This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
Did you ever see the faces of the children
They get so excited
Waking up on Christmas morning
Hours before the winter sun's ignited
They believe in dreams and all they mean
Including heaven's generosity
Peeping round the door
To see what parcels are for free
In curiosity
And Tommy doesn't know what day it is
He doesn't know who Jesus was
Or what praying is
How can he be saved
From the eternal grave?
Surrounded by his friends
He sits so silently
And unaware of anything
Playing poxy pinball,
Picks his nose and smiles and
Pokes his tongue at everything
I believe in love
But how can men who've never seen
Light be enlightened
Only if he's cured
Will his spirits future level ever heighten
And Tommy doesn't know what day it is
He doesn't know who Jesus was
Or what praying is
How can he be saved
From the eternal grave?
Tommy, can you hear me?
Tommy, can you hear me?
Tommy, can you hear me?
Tommy, can you hear me?
Tommy, can you hear me?
Can you hear me?
How can he be saved?
See me, feel me, touch me, heal me!
See me, feel me, touch me, heal me!
Tommy, can you hear me?
Tommy, can you hear me?
Tommy, can you hear me?
Tommy, can you hear me?
Tommy, can you hear me?
Can you, can you, can you hear me?
How can he be saved?
Did you ever see the faces of the children
They get so excited
Waking up on Christmas morning
Hours before the winter sun's ignited
They believe in dreams and all they mean
Including heaven's generosity
Peeping round the door
To see what parcels are for free
In curiosity
And Tommy doesn't know what day it is
He doesn't know who Jesus was
Or what praying is
How can he be saved
From the eternal grave?
They get so excited
Waking up on Christmas morning
Hours before the winter sun's ignited
They believe in dreams and all they mean
Including heaven's generosity
Peeping round the door
To see what parcels are for free
In curiosity
And Tommy doesn't know what day it is
He doesn't know who Jesus was
Or what praying is
How can he be saved
From the eternal grave?
Surrounded by his friends
He sits so silently
And unaware of anything
Playing poxy pinball,
Picks his nose and smiles and
Pokes his tongue at everything
I believe in love
But how can men who've never seen
Light be enlightened
Only if he's cured
Will his spirits future level ever heighten
And Tommy doesn't know what day it is
He doesn't know who Jesus was
Or what praying is
How can he be saved
From the eternal grave?
Tommy, can you hear me?
Tommy, can you hear me?
Tommy, can you hear me?
Tommy, can you hear me?
Tommy, can you hear me?
Can you hear me?
How can he be saved?
See me, feel me, touch me, heal me!
See me, feel me, touch me, heal me!
Tommy, can you hear me?
Tommy, can you hear me?
Tommy, can you hear me?
Tommy, can you hear me?
Tommy, can you hear me?
Can you, can you, can you hear me?
How can he be saved?
Did you ever see the faces of the children
They get so excited
Waking up on Christmas morning
Hours before the winter sun's ignited
They believe in dreams and all they mean
Including heaven's generosity
Peeping round the door
To see what parcels are for free
In curiosity
And Tommy doesn't know what day it is
He doesn't know who Jesus was
Or what praying is
How can he be saved
From the eternal grave?
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There aren’t many things that’ll hurt more than giving love a chance against your better judgement only to have your heart crushed yet again. Ed Sheeran tells such a story on “Page.” On this track, he is devastated to have lost his lover and even more saddened by the feeling that he may never move on from this.
Plastic Bag
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“Plastic Bag” is a song about searching for an escape from personal problems and hoping to find it in the lively atmosphere of a Saturday night party. Ed Sheeran tells the story of his friend and the myriad of troubles he is going through. Unable to find any solutions, this friend seeks a last resort in a party and the vanity that comes with it.
“I overthink and have trouble sleepin’ / All purpose gone and don’t have a reason / And there’s no doctor to stop this bleedin’ / So I left home and jumped in the deep end,” Ed Sheeran sings in verse one. He continues by adding that this person is feeling the weight of having disappointed his father and doesn’t have any friends to rely on in this difficult moment. In the second verse, Ed sings about the role of grief in his friend’s plight and his dwindling faith in prayer. “Saturday night is givin’ me a reason to rely on the strobe lights / The lifeline of a promise in a shot glass, and I’ll take that / If you’re givin’ out love from a plastic bag,” Ed sings on the chorus, as his friend turns to new vices in hopes of feeling better.
I think they want to know how he can be saved because he cannot speak or hear, and thus cannot repent for his sins before he dies, consigning him to hell.
It's like in colonial america, when dyptheria ripped through Puritan New England, killing unbaptised babies (because Puritans didn't do infant baptism), and these babies were thought to be consigned to Hell (it is interesting to note that this helped lead to the prevalence of Methodism and the Baptist faith in America).