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"
If I could be the man you idolize and sensualize the wisdom of the hunt
capture penalize free-thinking making basing
all who run the world and glamorize the business you can see I would be less
the man the stand I take and further all who seek the
twisted ethic live the ways and means of daring profit-sharing with the meek
free to think of me uncaring in the race of money
making climbing taking chances cancel those who gamble ramble on
about achieving still believing they can make it...
I cannot reach you caught between
The love you hate, the hate you need
‘Cause all your life you've traded me
The freedom for your amnesty
The lock and key that keeps you tied to me
The days you live and breathe
The "might have been" that you pretend
So you can cash our past in...
Now I stumble slowly forward through the twisted ethic
bore you with the details of the me inept but free to push the morals fact
debris of scattered ashes you believe after the fashion
now I see you for what you came to be in person fact and fiction
evolution self-exertion charm them into your submission
make them tow the line to the letter better now than later how we stand
and take it is the measure of the better man than he who claims to be
the thinker blinks to find his fame is never free...
I cannot reach you caught between
The love you hate, the hate you need
‘Cause all your life you've traded me
The freedom for your amnesty
The lock and key that keeps you tied to me
The days you live and breathe
The "might have been" that you pretend
So you can cash our past in...
Now I see a life of more than beautiful
Where I can be the everything you hide...
I cannot reach you caught between
The love you hate, the hate you need
‘Cause all your life you've traded me
The freedom for your pride...
I cannot reach you caught between
The love you hate, the hate you need
‘Cause all your life you've traded me
The freedom for your amnesty
The lock and key that keeps you tied to me
The days you live and breathe
The "might have been" that you pretend
So you can cash our past in...
capture penalize free-thinking making basing
all who run the world and glamorize the business you can see I would be less
the man the stand I take and further all who seek the
twisted ethic live the ways and means of daring profit-sharing with the meek
free to think of me uncaring in the race of money
making climbing taking chances cancel those who gamble ramble on
about achieving still believing they can make it...
I cannot reach you caught between
The love you hate, the hate you need
‘Cause all your life you've traded me
The freedom for your amnesty
The lock and key that keeps you tied to me
The days you live and breathe
The "might have been" that you pretend
So you can cash our past in...
Now I stumble slowly forward through the twisted ethic
bore you with the details of the me inept but free to push the morals fact
debris of scattered ashes you believe after the fashion
now I see you for what you came to be in person fact and fiction
evolution self-exertion charm them into your submission
make them tow the line to the letter better now than later how we stand
and take it is the measure of the better man than he who claims to be
the thinker blinks to find his fame is never free...
I cannot reach you caught between
The love you hate, the hate you need
‘Cause all your life you've traded me
The freedom for your amnesty
The lock and key that keeps you tied to me
The days you live and breathe
The "might have been" that you pretend
So you can cash our past in...
Now I see a life of more than beautiful
Where I can be the everything you hide...
I cannot reach you caught between
The love you hate, the hate you need
‘Cause all your life you've traded me
The freedom for your pride...
I cannot reach you caught between
The love you hate, the hate you need
‘Cause all your life you've traded me
The freedom for your amnesty
The lock and key that keeps you tied to me
The days you live and breathe
The "might have been" that you pretend
So you can cash our past in...
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The Night We Met
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I don't think it's necessarily about sex. It's about wanting to start the day with some love and affection. Maybe a warm cuddle. I'm not alone in interpreting it that way! For example:
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Page
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
There aren’t many things that’ll hurt more than giving love a chance against your better judgement only to have your heart crushed yet again. Ed Sheeran tells such a story on “Page.” On this track, he is devastated to have lost his lover and even more saddened by the feeling that he may never move on from this.