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"
At a party he was waiting
Looking kind of spooky and withdrawn
Like he could be underwater
The mighty mother with her hundred arms swept all aside
I hate to walk behind other people's ambitions
I saw you waiting, saint-like, with your warning:
"Leave alone
You don't belong here"
Got nervous, started whistling, every thought a ricochet
Did you notice? "Well," I wondered
"What's the worst thing I could say?"
Froze up inside
"You remind me of someone's daughter
I forgot her . . . I forgot her name, ashamed"
"Go home, and live with your pain
Leave alone
Leave alone, 'cause you know you don't belong
You don't belong here"
"And when I go, don't you follow
Leave alone
Leave alone, 'cause you know you don't belong
You don't belong here
Slip out quiet, nobody's looking
Leave alone, you don't belong here"
Looking kind of spooky and withdrawn
Like he could be underwater
The mighty mother with her hundred arms swept all aside
I hate to walk behind other people's ambitions
I saw you waiting, saint-like, with your warning:
"Leave alone
You don't belong here"
Got nervous, started whistling, every thought a ricochet
Did you notice? "Well," I wondered
"What's the worst thing I could say?"
Froze up inside
"You remind me of someone's daughter
I forgot her . . . I forgot her name, ashamed"
"Go home, and live with your pain
Leave alone
Leave alone, 'cause you know you don't belong
You don't belong here"
"And when I go, don't you follow
Leave alone
Leave alone, 'cause you know you don't belong
You don't belong here
Slip out quiet, nobody's looking
Leave alone, you don't belong here"
Lyrics submitted by EnjOy IncUbus, edited by Memento22Mori, Mellow_Harsher, Jate
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The Night We Met
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This song was originally written by a guy called Peter Gutteridge. He was one of the founders of the "Dunedin Sound" a musical scene in the south of New Zealand in the early 80s. From there it was covered by "The Clean" one of the early bands of that scene (he had originally been a member of in it's early days, writing a couple of their best early songs). The Dunedin sound, and the Clean became popular on american college radio in the mid to late 80s. I guess Yo La Tengo heard that version.
Great version of a great song,
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This is a sequel to 2001's "Reckless Abandon", and features the band looking back on their clumsy youth fondly.
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Plastic Bag
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“Plastic Bag” is a song about searching for an escape from personal problems and hoping to find it in the lively atmosphere of a Saturday night party. Ed Sheeran tells the story of his friend and the myriad of troubles he is going through. Unable to find any solutions, this friend seeks a last resort in a party and the vanity that comes with it.
“I overthink and have trouble sleepin’ / All purpose gone and don’t have a reason / And there’s no doctor to stop this bleedin’ / So I left home and jumped in the deep end,” Ed Sheeran sings in verse one. He continues by adding that this person is feeling the weight of having disappointed his father and doesn’t have any friends to rely on in this difficult moment. In the second verse, Ed sings about the role of grief in his friend’s plight and his dwindling faith in prayer. “Saturday night is givin’ me a reason to rely on the strobe lights / The lifeline of a promise in a shot glass, and I’ll take that / If you’re givin’ out love from a plastic bag,” Ed sings on the chorus, as his friend turns to new vices in hopes of feeling better.
The chord arrangement reminds me of the kind of song you might hear at a 1950's highschool dance. However, the delicate understated strumming of the guitar combined with the pitch bends in the melody submerges an otherwise pleasant social event into this uncomfortable, disorienting, somewhat nauseating atmosphere. When the ride cymbal starts playing after the first bar with the snare, it sounds alot like the chatter and movement of a crowd of people talking amongst eachother.
At a party he was waiting Looking kind of spooky and withdrawn Like he could be underwater...
If you've ever shown up to a dance, party, or any kind of festive social gathering feeling uncomfortable, out-of-place, unsure about what to do or who to talk to, or that you simply did not belong there in the first place, this song could take you back there. It doesn't really sound like a place you'd want to return to, but there's a certain pleasure taken when you listen to this song. It has such an endearing quality to it and makes you love the outsider and empathize with him.
Go home and live with your pain.
And if it's you whose the outsider, it could make you love and empathize with yourself.
Building on what's been said thus far, the song gets rid of the isolation that one feels when they end up just becoming a wallflower. Probably because it makes them feel less alone in that somebody else has felt alone, ignored, and uncomfortable before. It helps to build a connection with the artist that's more intimate than the connection that one will have with people that they know.