So this is the new year
And I don't feel any different
The clanking of crystal
Explosions off in the distance (in the distance)
So this is the new year
And I have no resolutions
For self assigned penance
For problems with easy solutions
So everybody put your best suit or dress on
Let's make believe that we are wealthy for just this once
Lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn
As thirty dialogues bleed into one
I wish the world was flat like the old days
Then I could travel just by folding a map
No more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways
There'd be no distance that can hold us back
There'd be no distance that could hold us back
There'd be no distance that could hold us back
There'd be no distance that could hold us back
So this is the new year
So this is the new year
So this is the new year
So this is the new year
And I don't feel any different
The clanking of crystal
Explosions off in the distance (in the distance)
So this is the new year
And I have no resolutions
For self assigned penance
For problems with easy solutions
So everybody put your best suit or dress on
Let's make believe that we are wealthy for just this once
Lighting firecrackers off on the front lawn
As thirty dialogues bleed into one
I wish the world was flat like the old days
Then I could travel just by folding a map
No more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways
There'd be no distance that can hold us back
There'd be no distance that could hold us back
There'd be no distance that could hold us back
There'd be no distance that could hold us back
So this is the new year
So this is the new year
So this is the new year
So this is the new year
Lyrics submitted by heartattack
"The New Year" as written by Christopher Walla Benjamin Gibbard
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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I think many people are wrong about the "no distance that can hold us back" lines being about a romantic relationship. The song is consistently referring to more than one person ("clanking of crystal", "thirty dialogues bleed into one", the whole part about resolutions). Gibbard himself revealed that he spends so much time figuring out WHO to spend time with, that I think the "distance" is simply referring to his closest friends, and possibly family.
I know the overwhelming majority of this PERFECT album is about a relationship, but this song seems much more about his own alienation from society as a whole.
The part where Gibbard talks about resolutions, and calls them "self asssigned penance/for problems with easy solutions" is about how everything everyone wants to solve with their resolutions is so easy to solve but instead we have to condemn ourselves to these BS resolutions that we're never going to follow through on.
"So everybody put your best suit or dress on/Let's make believe that we are wealthy for just this once" is about how people are pretending that things are going to get better but they're all sort of fake. At the same time, it doesn't sound like they're being condemned for their fakeness, in fact, it sounds as though the singer is joining in. The song is more a sad acknowledgement of the way we have to celebrate as opposed to a cynical barrage on people's happiness.
The next stanza is a musing about how the singer wants closeness with people and that modern advances meant to bring people together just make them feel farther apart. This is very similar to what Gibbard talks about in the album's title song "Transatlanticism."
great lyrics and the music to match it..its got it all
"so this is the new year.
and i don't feel any different."
He sees past the crap about the new year being a time for change, to make yourself a better person. It is just an excuse to party.
Love this one.
"there'd be no distance that could hold us back"