The song lyrics were written by the band Van Halen, as they were asked to write a song for the 1979 movie "Over the Edge" starring Matt Dillon. The movie (and the lyrics, although more obliquely) are about bored, rebellious youth with nothing better to do than get into trouble. If you see the movie, these lyrics will make more sense. It's a great movie if you grew up in the 70s/80s you'll definitely remember some of these characters from your own life. Fun fact, after writing the song, Van Halen decided not to let the movie use it.
Remember when you were the hunted
Remember when I swallowed you in
Remember the rewards shimmering on the floor
Off the plastic chandelier
Remember when I saw you in orbit
Remember when I pulled you back in
Remember looking on blinking into the dawn
Thinking how this will never end
Surrounded
Let's romanticize
Our beloved memories
Surrounded
Let's demonize
Our soft injuries
Surrounded
Can we get behind
Distortion and liberties
Surrounded
We're surrounded or spiraling
Remember when I played assassin
Remember when my joking turned grim
Remember how we thought if we followed the dots
It would stop all the accidents
Remember when you broke my halo
Remember when I tied your wings in
Remember how we slipped on the lies we equipped
Just to bring back the goods again
Surrounded
Let's romanticize
Our beloved memories
Surrounded
Let's demonize
Our soft injuries
Surrounded
Can we get behind
Distortion and liberties
Surrounded
We're surrounded or spiraling
Is it perfect in our little Hell
Are you dancing or stumbling beside me
Well this might not be
We'll just wait and see
So now that we've stopped hearing echoes
And now that the replay wore thin
Just remember who held you
Remember who held you
Remember who held you
Remember who held you
Remember who held you
Surrounded
Let's romanticize
Our beloved memories
Surrounded
Let's demonize
Our soft injuries
Surrounded
Can we get behind
Distortion and liberties
Surrounded
We're surrounded or spiraling
Is it perfect in our little Hell
Remember when I swallowed you in
Remember the rewards shimmering on the floor
Off the plastic chandelier
Remember when I saw you in orbit
Remember when I pulled you back in
Remember looking on blinking into the dawn
Thinking how this will never end
Surrounded
Let's romanticize
Our beloved memories
Surrounded
Let's demonize
Our soft injuries
Surrounded
Can we get behind
Distortion and liberties
Surrounded
We're surrounded or spiraling
Remember when I played assassin
Remember when my joking turned grim
Remember how we thought if we followed the dots
It would stop all the accidents
Remember when you broke my halo
Remember when I tied your wings in
Remember how we slipped on the lies we equipped
Just to bring back the goods again
Surrounded
Let's romanticize
Our beloved memories
Surrounded
Let's demonize
Our soft injuries
Surrounded
Can we get behind
Distortion and liberties
Surrounded
We're surrounded or spiraling
Is it perfect in our little Hell
Are you dancing or stumbling beside me
Well this might not be
We'll just wait and see
So now that we've stopped hearing echoes
And now that the replay wore thin
Just remember who held you
Remember who held you
Remember who held you
Remember who held you
Remember who held you
Surrounded
Let's romanticize
Our beloved memories
Surrounded
Let's demonize
Our soft injuries
Surrounded
Can we get behind
Distortion and liberties
Surrounded
We're surrounded or spiraling
Is it perfect in our little Hell
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More Featured Meanings
Light Up The Sky
Van Halen
Van Halen
The Night We Met
Lord Huron
Lord Huron
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"
Mountain Song
Jane's Addiction
Jane's Addiction
Jane's Addiction vocalist Perry Farrell gives Adam Reader some heartfelt insight into Jane’s Addiction's hard rock manifesto "Mountain Song", which was the second single from their revolutionary album Nothing's Shocking. Mountain song was first recorded in 1986 and appeared on the soundtrack to the film Dudes starring Jon Cryer. The version on Nothing's Shocking was re-recorded in 1988.
"'Mountain Song' was actually about... I hate to say it but... drugs. Climbing this mountain and getting as high as you can, and then coming down that mountain," reveals Farrell. "What it feels to descend from the mountain top... not easy at all. The ascension is tough but exhilarating. Getting down is... it's a real bummer. Drugs is not for everybody obviously. For me, I wanted to experience the heights, and the lows come along with it."
"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."
No Surprises
Radiohead
Radiohead
Same ideas expressed in Fitter, Happier are expressed in this song. We're told to strive for some sort of ideal life, which includes getting a good job, being kind to everyone, finding a partner, getting married, having a couple kids, living in a quiet neighborhood in a nice big house, etc. But in Fitter, Happier the narrator(?) realizes that it's incredibly robotic to live this life. People are being used by those in power "like a pig in a cage on antibiotics"--being pacified with things like new phones and cool gadgets and houses while being sucked dry. On No Surprises, the narrator is realizing how this life is killing him slowly. In the video, his helmet is slowly filling up with water, drowning him. But he's so complacent with it. This is a good summary of the song. This boring, "perfect" life foisted upon us by some higher powers (not spiritual, but political, economic, etc. politicians and businessmen, perhaps) is not the way to live. But there is seemingly no way out but death. He'd rather die peacefully right now than live in this cage. While our lives are often shielded, we're in our own protective bubbles, or protective helmets like the one Thom wears, if we look a little harder we can see all the corruption, lies, manipulation, etc. that is going on in the world, often run by huge yet nearly invisible organizations, corporations, and 'leaders'. It's a very hopeless song because it reflects real life.
Head > Heels
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
“Head > Heels” is a track that aims to capture what it feels like to experience romance that exceeds expectations. Ed Sheeran dedicates his album outro to a lover who has blessed him with a unique experience that he seeks to describe through the song’s nuanced lyrics.
The verses are about a romanticized (in the sense of "made larger than life") version of a relationship. The chorus refers to exaggerating the good times and covering up the bad, whitewashing over a more realistic memory of their past together with "distortion" and taking "liberties" with their time together.
The one thing I really don't have a handle on with this song - and it bugs me because it's the title, which is a testament to its importance in the theme of the song - is the relationship between being surrounded and spiraling.
Being surrounded indicates being trapped in one spot due to outside forces.
Spiraling seems more like a self-directed path to an inevitable center point - usually, as someone else mentioned, a downward spiral, as if the end result is undesirable.
It doesn't seem like either of them is something you'd want to be... both indicate a type of being trapped. So what's the important distinction between the two? Others surrounding you and boxing you in vs. spiraling out of control, doing it to yourselves?
So then they're stuck in this idealized relationship, that they want to think is "perfect," even though it might just be "our little hell." Maybe if they're not actually surrounded/trapped in the relationship, if it's really not working out and they're just spiraling toward a more and more broken relationship, they need to come clean with themselves about how unhappy they are?
The surrounded/spiraling imagery is so vague and not directly related to anything else in the song, so it's harder to get a handle on.
"The one thing I really don't have a handle on with this song - and it bugs me because it's the title, which is a testament to its importance in the theme of the song - is the relationship between being surrounded and spiraling."<br /> <br /> Now, I come to think that 'surrounded' would mean being surrounded by the nostalgia that he has of the loved one, and 'spiraling', as in he's sinking into the nostalgia at a high rate.