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Belle & Sebastian – I Want the World to Stop Lyrics 14 years ago
Well, first of all this is one of the best B&S songs ever. It's my anthem of my life right now as I'm travelling the national parks of Africa.

The song is, as Sebastian1 puts it, about the global societies growing bigger and bigger.

Let me step out of my shell
I'm wrapped in sheets of milky winter disorder
Let me feel the air again, the talk of friends
The mind of someone my equal

These lines are about him "waking up". He's been living in this comfortable shell all his life, but suddenly, probably as you get older, you realize that something has changed so dramatically (and not for the better). He wants to change it, and that's why he wants someone to talk to about (I think the lines "the talk of friends, the mind of someone my equal" inclines that not that many people are worth talking to about these issues as everyone is comfortable with their modern day lifes).

Tinseltown has followed me from Tinseltown to
Grey adorable city by the docks
Girls will walk in moving air
The sun hangs low, the girls don't care
As they paint themselves at dusk

The big modern cities e.g. Hollywood (or Tinseltown) follows him everywhere. There's no place on earth where you will not see the same thing every day. Even in the "Grey adorable city by the docks" there's no escaping the power of MTV and fashion and that's why girls are going out, defying even bad weather, to get a tan and will stay there until the sun goes down, just to get as much sun as possible.

Towns' and cities' populations up and grow
The workers move to the suburbs
In between I watch and go
I run alongside rush hour traffic
A prayer for every car

This one is pretty straight forward. In 2045 there will be 9 billion people on the planet, maybe even more. People moves to the city to work, but Stuart is praying "for every car", trying to change their opinion about the big city and the modern lifestyle.

I want to write a message to you
Every day at ten o'clock in the evening
Yellow pearl my city is
This is your art
This is your Balzac, your Brookside, and your Bach

I think this is Stuart, who is really religious, praying to God about what is going on on this planet. Telling him that this is his masterpiece, and he should do everything to proctect.

People have forgotten the beauty of the nature, something that I have found again in my many travels in both Asia and Africa. The big cities craving the lives of many animals. There's 2300 tigers left in the world, every year there are a 100 less lions then the year before. People are destroying what is left of the Real Planet Earth.

I think Stuart is trying to get people to realize what destruction we put on this planet. Until then, I will keep playing this song for my clients as I show them around Africa!

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