| Lorde – Team Lyrics | 12 years ago |
| I'm thinking about this again, and maybe the "palace wants release" part is more sinister than I was originally thinking. Maybe it's a comment that the media want to create people who are unhappy and competitive for the media's own pleasure / benefit (presumably to sell the unhappy masses things that will fill the darkness)... or something like that. | |
| Lorde – Team Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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This is about teenagers coming of age and finding out that portrayals of life & love in the media are prettier and shinier than reality... and also (hopefully) finding out that real life isn't necessarily bad compared to a constant struggle for an unattainable ideal. "Wait til you're announced... send the call out" refers to teenagers coming of age and starting to gain access to experience the *real* world. "Ladies... in finery... [with] jewels on throats.. [and] between teeth" are teenage girls dressed up but still wearing braces. "Boys.. their skin in craters" are pimply teenage boys. "We love like a brother... while he glows" refers to the teenage girls trying to figure out their feelings for boys who they had previously thought of as just friends. "Dancin' round lies we tell... with big eyes" refers to the awkward teenagers trying to pretend to be the cool adults they admire in the media, but also seeing clearly that every other teenager still just as awkward as they are. "Even the comatose... don't dance and tell" means nobody calls out anyone else for having gone through that awkward phase... but it also implies that we should eventually leave the pretending behind and grow into our own skins. "Cities you'll never see onscreen" and "ruins of a palace within my dreams" both refer to a reality that is not as pretty as life as portrayed in the media. "But we sure know how to run things" and "you know we're on each other's team" means that reality -- for all its warts -- can still provide happiness and true friendships / love. "I'm kind of over... older" means she understands that the ideal life that the media told her she should live just created unnecessary jealousies, finger-pointing, bickering ("all the cups got broke", "it's not my fault", "everyone's competing for a love they won't receive"). And guess what? The media ideal changes over time ("what the palace wants is release"). In some ways, maybe that ideal is even shifting to reflect the new generation's reality? The last chorus "we're on each other's team... and you know, and you know, and you know" means that she's found friends and happiness outside outside of the path that the media had laid out for her... and she knows that you know that you can chart your own path to happiness, too. |
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