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"
God dammit Amy, we're not kids any more.
You can't just keep waltzing out of my life,
Leaving clothes on my bedroom floor,
Like nothing really matters, like pain doesn't hurt.
You should be more to me by now than just heartbreak in a short skirt.
You kind of remind me of scars on my arms that I made when I was a kid,
With a disassembled disposable razor I stole from my dad,
When I thought that suffering was something profound,
That weighed down on wise heads,
And not just something to be avoided,
Something normal people dread.
God dammit Amy, well of course I've changed.
With all the things I've done and the places I've been
I'd be a machine if I had stayed the same.
But you're still back where we started, you haven't changed at all.
You're still trying to live like a kid, like you can always have it all.
You know you kind of remind me of scars on my arms that I hid as best I could,
That I covered with ink, but in the right kind of light they still bleed through,
Showing that there are some things I just can't change no matter what I do:
The tell-tale signs of being used,
Of being trapped inside of you.
You're a beautiful butterfly
Burned with a branding iron
Onto my outsides into my insides
As a simple sign:
To show off your ownership.
Burned into my naked skin,
Onto my outsides into my insides.
It's not even love any more,
It's just a claim upon my soul.
It stains my skin, yeah it's on my breath,
And I'm ashamed to get undressed
In front of strangers in case they see
The tell tale signs that you have left all over me.
God dammit Amy.
You'll always remind me of scars on my arms that I know will never fade.
And it's not like it's something I think about each and every day -
I just occasionally catch myself scratching them, as if they'd ever go away.
But these tell tale signs are here to stay, and in the end you know that's OK.
You will always be a part of my patched-up patchwork taped-up tape-deck heart.
You can't just keep waltzing out of my life,
Leaving clothes on my bedroom floor,
Like nothing really matters, like pain doesn't hurt.
You should be more to me by now than just heartbreak in a short skirt.
You kind of remind me of scars on my arms that I made when I was a kid,
With a disassembled disposable razor I stole from my dad,
When I thought that suffering was something profound,
That weighed down on wise heads,
And not just something to be avoided,
Something normal people dread.
God dammit Amy, well of course I've changed.
With all the things I've done and the places I've been
I'd be a machine if I had stayed the same.
But you're still back where we started, you haven't changed at all.
You're still trying to live like a kid, like you can always have it all.
You know you kind of remind me of scars on my arms that I hid as best I could,
That I covered with ink, but in the right kind of light they still bleed through,
Showing that there are some things I just can't change no matter what I do:
The tell-tale signs of being used,
Of being trapped inside of you.
You're a beautiful butterfly
Burned with a branding iron
Onto my outsides into my insides
As a simple sign:
To show off your ownership.
Burned into my naked skin,
Onto my outsides into my insides.
It's not even love any more,
It's just a claim upon my soul.
It stains my skin, yeah it's on my breath,
And I'm ashamed to get undressed
In front of strangers in case they see
The tell tale signs that you have left all over me.
God dammit Amy.
You'll always remind me of scars on my arms that I know will never fade.
And it's not like it's something I think about each and every day -
I just occasionally catch myself scratching them, as if they'd ever go away.
But these tell tale signs are here to stay, and in the end you know that's OK.
You will always be a part of my patched-up patchwork taped-up tape-deck heart.
Lyrics submitted by SoBrokenHearted
Tell Tale Signs Lyrics as written by Frank Turner
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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How does this song not have any comments? It's my favourite track on Tape Deck Heart <3
Totally agree, this is by far my favourite song right now. It's so poetically beautiful and I guess fairly self descriptive, although there should be more discussion about it for sure.
heartbreaking. it's such an intimate song, i kinda choked when i first heard it