in their beds; beautiful or well respected people living high, but true happiness is not found here, according to conor, and i believe him. What i got from this song is that true happiness is not found with money or having the best things. There is no point fighting over nothing, happiness can be found by the poorest or most 'failured' people. conor gets attacked for his voice quite alot, and this sneaks into this song. All in all, who cares what people think, just fuck it up! haha :)

I recently saw Bright Eyes perform, and before playing this song, Connor said "This song is kind of a kumbayah, make love not war. It's also about bring smart and not joining senseless stupidity"

This is one of my favorite songs.

"I have my drugs, I have my women They keep away my loneliness My parents, they have their religions But sleep in seperate houses"

To me, this is him saying that while his methods of self medication (drugs and women) may be frowned upon, they seem to be working for him better then the methods his parents, or anyone else for that matter, chose, which was religion.

This song is so brilliant.

This is definitely my favorite Bright Eyes song. I saw it played live at the Vote for Change concert and I was like "Wow." It's amazing because it REALLY showcases Conor's voice and feelings about politics and life in general. The end line scandalilzed my mother and I couldn't stop laughing!

The first time I heard this song was in 2002. He played it in our little venue in Omaha during a protest show against the war.

i love how the music is based on ode to joy, my favorite classical song. Its one of my many favorites.