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"
I find the map and draw a straight line
Over rivers, farms, and state lines
The distance from 'here' to where you'd be
It's only finger-lengths that I see
I touch the place where I'd find your face
My fingers in creases of distant dark places
I hang my coat up in the first bar
There is no peace that I've found so far
The laughter penetrates my silence
As drunken men find flaws in science
Their words mostly noises
Ghosts with just voices
Your words in my memory
Are like music to me
I'm miles from where you are
I lay down on the cold ground
And I pray that something picks me up
And sets me down in your warm arms
After I have traveled so far
We'd set the fire to the third bar
We'd share each other like an island
Until exhausted, close our eyelids
And dreaming, pick up from
The last place we left off
Your soft skin is weeping
A joy you can't keep in
I'm miles from where you are
I lay down on the cold ground
And I pray that something picks me up
And sets me down in your warm arms
I'm miles from where you are
I lay down on the cold ground
And I pray that something picks me up
And sets me down in your warm arms
Over rivers, farms, and state lines
The distance from 'here' to where you'd be
It's only finger-lengths that I see
I touch the place where I'd find your face
My fingers in creases of distant dark places
I hang my coat up in the first bar
There is no peace that I've found so far
The laughter penetrates my silence
As drunken men find flaws in science
Their words mostly noises
Ghosts with just voices
Your words in my memory
Are like music to me
I'm miles from where you are
I lay down on the cold ground
And I pray that something picks me up
And sets me down in your warm arms
After I have traveled so far
We'd set the fire to the third bar
We'd share each other like an island
Until exhausted, close our eyelids
And dreaming, pick up from
The last place we left off
Your soft skin is weeping
A joy you can't keep in
I'm miles from where you are
I lay down on the cold ground
And I pray that something picks me up
And sets me down in your warm arms
I'm miles from where you are
I lay down on the cold ground
And I pray that something picks me up
And sets me down in your warm arms
Lyrics submitted by blinxbcr, edited by TokyoKitten
Set the Fire to the Third Bar Lyrics as written by Gary Lightbody Nathan Connolly
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
Add your thoughts
Log in now to tell us what you think this song means.
Don’t have an account? Create an account with SongMeanings to post comments, submit lyrics, and more. It’s super easy, we promise!
More Featured Meanings
The Night We Met
Lord Huron
Lord Huron
Mental Istid
Ebba Grön
Ebba Grön
This is one of my favorite songs. https://fnfgo.io
Dreamwalker
Silent Planet
Silent Planet
I think much like another song “Anti-Matter” (that's also on the same album as this song), this one is also is inspired by a horrifying van crash the band experienced on Nov 3, 2022. This, much like the other track, sounds like it's an extension what they shared while huddled in the wreckage, as they helped frontman Garrett Russell stem the bleeding from his head wound while he was under the temporary effects of a concussion. The track speaks of where the mind goes at the most desperate & desolate of times, when it just about slips away to all but disconnect itself, and the aftermath.
Gentle Hour
Yo La Tengo
Yo La Tengo
This song was originally written by a guy called Peter Gutteridge. He was one of the founders of the "Dunedin Sound" a musical scene in the south of New Zealand in the early 80s. From there it was covered by "The Clean" one of the early bands of that scene (he had originally been a member of in it's early days, writing a couple of their best early songs). The Dunedin sound, and the Clean became popular on american college radio in the mid to late 80s. I guess Yo La Tengo heard that version.
Great version of a great song,
When We Were Young
Blink-182
Blink-182
This is a sequel to 2001's "Reckless Abandon", and features the band looking back on their clumsy youth fondly.
When this song closes, I still sense a deep yearning so I don't believe that the two lovers are reunited. Everything makes sense as written until the second half.
"After I have traveled so far"
I agree that the lyrics are looking forward, the two lovers haven't been reunited yet.
"We'd set the fire to the third bar"
Is not a literal fire but is saying that nothing else would matter once they find each other. The search would be over. The fire as an image is important because the heat of a fire is in contrast to the cold he is enduring to reach his love.
"We'd share each other like an island Until exhausted, close our eyelids And dreaming pick up from The last place we left off"
This reinforces that nothing else in the world matters but reaching her and being with her. The island image is brilliant. Note that an island is another warm image.
"Your soft skin is weeping A joy you can't keep it"
This is where I'm lost... "skin is weeping" could mean sweating (which again suggests warmth) but I don't understand "a joy you can't keep it." I wonder if she's dead or otherwise gone to him forever and his journey to find her will never end. Either that, or even if they find one another they can't stay together and he will be forced to return home but I feel like it's the former.
I watched a recording of a live performance of this and both Lightbody and Wainwright sing with such passion. Lightbody is shaking when he sings. So haunting and beautiful, tinged with desperation and yearning.
Not related to the meaning, but here is info from Snow Patrol's MySpace page: "Lightbody wrote the song towards the end of the album sessions and thought it would fit Wainwrights voice perfectly. By chance she was touring Ireland at the time. "Im not a great believer in fate." Says Lightbody. "But when someone called to say "Shes here, in this country and she wants to sing it, that was definitely "a moment."
i think it's suppose to be "a joy you can't keep in" like, the passion and "fire" is so great that her skin is weeping(sweating) from the heat...and it's too bad that you can't contain it.