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"
As if I really didn't understand
That I was just another part of their plan
I went off looking for the promise
Believing in the Motherland
And from the comfort of a dreamer's bed
And the safety of my own head
I went on speaking of the future
While other people fought and bled
The kid I was when I first left home
Was looking for his freedom and a life of his own
But the freedom that he found wasn't quite as sweet
When the truth was known
I have prayed for America
I was made for America
It's in my blood and in my bones
By the dawn's early light
By all I know is right
We're going to reap what we have sown
As if freedom was a question of might
As if loyalty was black and white
You hear people say it all the time-
"My country wrong or right"
I want to know what that's got to do
With what it takes to find out what's true
With everyone from the President on down
Trying to keep it from you
The thing I wonder about the Dads and Moms
Who send their sons to the Vietnams
Will they really think their way of life
Has been protected as the next war comes?
I have prayed for America
I was made for America
Her shining dream plays in my mind
By the rockets red glare
A generation's blank stare
We better wake her up this time
The kid I was when I first left home
Was looking for his freedom and a life of his own
But the freedom that he found wasn't quite as sweet
When the truth was known
I have prayed for America
I was made for America
I can't let go till she comes around
Until the land of the free
Is awake and can see
And until her conscience has been found
That I was just another part of their plan
I went off looking for the promise
Believing in the Motherland
And from the comfort of a dreamer's bed
And the safety of my own head
I went on speaking of the future
While other people fought and bled
The kid I was when I first left home
Was looking for his freedom and a life of his own
But the freedom that he found wasn't quite as sweet
When the truth was known
I have prayed for America
I was made for America
It's in my blood and in my bones
By the dawn's early light
By all I know is right
We're going to reap what we have sown
As if freedom was a question of might
As if loyalty was black and white
You hear people say it all the time-
"My country wrong or right"
I want to know what that's got to do
With what it takes to find out what's true
With everyone from the President on down
Trying to keep it from you
The thing I wonder about the Dads and Moms
Who send their sons to the Vietnams
Will they really think their way of life
Has been protected as the next war comes?
I have prayed for America
I was made for America
Her shining dream plays in my mind
By the rockets red glare
A generation's blank stare
We better wake her up this time
The kid I was when I first left home
Was looking for his freedom and a life of his own
But the freedom that he found wasn't quite as sweet
When the truth was known
I have prayed for America
I was made for America
I can't let go till she comes around
Until the land of the free
Is awake and can see
And until her conscience has been found
Lyrics submitted by seether166
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This is one of my favorite songs. https://fnfgo.io
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"There's a part - 'Cash in now honey, cash in Miss Smith.' Miss Smith is my Mother; our last name was Smith. Cashing in when she cashed in her life. So... she decided that, to her... at that time, she was desperate. Life wasn't worth it for her, that was her opinion. Some people think, never take your life, and some people find that their life isn't worth living. She was in love with my Dad, and my Dad was not faithful to her, and it broke her heart. She was very desperate and she did something that I know she regrets."
Magical
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How would you describe the feeling of being in love? For Ed Sheeran, the word is “Magical.” in HIS three-minute album opener, he makes an attempt to capture the beauty and delicacy of true love with words. He describes the magic of it all over a bright Pop song produced by Aaron Dessner.
Punchline
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Ed Sheeran sings about missing his former partner and learning important life lessons in the process on “Punchline.” This track tells a story of battling to get rid of emotions for a former lover, whom he now realized might not have loved him the same way. He’s now caught between accepting that fact and learning life lessons from it and going back to beg her for another chance.
Although this song was written in the Reagan era, its true relevance could not be clearer in the wake of the invasion of Iraq. "Will they really think their way of life has been protected as the next war comes?" This song is about a guy who loves his country but hates what it has done to the rest of the world. One of Jackson's most direct songs that really delivers a punch.
I've liked this album and song since it was released. Just a few years ago I realized that he must have written this song partly as a response to a song by the Panamanian singer Ruben Blades called "Buscando America." The title translates as "Looking for America." In that song, America refers not to the United States, but to all of Latin America. Maybe he's thinking of the US and Canada too.
Anyway, Buscando America is a fantastic song in which Mr. Blades laments the oppression and corruption which Latin America has suffered from since European conquest. "Living under dictatorships, I search for America but I cannot find her. Her tortured body, who knows where it is." It is an amazing song.
For America was released the year after Buscando America. I know that Jackson and Ruben Blades have appeared together and are friends. Also, For America is on the same album as Lives in the Balance, which explicitly talks about the US's role in Latin American wars and oppression.
I feel sure that Jackson wanted to write about the same topic that Ruben Blades wrote about, but from the perspective of the United States. He lays out the US's role in the suffering and exploitation that takes place in Latin America.
Ruben Blades calls out to all people to seek the truth and bring freedom to all the Americas. "Wrapped in shadows, we deny what is true. Where there is no justice, there cannot be peace.....they have kidnapped America and gagged her mouth. Now it falls to us to bring her to freedom."
It sounds beautiful in Spanish. So I think Jackson is doing his part to bring the truth out of the shadows. So people can be free.
So relevant still, what ideals does the United States stand for now? The platitudes of the national anthem and ideals of the Constitution ring hollow when you see the reality on the ground, "the Vietnams" (plural intended) that destroy so much at the expense of supposed "democracy." Browne wrote as a young man seeing the real gap between the ideals of the US and the reality, and unfortunately that gap just seems to have grown larger in the years since this song was written.