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"
Up on the toe
There is a view
Up on the toe
And the spine
Straight and erect
Hungry and curious
Up on the toe
Looking forward to
The air is thinner here
She came here
To lose face
Got down on her knees
The beast is back
On four legs
Set her clock to the moon
Raises her spine
Vertebrae by vertebrae
Up on the toe
Looking
I have been filled with steam for months, for years
Same old cloud, claustrophobic me
Let it burst like old train sounds
Make them leave me nature
Vertebrae by vertebrae by vertebrae
My arms ooze out of my shoulders
And the arms ooze out of my shoulders
I curl my tail inwards, inwards
I set my clock on the moon
Vertebrae by vertebrae
Please release this pressure of me
Please release this pressure of me
Please release this pressure of me
Please
Let off some steam
There is a view
Up on the toe
And the spine
Straight and erect
Hungry and curious
Up on the toe
Looking forward to
The air is thinner here
She came here
To lose face
Got down on her knees
The beast is back
On four legs
Set her clock to the moon
Raises her spine
Vertebrae by vertebrae
Up on the toe
Looking
I have been filled with steam for months, for years
Same old cloud, claustrophobic me
Let it burst like old train sounds
Make them leave me nature
Vertebrae by vertebrae by vertebrae
My arms ooze out of my shoulders
And the arms ooze out of my shoulders
I curl my tail inwards, inwards
I set my clock on the moon
Vertebrae by vertebrae
Please release this pressure of me
Please release this pressure of me
Please release this pressure of me
Please
Let off some steam
Lyrics submitted by Nitrofurantoina
Vertebrae By Vertebrae Lyrics as written by Bjork Gudmundsdottir
Lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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I am a firm believer that the best songs are the ones that you don't always like at first. Once I got to listening to this one though, the intensity with which she sings it made me love it.
It seems to me like an emotional cataclysm leading to the revelations in "pneumonia." I think it's about a woman (possibly autobiographical) who, filled with emotions and turmoil, has gone to a place where she can be alone (to me, it seems to suggest some kind of mountain or cliff) and try to release these feelings which have snowballed inside her and built up like steam in a tea pot. Perhaps the "beast" alluded to is her inner chaos which is trying to get out. "vertebrae by vertebrae" seems to make sense with the song because it frequently refers to standing tall to look forward (perhaps metaphorically, attempting to see how there can be a future with all of these feelings exerting so much pressure on her). Notice how the song has no lyrical or musical resolution in the end. I think that that fact, the rain beginning on track 6, and the similar instrumentation insinuates that this song and pneumonia were meant to be taken as a set. Perhaps pneumonia was meant to be advice for the character in "Vertebrae by Vertebrae." That seems plausible, at least to me.