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"
When the bus shelter windows and napkin dispensers surprise
With distorted reflections, it's never the someone you're hoping to recognize
And the rent is too high living here between reasons to live
Where you can't sleep alone and your memories groan and the borders of night start to give
When you can't save
Cash or conviction, you're broke and you're breaking
A tired shoelace or a wave
So long past past-due, a new name for everything
When the one-ways collude with the map that you folded wrong
And the route you abandoned is always the path that you probably should be upon
When the bottle cap ashtrays and intimates' ears are all full
With results of your breath, and the threads of your fear are unfurled with the tiniest pull
One more time, try
Stand with your hands in your pockets and stare
At the smudge on a newspaper sky
And ask it to rain a new name for everything
Fire every phrase
They don't want to work for us anymore
Dot and Dash our days
Make your face the flag of a semaphore
All you won't show
The boxes you brought here and never unpacked are still patiently waiting to go
So put on those clothes you never grew into, and smile like you mean it for once
If you come back, bring a new name for everything
A new name for everything
A new name for everything
With distorted reflections, it's never the someone you're hoping to recognize
And the rent is too high living here between reasons to live
Where you can't sleep alone and your memories groan and the borders of night start to give
When you can't save
Cash or conviction, you're broke and you're breaking
A tired shoelace or a wave
So long past past-due, a new name for everything
When the one-ways collude with the map that you folded wrong
And the route you abandoned is always the path that you probably should be upon
When the bottle cap ashtrays and intimates' ears are all full
With results of your breath, and the threads of your fear are unfurled with the tiniest pull
One more time, try
Stand with your hands in your pockets and stare
At the smudge on a newspaper sky
And ask it to rain a new name for everything
Fire every phrase
They don't want to work for us anymore
Dot and Dash our days
Make your face the flag of a semaphore
All you won't show
The boxes you brought here and never unpacked are still patiently waiting to go
So put on those clothes you never grew into, and smile like you mean it for once
If you come back, bring a new name for everything
A new name for everything
A new name for everything
Lyrics submitted by lakeoffire23, edited by eunoia
A New Name for Everything Lyrics as written by Jason Tait John K Samson
Lyrics © CCS RIGHTS MANAGEMENT CORP
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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This is one of my favorite songs. https://fnfgo.io
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Great version of a great song,
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This is about the need for personal reinvention. The speaker is pretty desperate for an influx of new ideas and energy in his life, and his search for "a new name for everything" is a metaphor for his attempt to reconfigure how he approaches his life. I think it's about how language, and specifically poetry, have helped the singer think about his own life in different ways and defeat the stagnation and despair depicted in the song.