6 Underground

Vampires? Prostitution? Cunnilingus? Wrong, wrong, and wrong. Drug addiction is the best guess, but still not the answer. It's about social anxiety...Here is Liam Howe's explanation:

"'6 Underground' is about the claustrophobia," says Howe, "of not being able to creatively express yourself in a very small town. It's enormously difficult to have your say, or any effect from what you say. We compared it to existing in a coffin, or being restricted to the point of being buried. So it's a reference to being 6 foot underground."

I don't think this song has anything to do with being a hooker or strung out on drugs at all. After years of listening to his song on repeat, it's come to my understanding that the subject matter of the song is really about the emotional strain relationships and associations can have on a person. It's, in my opinion, everybody taking from everybody, without caring, and without giving back. It addresses how tiring it can be, how numb it can make you feel, but how not embracing all the bad things in a life revolved around people can make you feel just as empty; that in fact, one would rather deal with all of that than be completely alone. However, it really shows how shallow people can be, and how the people around you that you're supposed to be able to count on disregards you and your feelings, you become jaded through heir selfish acts, and simulate that kind of behavior on other people. To me, it's a song about being used and abused emotionally, and in return just not giving a damn anymore.

"I'm open to falling from grace" sums up this song for me. This song displays "The struggle with needing people you could easily hate and having to choose something you dont want"

The Hidden Meaning of the Lyrics in "6 Underground"
By; Mark A. Jones

Take me down, 6 underground, The ground beneath your feet, -In reference to being consumed by death, and buried six feet underground. Laid out low, nothing to go Nowhere a way to meet -Laying here dead with no place to go, and no way to meet with. Lying in the bed you've made for yourself. I've got a head full of drought', Down here -Drought is an extended period without water in a region, but in the song I believe it to be a metaphor for a head full of empty thoughts (death basically) meaning the song writer is describing what it means to be dead. DOWN HERE... To me say descended (down) into hell, FALLEN FROM GRACE... suggest hell also. So far off losing out, round here -Missing out on the life the writer once had, because he/she is dead.

Chorus: Overground, watch this space -A funeral gathering of friends and family watching where the tragic victim now lies. I'm open to falling from grace...

• IM OPEN TO FALLING FROM GRACE... to me suggests suicide. The taking of your own life is a fall from grace, or damnation, hell basically. Verse one of the song is basically the end result of the tellers story, being told in the first person in a past-tense. How do I know this, you ask? I'M OPEN... Suggest first person.

Calm me down, bring it round

• In reference to rescuers calming a person wanting to jump. BRING IT ROUND... could refer to a safety net, or air mattress for jumpers possibly. Too way high off your street
• A high rise, ledge or rooftop. Basically a fall that would surely kill a person. I can see, like nothing else
• He/She is looking down, while everyone else would be looking up. LIKE NOTHING ELSE... suggest he/she is alone up there. In me you're better than I wannabe
• This part of the song suggest another person involved in the story. Perhaps a loved one? Who values the writers life, more than the writer values their own. IN ME... May suggest inner thoughts. Perhaps the the jumpers last thoughts??? Don't think 'cos I understand, I care Don't think 'cos I'm talking, were friends
• This part of the song I believe means just what it say... Even though the people (rescuers) mean well in their attempts, the jumper sympathizes with what they have to say, and yet doesn't care, and neither considers them to be friends. FRIENDS is plural, which may suggest a mass is gathered below. Verse two is the events leading up to verse one. It basically describes how he/she died.

Talk me down, safe and sound -This part of the song describes a friend, or loved one trying to calm the user down (drugs)... This part of the song suggest some sort of paranoia. Which to me suggest "Crack Cocaine". I've seen what this stuff does to people, and this drug was very popular right around the era of this song.
Too strung up to sleep

• The user is too high to sleep. Which is common in crack smokers. Wear me out, scream and shout The user has become worn out, and hysterical. Swear my times never cheap
• The consequences of use are costly over time. I fake my life like I've lived, Too Much
• This suggests that the users masks the life he/she has come to know. who tries to appear normal on the surface, when it's anything but. I imagine someone like this would feel alone. TOO MUCH... refers to the life the user has lived. A fast life, which is refered to by many as a life of drug use. I take what ever you're given, Not enough
• I believe this part of the song refers to the high you get from the drug. Much like the crack high people chase, which is never enough.. Or so I've heard. Verse three is basically the start of the writers story, the beginning/cause of how the writer ends up six feet underground. In short, the story is being told backwards in the first person in a past tense... Effect back to cause. Which takes place at their funeral, and describes the events leading up to their death. This is just my interpretation of the song. I'm sure it could be be interpreted many other ways, but thats what makes this song so engenious. It really gets you thinking. Hats off to the Sneeker Pimps. A really well written song, with a mysterious quality. Truely I say this song is poetry in motion.

I think the lyrics are deliberately full of double-meaning, in order to link death, hell, sex and drugs altogether, to create a portrait of a junkie / hooker living in their own personal hell and wanting to die.

"Laid out low" both alludes to being buried and to getting laid.

"Fall from grace" alludes to both "a fallen woman" - that is, a hooker - and to "the fallen angel" or, in other words, the devil.

She talks from "down here" (which is "underground") to those "overground", as if she's dead and in Hell, talking to the living on the surface. A metaphor that her life is a living hell and that she feels dead inside. The fact that she feels dead inside is also reflected in other lyrics too.

"In me, you're better than I wannabe" could be literally someone inside her, because she's a hooker, or it could be drugs.

Many junkies end up as hookers, in order to afford their drug habits. Such a life would be a living hell and she welcomes her walking death - her non-existent life.

These metaphors of death, hell, sex and drugs are deliberately merged together. The double-meanings are there purposefully to suggest that all these things are all bound together - that it's a cycle of having sex to buy drugs to get high to feel like shit to need more drugs to have more sex to buy more drugs to...

Metaphorically, she's in her own personal hell and she's talking to the "overground" - the rest of us living normal lives - and the most twisted thing about the song is that she WANTS to be there, because she wants those drugs to kill her, as her life has become empty and meaningless.

She's wallowing in the misery of her personal hell - a cycle of sex and drugs, which is to be, as it were, "the walking dead" - craving to be taken away from it all by the grave.

It's a mixture of all these things together, I believe.

Which is why it's so lyrically powerful and an amazing song.

This song is amazing, there's so many ways you can take it which makes music so beautiful..it touches you in a way that only you know. The way I perceive this song is a drug addict (meth probably) that's struggling with the addiction. She knows the wrongs she's committing, she's fighting the craving yet she does it anyway. Like the first verse, she's coming down and she needs her fix. Second, your drug dealer is your "friend" so to speak but really you're just around em for one reason, to get your dope. In my experience this song hits the nail on the head of the life of a meth addict...

To me personally, I like to think this song is about a woman who's in love with a guy who's dumping her. She can't handle the pain and wants to kill herself. she says she's open to falling from grace, so to me it's like she's open to doing something horrible like killing herself. She mentions that he calms her and yet he's better than she wants to be, because maybe he's getting over it and she doesn't want to. Then she goes into how she understands why, but doesnt care and how they aren't friends. Later she goes on to say how she's strung up at night and how her life is fake. Makes me think of heartbreak, the inability to sleep and then just going through the motions of every day life while you are heartbroken. Then she says she'll take whatever he's giving while it's not enough. Sad.

PS.....6 underground means dead, like buried six feet underground.....

i have been looking for this song for what seems like forever,anyway i think the first verse is heim or her feeling empty and depressed and wanting to die,im mean after whoreing yourself out for long enough it gets to you you want more but your also scarred emotionally...but in this case i dont think she has the strength to do it herself,she says "take me down 6 underground" she could have been asking or praying eh either way werks but its a great fucking song

This song is filled with metaphors, symbolism, multi-layered, ripe for interpretation. The writer may or may not have fully understood at the time they were writing this the complexity or the multi faceted interpretation possibilities.

The Genius of this multi-layered poetic writing will prompt many interpretations. As I have read through the comments, the song has many meanings based on the individual's Perspective and Life Experiences. That is the true beauty of art, we get to experience it in a way that we see and understand / interpret it.

The song absolutely has references to drugs, sex, relationships, deity, death suicide and on and on.

It's up to the listener to decide what they want to think, feel and hear from it. While the writer may have had one purpose or intent in mind it cannot be helped but there are many different meanings that one can take away from the song