| Rise Against – The Approaching Curve Lyrics | 17 years ago |
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This one time I got sick of writing English essays, so I thought I'd do one on this particular song, one of my favourite songs of all time. Pardon me if it sounds a bit pretentious. I was brought up to write like this in my essays. Hahaha. ------------------ ‘The Approaching Curve’ is a song of despair, of sadness and stagnant relationships. It is a lyrical interpretation of the inevitability of death, and the mask we put on ourselves in our everyday lives. Using the imagery of a car traveling on a highway, it successfully tackles those ideas, and concentrates it into a focused microcosm of human life, the end of a love relationship. Using a first-person view for its narrative vehicle, this allows the listener to easily feel a sense of strong empathy towards the singer. The use of such a narrative device also allows for a very personal account of the story, as the listener is privy to the singer’s thoughts, but not to the other person in the story. The listener is moved to symphatise with the singer, not the other person. The listener is led to believe that the singer is justified in ending the relationship, even though the singer admits, ‘this is what’s best for me,’ and ‘maybe just for me I thought.’ The guilt shown by the singer further pulls away the listener from the girl, seeing her as unreasonable, irrational and emotionally unreliable afterwards. The imagery of traveling is used extensively. The ‘painfully straight stretch of road’ signifies the state of the relationship which has gone stale and stagnant, obviously going nowhere, and is no longer exciting to both parties. ‘The vague hints of an impending dawn’ symbolizes a new start that has been waiting for the singer, of which is not yet clear to him, and as we later find out, he never achieves. The stereo of the car, blaring ‘with a calming frequency,’ is the symbolization of the relationship as a façade to the outside world. The relationship seemingly has been having troubles long before, but it is covered underneath smiles i.e. calming music. Music itself can be a façade. An image of created outer being. The music is covering all the cracks in their relationship – ‘our cracking voices became part of the music.’ It’s the smiles ‘that’s all they’d seen.’ The couples’ friends and family don’t and cannot see the buried sadness and stagnancy of the relationship because both of them are good at hiding it. The inevitability of death is foreshadowed in the chorus. The listener finds out, after the second chorus, that it is about the impending death of the couple, which can be speculated to be from a fall off a cliff into a river, hence ‘the tears in which we are drowned.’ This also tells the listener how much sadness has been present in the relationship, so much so that they are drowned in it. The death by drowning is also foreshadowed by the image of ‘the faraway squeal of a pot of boiling water,’ of which ‘boiling signifies the end or climax of the story, the boiling point of the relationship, and of course, their impending doom. When ‘she made no indications of slowing,’ the listener is given the impression that the girl does not intend to give up the relationship. She is determined to hold on to it as long as she can. She wants to hold the steering wheel. When the singer asks her ’please love, give me the wheel,’ he is telling that the relationship has gone out of control, and she has got to give it up. And of course she doesn’t, which leads to their doom. ‘The Approaching Curve’ is the exploration of human emotions and the irrationality of it. It is the story of unwillingness to give up the facades of everyday life. The desperation to hold on to things that might not be beneficial to hold on to, but are the only things we can and want to hold on to. It is a song of despair, death and stagnancy. ----------------- Anyways, this is my second stab at analysing this. My first comment is on the first page :) I love this song. Beautiful, absolutely beautiful. I think comparing this song to Good Charlotte is unfair. Good Charlotte is being sentimental in a contrived and forced way. Rise Against is being poetic and metaphorical. Good Charlotte can never ever manage to be even remotely poetic, ever. Rise Against, poetic. Good Charlotte, sentimental recycled garbage. |
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| The King Blues – Mr. Music Man Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| I had just gotten to like Ska.. This is one of the songs that got me into it | |
| Rise Against – Ready To Fall Lyrics | 18 years ago |
| Wow. The video for this song was a large part in the push to become vegan. I'm still in a state of transition though, from vegetarian to vegan. A few months ago, they inspired to become vegetarian Now I see it clearer now. Rise Against is the single biggest influence in terms of my lifestyle now. I thank them for it | |
| Rise Against – The Approaching Curve Lyrics | 19 years ago |
| Yeah. I love this song. Still listening to it two months after I posted that. It's so... Poetic.. And the song is choke-full of metaphors, imagery and symbolism, sometimes it feels like I'm listening to a piece of literature. A poem even | |
| Rise Against – Under The Knife Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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I thought it was obvious the first time I read the lyrics that this is a song about going 'under the knife', i.e. having a surgical operation. He is given anesthesia, and is unconscious throughout the whole surgery (wake me when it's through). He feels he'd rather not feel or see anything from the surgery, and chooses to be injected with anesthetics. |
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| Rise Against – Survive Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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I can relate to this song in that I hear so many people complaining about how their lives are so hard and that other people are lucky not having to get through what they have. What they don't realise is that everyone has the same fucking story, only slightly different problems and different names. It's "how we survive that makes us who we are", not the things that are thrown at us. People throw lemons, we make lemonades. Most people just complain about how hard he lemons were thrown and how the lemons made a bump on their heads. Life isn't meant to be perfect. It wouldn't be meaningful if it was perfect. We wouldn't know the meaning of happiness if we were given everything. True people go through true difficulties. Survivors solve problems, not complain about them. |
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| Rise Against – Swing Life Away Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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I think it's how a financially-struggling family manages to be happy inspite of the shortcomings by having each other. The family talks about the worst things that have happened to them (let's compare scars) but in a positive way, discussing how they've survived it instead of how bad it was. Then they try to move on with their lives (let's unwrite these pages). Basically it's about a song of how we should and can be positive even in the most difficult of situations. Even when the family is struggling, they still talk of places they can go to, and moving away from their current beat-down house. |
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| Rise Against – The Approaching Curve Lyrics | 19 years ago |
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One of the best songs lyrically that I've hear in such a long time. The use of imagery builds up such a strong description of the situation in the car, and the emotions revolving around it. I think this is a song about the guy dumping the girl, choosing to break the news while on the road. "Why are you doing this? she spoke", asking him why he was breaking the relationship. He thinks the relationship is getting stagnant and going nowhere (a painfully straight stretch of road) with no benefit to him whatsoever (this is what's best for me..or maybe just for me I thought). The girl grows unstable while driving. She doesn't concentrate on her driving, and is too emotional to pay attention to the road. This is evident when she closes her eyes "for a bit longer than a standard blink", totally oblivious to everything outside the car. The guy begs for the girl to give the wheel to him, but she refuses, being emotional, and this is symbolic of her unwillingness to not let go of the relationship. The guy realises it is getting dangerous, and tries to convince her, but she does not listen. She puts her foot on the gas, getting faster, but not keeping an eye on the road. As the curve approaches, she was already oblivious to it. The chorus is a foreshadowing of their impending doom, in which they are killed after falling off the edge and falling into a river (long since dried, are the tears in which we had drowned), also symbolic of the amount of tears and sadness the relationship has brought onto both of them. But then they have managed to hide their unhappiness, and the people who knows them, will think that they had a happy relationship (they'll remember only our smiles, cause that's all they've seen). |
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