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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The line "and we are not aloud to spend" is, according to James, about the influence of consumerism on the working classes in the UK. "That fuck it mentality of, we are not allowed to [spend money], so therefore we shall", James said.
Incidentally, anyone who has seen the video for the song with the images of the Poll Tax riots in London and George Orwell quote "Hope Lies In The Proles" would know this song IS about the working classes. Drinking is mentioned in the song, but so is love. It's not a love song either. Go figure...
It's a song for reflection, so it annoys me when I hear people play it in a shop or something knowing nothing of what the words mean. Ah sigh, I'm just a very over-protective Manics fan :>................
the song is about working class perception and how everyone thinks 'we dont talk about love, we only wanna get drunk' whereas in reality the working class can be intelligent and useful, a lot of writers musicians actors sports people etc come from a working class background. 'libraries gave us power' highlights how no matter your background you can always improve and learn and 'i waish i had a bottle...etc' just means that you can improve as a person without being ashamed of where you come from although the upper classes do not recognise this hence the 'what price now for a shallow piece of dignity'.
unfortunately if you look at most town centres in the country at a weekend the 'we only wanna get drunk' line kind of stops being ironic as it is meant in the song.
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.
how f*ing well does he sing it??
"Libraries gave us power, then work came and made us free. What price now, for a bit of dignity"
"WORK MAKES YOU FREE" was the slogan of auchwitz. And libraries/education didn't give working class people the power they thought it would. It's a bit of dark humour about how screwed the working classes get, basically!
The choruses, in contrast are about the modern day working classes, celebrating life, and their freedom.
So, the lyrics are about the the persecution working class people survived (The Holocaust) and the freedom and hope they now enjoy. It's a celebration basically.
How many alcoholics do you know?
How many people do you know who are considered working class?
I assume the latter will outnumber the former. The majority of people in the UK are 'working class', the working class secretly run the country while the 'middle' and 'upper' classes watch in slendour. This is a theme that you do not care about? Yet you think a song about alcoholism will 'stand the rest of time'? You are sadly mistaken and by the look of it, sadly very ignorant of the world around you. Sorry if any of that didn't make sense, bye.
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.