| Snow Patrol – Empress Lyrics | 2 years ago |
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No comments?! Dang! I’ve got this song stuck in my head, but I didn’t realize that Snow Patrol itself was niche. I believe this song symbolises the awkward time of adolescence, and how at the start you feel like an “outcast”, as everyone else seems to know everything and you feel like you will never fit in. Let’s break it down: "You’re angry but you don’t know how to be that yet It seems too much went wrong and all at once Resistance seems impossible from down this low And surely no one else can feel like this" This verse describes the feeling of isolation you experience when you don’t know what is going on. They see the change of adolescence as something “went wrong” and that it happened “all at once”. The initial response is to feel “angry”, because you don’t know why you feel this way. It seems “impossible” to resist this change, and you resolve that “surely no else can feel like this”. "But on the streets You can see them gathering And in your heart You know they feel like you do" This a metaphor for realisation that you are not alone, that others “feel like you do”, and that the other people like you are all “gathering” together, almost in a symbol of celebration. "Sound and pulse and volume Hands just reaching other hands This is almost overload I said almost overload Friends and foes and princes Are all just human in the end This is so damn simple, yeah It’s so damn simple" Possibly describing a party, like those you would have as a teenager, where this new-found rebellion and freedom is “almost overload”; the “sound and pulse and volume” of the music, and the “hands2 of drunken teens reaching out to each other for guidance and reassurance, maybe love. Your mind then gives into this idea of growing up, realising you are all in the same boat, that you are all “just human in the end”, and that it really is quite “simple”. Just go with the flow. "So standing in the steady throng of restless hope You don’t feel like an outcast anymore And something deep inside of you has woken up And you know that nothing’s gonna be the same again" Still in the same setting as the chorus, you feel accepted, and not alone, not an “outcast anymore”, as you stand alongside your peers, in a “throng”. The “restless hope” is juxtaposition describing how although you feel uncomfortable and not quite come to acceptance of growing up, “restless”, you feel “hope” that you will, “it will”. "Your mind won’t be still It may not again You don’t think it will But it will, it will" Your mind is in overload from all the new information, senses, feelings that you are feeling; it “won’t be still”, again hinting at the slight insecurity, “but it will” reassures you that it will all come in time. Overall, the song shows how teenagers progress from having a grim and bleak outlook at the significant change from childhood to adolescence; that at the start we are all confused and feel alone, that no one else understands, but then the realisation and reassurance that everyone else feels the same, and the strength we draw from others, growing up together, learning and experiencing. Because in the end you’re not alone. |
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