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.
Oh that summer with you
I clearly remember
We swimming off the Serbian coast
And you reread and you reread hard times
After the way it ended
I was bloody and bruised
I needed to find out why you cut me off
And left me for dead in Javeria
Hard times
So I lost a year
On that shaky pier
To find an answer
I searched every sentence
And ended deeper still
In hard times
I clearly remember
We swimming off the Serbian coast
And you reread and you reread hard times
After the way it ended
I was bloody and bruised
I needed to find out why you cut me off
And left me for dead in Javeria
Hard times
So I lost a year
On that shaky pier
To find an answer
I searched every sentence
And ended deeper still
In hard times
Lyrics submitted by skellybelly
Hard Times Lyrics as written by John Vanderslice
Lyrics © SC PUBLISHING DBA SECRETLY CANADIAN PUB.
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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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:
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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.
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The lyric is "And you re-read, and you re-read." As this song is making reference to the novel by Charles Dickens (I have not read said novel.) And so it would seem that the love interest of the protagonist was obsessed with this novel leading up to her leaving without any explanation. In order to understand why his love interest would leave him stranded in this manner he gets a copy of the novel and reads it only to 'end up deeper still, In Hard Times.' Which is a clever double entendre. He spends a year searching every sentence of this novel trying to understand her and then becomes her without realizing. So she too was mourning a loss when they were together and was searching for solace in the novel. At least I would make that assumption. There was not much to get out of the content of the novel, it was a total red hearing that led him on because he thought that the separation was a person a front to him- a stance which I can relate very deeply too.