The End of The World

While the obvious connections with suicide or alcoholism could be drawn easily, more subtly this song could be about someone who views the world through a negative lens constantly and how as much as the writer tries to show the beauty in the world, this person refuses to see it. It's one or another between the rope and the bottle. There is no good option for this person. They can't see it. Skiba sings it in a kind of exasperated way like He's tired of hearing this negative view constantly and just allowing that person to continue feeling the way they feel knowing he can't do anything about it. You can hear it when he says maybe you're a vampire.

"Zombie" is about the ethno-political conflict in Ireland. This is obvious if you know anything of the singer (Dolores O'Riordan)'s Irish heritage and understood the "1916" Easter Rising reference. "Another head hangs lowly Child is slowly taken And the violence caused such silence Who are we mistaken - Another mother's breaking Heart is taking over" Laments the Warrington bomb attacks in which two children were fatally injured on March 23rd, 1993. Twelve year old Tim Parry was taken off life support with permission from his mother after five days in the hospital, virtually braindead. "But you see it's not me It's not my family" References how people who are not directly involved with the violence feel about it. They are "zombies" without sympathy who refuse to take action while others suffer.

In the 1980s, sunglasses were a common fashion for people who wanted to adopt a "tough guy" persona (note all the cop shows from that era -- Simon & Simon, Miami Vice, etc. -- where the lead characters wore shades). So I think this song is about a guy who wears shades as a way of hiding his insecurity after learning that his girlfriend is cheating on him. He's trying to pretend that he's a "tough guy" to hide the fact that his girlfriend's affair is disturbing him.

This song is timeless, and nearly 20 years after its creation, still possesses the mystique it did the first time i heard it ~1994. To me, at first blush, all those years ago, it had some kind of homo-erotic allure. The line "so that the others may do" tells of something which must be done for others to follow suit. It felt like like some kind of roxy-glam-pop invitation to sexual liberation. Upon further introspection I think the song may not have an intrinsic meaning, but simply represents a sort of "holding open the door" for people who otherwise might be affronted by this song/band's unusual style. I know, as a sort of armchair rock-historian, that there have been few bands so daring and so true to the sound that wanted to emerge from within, whether the creator wanted it or not. This band handled it with elegance and grace seldom, if ever, seen.

This standalone single marks the first official collaboration between the two rappers. The track was produced by SephGotTheWaves, Stillsanexile & Trademark. It was released on December 29, 2020.