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"
Decided
To sneak off away
From your stomach
And try your pulse
And captured
What seemed all
Unknowing and candid
But they suspected
It was false
She's playful
The boring would
Warn you be careful
Of her brigade
In order to tame
This relentless marauder
Move away from the parade
And she was walking on the tables
In the glass house
Endearingly bedraggled in the wind
Subtle in her method of seduction
The twenty little tragedies begin
And she would throw
A feather boa in the road
If she thought
That it would set the scene
Unfittingly dipped
Into your companions
Enlighten them to make you see
And there's affection to rent
The age of the understatement
Before the attraction ferments
Kiss me properly and pull me apart
Affection to rent
The age of the understatement
Before this attraction ferments
Kiss me properly and pull me apart
And my fingers scratch at my hair
Before my mind can get too reckless
The idea of seeing you here
Is enough to make the sweat grow cold
To sneak off away
From your stomach
And try your pulse
And captured
What seemed all
Unknowing and candid
But they suspected
It was false
She's playful
The boring would
Warn you be careful
Of her brigade
In order to tame
This relentless marauder
Move away from the parade
And she was walking on the tables
In the glass house
Endearingly bedraggled in the wind
Subtle in her method of seduction
The twenty little tragedies begin
And she would throw
A feather boa in the road
If she thought
That it would set the scene
Unfittingly dipped
Into your companions
Enlighten them to make you see
And there's affection to rent
The age of the understatement
Before the attraction ferments
Kiss me properly and pull me apart
Affection to rent
The age of the understatement
Before this attraction ferments
Kiss me properly and pull me apart
And my fingers scratch at my hair
Before my mind can get too reckless
The idea of seeing you here
Is enough to make the sweat grow cold
Lyrics submitted by indiebopper
The Age Of The Understatement Lyrics as written by Miles Kane Alex Turner
Lyrics © CONCORD MUSIC PUBLISHING LLC, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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To be honest it really isn't as much about the lyrics as the sound of the words with the strings and the choral type parts.
I think the kind of chorus part could be about the way, in our current society, it's all about the sex and not really feeling. There's this trend of not really feeling intensely, it's all about the understatement.
This girl is a bit of a maneater but she does not really care about any of them, while the guy tries to genuinely attract her by being apathetic, 'stepping away from the parade' when really all this guy wants is for her to 'kiss [him] properly' so that he can fall apart. He’s itching to show how he’s attracted to her but knows that if he did he’d lose her like all the others.
Or at least those are my initial thoughts. I’ll probably change my mind by tomorrow =)