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Time Will Break the World Lyrics
The sun and the shutters and the sun shattered hair
The butler hesitates at the top of the stairs
A kitten from Great Britain sleeps behind the drapes
An old silver bowl filled with apples and grapes
It's so very cold in the mansion after sunset
The snow is blowing through the baseboard outlets
And I have no idea what drives you, mister
Tanning beds explode with rich women inside
All my poor, hungry children
All my poor, hungry children
All my poor, hungry children
Time will break the world
Time will break the world
Time will break the world
The snow falls down so beautiful and stupid
For the black silhoutte of Abraham Lincoln trees
The sky's low and grey like a Japanese table
And my horse's legs look like four brown shotguns
The icicles are dripping like the whole house is weeping
On an evil little car with gull-wing doors
And I have no idea what drives you, mister
But I've killed you in my mind so many times before
All my poor, hungry children
All my poor, hungry children
All my poor, hungry children
Time will break the world
Time will break the world
Time will break the world
The butler hesitates at the top of the stairs
A kitten from Great Britain sleeps behind the drapes
An old silver bowl filled with apples and grapes
The snow is blowing through the baseboard outlets
And I have no idea what drives you, mister
Tanning beds explode with rich women inside
All my poor, hungry children
All my poor, hungry children
Time will break the world
Time will break the world
Time will break the world
For the black silhoutte of Abraham Lincoln trees
The sky's low and grey like a Japanese table
And my horse's legs look like four brown shotguns
On an evil little car with gull-wing doors
And I have no idea what drives you, mister
But I've killed you in my mind so many times before
All my poor, hungry children
All my poor, hungry children
Time will break the world
Time will break the world
Time will break the world
Song Info
Submitted by
3ric On May 24, 2002
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I think this song is about his father, apparently a powerful lobbyist for some pretty powerful & heinous interests (whom he outed when he announced the end of the Jews). He even mentioned that the Tanning Salon Owners of America count among his dad's clients.
"And I have no idea what drives you, mister But I've killed you in my mind so many times before"
http://stereogum.com/47621/silver_jew_calls_it_quits_exposes_dad/news/
@killertomatoes I came here tonight to see if anyone else thought this! Glad i'm not the only one. Purple Mountains was such an honest record, I went back through his old records and now that i understood how much he struggled with darkness, despair, addiction, vanity/self-depreciation, i realized how literal and autobiographical he had been the whole time. And this one felt really clear- I think he is saying his dad's nihilism is emblematic of the entropy and decline that the world will inexorably head towards, a pretty pessimistic feeling.
@killertomatoes I came here tonight to see if anyone else thought this! Glad i'm not the only one. Purple Mountains was such an honest record, I went back through his old records and now that i understood how much he struggled with darkness, despair, addiction, vanity/self-depreciation, i realized how literal and autobiographical he had been the whole time. And this one felt really clear- I think he is saying his dad's nihilism is emblematic of the entropy and decline that the world will inexorably head towards, a pretty pessimistic feeling.
This song is sort of like the "Bright Flight" Rosetta Stone. It's completely fat with Southern Gothic images, bitter humor and cryptic metaphors. I don't know if this song is about anything greater than the success of its own poetry, but if I had to suggest some point to it....how bout drug addiction? Or not?
Also, "Bright Flight" is Berman's most interesting achievement in terms of lyric and theme. All the songs seem to reference one another throughout. Here, there's Abraham Lincoln trees which connect with the George Washington reference in "Slow Education." Plus we have the shotgun horse legs and something else in "Horseleg Swastikas."
I think you're right that the best part of the song is the poetry, but I would suggest that it's not about drugs, it's about Berman's loathing of rich people, which I'm pretty sure he's mentioned in some interviews. Also, I think in the song maybe the singer kills the owner of the mansion. The first verse he's inside the home noting what he sees, the butler hesitates when he notices the intruder, and the action sequence is represented through the exploding tanning beds (could be literal or symbolic within the story). In the second verse the singer leaves the...
I think you're right that the best part of the song is the poetry, but I would suggest that it's not about drugs, it's about Berman's loathing of rich people, which I'm pretty sure he's mentioned in some interviews. Also, I think in the song maybe the singer kills the owner of the mansion. The first verse he's inside the home noting what he sees, the butler hesitates when he notices the intruder, and the action sequence is represented through the exploding tanning beds (could be literal or symbolic within the story). In the second verse the singer leaves the mansion and returns to his horse. With the kill fresh in his mind we get the metaphors of the house weeping and the horses legs looking like shotguns.