Amie

• I always thought he was singing this song to Amie, a friend of him who died suddenly: "then something unusual, something strange comes from nothing at all".
• "I saw a spaceship fly by your window..." he could be talking about her soul going to heaven...
• In the chorus, he is asking her to come back, and do what they used to do when they were friends...
• "Nothing unusual, nothing's changed, just a little older, that's all..." he is letting her know that time has passed, and he is still the same, and that he realized that he was in love with her, but too late, she is gone...
• "but I'm not a miracle, you're not a saint, just a little soldier on the road to nowhere...." he cannot change the past, he cannot revive her, and she cannot do it neither, she is "on the road to nowhere" (heaven).
• I do not think that "The Story of O" has a secret message, just a book they used to talk about.

I saw Damien Rice in Philly (one of the best shows I ever went to) and he said that this song is basically about being with someone who you can let your gaurd down with and completely opening yourself to the impossible. Once you do, anything impossible or magical can happen.

Well I have my own interpretation of this song. I think that all he is saying is that for the first time in his life something amasing is happening, he has fall in love for the first time or he is having a new kind of feeling for someone.And he founds it in a regular person. About the "story of O" I can´t really tell what that is...It`s the only thing that makes me doubt.

This is my humble opinion.

I always thought Amie was the story of a girl that was killed by a rock thrown in a rash of violence in Ireland between the Orange and the Green (stones taught me how to fly...), or maybe a rock thrown at the wall that divides Northern Ireland from the rest of the world. I can't say for sure because I didn't write the song, but I'm fairly certain. It seems full of regret, a conversation one would have in the here-after.

I believe he says "amie come sit on my wall and read me a story of old." At least those are the lyrics on his website http://damienrice.com/lyrics.php?ref=109&trk=6

and tell it like you still believe...

Sounds to me like Damien might think that the senseless violence that ended her life may have caused Amie to lose her faith.

"...a change for you and me"

If I do remember right, it was only after Amie was struck that the violence subsided. Guilt is a powerful thing.

"Amie" is not the french for "beloved". It is the french for "friend".

Whatever the interpretation is of the song as a whole and the individual lyrics, I think we can all sufficiently say that you could delve into this as much as you want, and you still wont understand the full meaning. The song is very structured but still open to discussion and that's what I love (apart from the general sound of it). No matter who you are you can take something differently from it and let it affect you.

This song is incredibly deep and full of meanings but I think I agree with the above posts about how this song is about love and total acceptance of each other as people. But I do have something to add, before I saw that someone said that the spelling of "Amie" in the song translated to "friend" this is true but there's another interesting thing, the "e" at the end of the word indicates it's conjugated to female. This means that "Amie" could be refferring to a friend a who is female, though this doesn't directly translate to "girlfriend" as such, I think friendship is crucial to relationships, well those are my two cents. By the way thanks other people for posting as well, I've found all the comments really intruiging, fun to read and actually helpful to understanding this song which is quickly becoming one of my favourites.

God Bless, Mozes

This is such a beautiful song. I don't know what it is about is but it reminds me of being in love. That speciel careless feeling. All that matters is the one your with and love.

‘Story of O’ is a novel (if you could call it that) by the same name. It has nothing to with Shakespeare or Othello. When he says ‘read me the story of O’ I’m afraid he means that rather literally. Although the interpretation is layered, it can be interpreted as sexual foreplay or as a fodder for a heated intellectual argument.

I totally agree with your interpretation. Don't know if you have a big ladder of intensity in the vocabulary of relationship in English, but in French the word "amie" is very strong, I think stronger than "friend".You can tell everything to an "amie" and you know everything about her (her because "amie" with an E shows that it's a girl), as she knows everything about you. That's why I think it's the explanation of "Nothing unusual, nothing strange " : no surprise since you know each other perfectly. But it's very hard to keep this relationship intact because you grow, you change, you go away like " another soldier On the road to nowhere" I understand this song as a look on the past, when you remember (and regret) good things ( here the hopes of two young people about their futur "tell it like you still believe That the end of the century Brings a change for you and me ) and when you realize you've losted your best friends: "You know when you've found it, There's something I've learned 'Cause you feel it when they take it away"