Libraries gave us power
Then work came and made us free
What price now
For a shallow piece of dignity
I wish I had a bottle
Right here in my dirty face
To wear the scars
To show from where I came
We don't talk about love
We only wanna get drunk
And we are not allowed to spend
As we are told that this is the end
A design for life
A design for life
A design for life
A design for life
I wish I had a bottle
Right here in my pretty face
To wear the scars
To show from where I came
We don't talk about love
We only wanna get drunk
And we are not allowed to spend
As we are told that this is the end
A design for life
A design for life
A design for life
A design for life
We don't talk about love
We only wanna get drunk
And we are not allowed to spend
As we are told that this is the end
A design for life
A design for life
A design for life
A design for
Then work came and made us free
What price now
For a shallow piece of dignity
I wish I had a bottle
Right here in my dirty face
To wear the scars
To show from where I came
We don't talk about love
We only wanna get drunk
And we are not allowed to spend
As we are told that this is the end
A design for life
A design for life
A design for life
A design for life
I wish I had a bottle
Right here in my pretty face
To wear the scars
To show from where I came
We don't talk about love
We only wanna get drunk
And we are not allowed to spend
As we are told that this is the end
A design for life
A design for life
A design for life
A design for life
We don't talk about love
We only wanna get drunk
And we are not allowed to spend
As we are told that this is the end
A design for life
A design for life
A design for life
A design for
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They expect poor people to look like tramps and be violent so the person or people this song is about feel they might as well go in with scars to conform to narrow minded prejudices against the working class
Finally I thought the line about work making us free was ironic too as in it actually is an emprisonment born out of a capitalist society where some are allowed to have everything so others must work like rodents on a treadmill just to get by, I never knew about the "albrecht macht frei" thing. I though that was the name of a nazi lol as the libertines have a song by that name.
You have done very well as the whole song could well be about people looking down their noses and not just that bit I decided was unquestioanably about people looking down on people (the bits about we only one to get drunk I take as literal I know the other meaning is entirely reasonable too but I just think it makes more sense i.e literal before metaphors)
the drinking culture you mention as being prevalent now was just as prevalent at the time the song was released, its just more widely noted by the press and widespread across the country. it's a trend that goes way back.
Its like this if someone is a million miles away from the meaning of a song then don't reward them for their effort. However if someone is fairly close to a multifaceted line then that is where your "open to inerpretation comes in", the artist himself said they were wrong, so who is narrow minded now, who thinks they know more than the artist? Yourself.
Ps someone much brighter than you made a much more valid criticism of my argument and that is this page dosent specify if its the artists intent or what you get from the song, but personally the ONLY thing that matters is what the artist was talking about. And occasionally then extrapolating from that for modern times. Missing the more straightfoward lines does not class as that.
SO spit out your dummy, because your relativism sucks.