| MGMT – Mystery Disease Lyrics | 2 years ago |
|
This song is so fucking good. There are certainly some lyrics that make the song seem like it’s entirely about drugs, and maybe some of the lyrics are, but in my opinion this is more of a commentary on society, herd mentality, and government control. In short, my interpretation is that the mystery disease symbolizes conformity. It may seem like a stretch, but if you listen to the song and think "conformity" anytime the narrator sings "mystery disease" the lyrics begin to more clearly make sense in context to one another. Governments around the world shape societal systems into invisible prisons, lulling citizens to sleep with herd mentality and conformity. This form of control ensures persistent power for elites until the pressure on societies grows to a boiling point when the people wake up and revolt. “It can’t pay attention, what slips into the system, a light touch, a whisper that puts you to sleep, don’t sympathize with the mystery disease.” Conformity doesn’t pick and choose. Everyone is born into the societal system used by governments to control and oppress citizens. Conformity lulls you to sleep in your youth with a light touch that you don’t notice. It dumbs you down more and more as time goes on until eventually you find yourself trapped by societal norms, stuck as a cog in a machine, locked in a cage with your goals and ambitions on the other side of the room with the key just out of reach. Conformity led you there. Don’t sympathize with it. It is dangerous if what you are conforming to is in no way beneficial to you or society as a whole. Just look at everything that happened during Covid. “All it is is a feeling, pain in a dress to revealing.” You can sense when you’re conforming if you open up your eyes. A modest woman with self-respect will feel uncomfortable looking like a prostitute in a dress (which has now become a societal norm). “A lost bond, an old friend who likes what it sees, you can’t shake off the mystery disease.” Despite being part of the herd at various points in life, you do have the ability to leave it by not conforming. You also have the ability to rejoin the herd by re-conforming. If conformity was a sentient entity, it’d be happy to have you back again! "Lovers in a past life meet in the street close to midnight. A last look sweet like the end of a dream." These lovers are doing something rebellious that isn't a societal norm. Perhaps they are high school teenagers that snuck out at night to meet up. Their time is short together in that joyful moment. A final glimpse of one another feels like pure bliss, but it vanishes in an instant, just like at the end of a good dream. The next day they have to go to school (or work), falling back into their normal daily life. "Go on tell your symptoms to me, its not in any of the books you can read." When you're in the herd, you at times will notice something isn't right, but you can't quite place your finger on it. You won't find an explanation to be public knowledge because most people also don't recognize the problem, and governments might even ban any books that give an explanation. “It’s no fun to face what you don’t get to be, but what’s one more to the mystery disease.” When you go about your ordinary day-to-day life while not chasing down your dreams and ambitions, you may see other people living out the life you desire. That’s no fun, but perhaps you may find it too challenging or not viable to go after your ambitions, and so you succumb to conformity and work a shitty, miserable job that leads you nowhere, not one step closer to your aspirations, simply because it feels like your only way of making ends meet. (Fuck that) I think the third verse is causing people to think the entire song is about drugs, but I'd argue its not. "Floating impatience snuffs my limited sapience." The narrator is starting to wake up to reality (limited sapience), but is struggling with the knowledge and growing impatient with it, resorting to drugs. "Black smoke as soon as the pressure's released. Deep space sighs, the mystery disease." The pressure of having this knowledge is released from inhaling the drug. From Wikipedia: "Pantheism is the philosophical religious belief that reality, the universe, the cosmos, and nature are identical to divinity and a supreme being or entity." In this context, deep space refers to God or a supreme being, which is the universe itself. This supreme being sighs that another human on the path of enlightenment has gone back to sleep. "Consumed by a weakness cut with perpetual unrest". Sin is a weakness we all have and it is forever unrelenting. Drug addicts sin frequently as they are consumed by their vices. "You see stars, sunsets blurred through a screen." We see celebrity stars on TV and our phones (social media). These stars are sunsets in the sense they are fading out of the limelight over time. These people are often times not good role models and exemplify drug use, especially rappers. "Trap what you want, waste what you need." Some rappers are associated with gang activity and trap houses. They sell drugs and then waste money on shit they don't need, often to appear to be of a higher status (gold watch/chains/teeth). “As the west wind sweeps through the leaves emperors of history fall to their knees” is about revolution. The west wind is symbolic of a conscious awakening within societies causing citizens to stop conforming, which leads to revolution and overthrow of oppressors. Lastly, “small fronds can’t see the wood for the trees. Left in the dust of the mystery disease” basically means that ordinary citizens in the herd are too focused on their daily lives to recognize that they are being oppressed by their governments. People who can’t wake up and realize who the real oppressors are in this world will continue to suffer and eventually perish with the herds that their rulers are leading off a cliff. |
|
| The Growlers – Nobody Owns You Lyrics | 3 years ago |
| I think the meaning of this song is pretty apparent, as the lyrics are not too abstract to understand. However, this is my interpretation, whether its the true meaning behind the song or not:\n\nI find this song to be about how life is too short to let your fears about how people might perceive you hold you back from how you truly want to act. "Pissin’ on the moments and missing the chance" and "Waiting for approval and nobody cares" stick out as lyrics from the first verse. Many people go through life wasting opportunities, even small ones, as a result of their fears of others perceptions of them. We wait for approval from people (often strangers) who don\'t have the slightest concern about what we are doing a lot of the time. And even if they did care, why should we await their approval in the first place? Life is too short.\n\nThe chorus reiterates this idea in more detail. "Irrational thoughts to feed the mundane." If you want to live a basic life then you can let your irrational thoughts about how others perceive you to dictate your life. It\'s a self-sabotaging behavior. If you have the courage to stay true to yourself and care as little as possible about the perceptions of others, then you can live a more interesting life. | |
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.