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"
I won't see my dear friends as much
Male friends especially, I'll no longer be in touch
I'll change my hobbies to match yours
I'll stop reading my favorite books
I won't spend all this selfish time alone
I'll cater to you and hang on your every word
[Chorus]
I'll be subservient and spineless
I'll lick your boots as empty shells
I'll be opinionless and silent
I'll be the prettiest appendage to ever lose herself
I'll re-define self-sacrifice
Live my life as apologetic compromise
I'll know you need if I rock the boat
[Chorus]
I feel this, truly proclaimed will help the curbing of this tendency
I know this sharing of shame will ensure that I won't forget myself so easily
I'll be low-maintenance and agreeable
I will not talk about my dreams so much
I'll listen to you for hours, won't need anything
[Chorus: x2]
I feel this, truly proclaimed will help the curbing of this tendency
I know this sharing of shame will ensure that I won't forget myself so easily
Male friends especially, I'll no longer be in touch
I'll change my hobbies to match yours
I'll stop reading my favorite books
I won't spend all this selfish time alone
I'll cater to you and hang on your every word
[Chorus]
I'll be subservient and spineless
I'll lick your boots as empty shells
I'll be opinionless and silent
I'll be the prettiest appendage to ever lose herself
I'll re-define self-sacrifice
Live my life as apologetic compromise
I'll know you need if I rock the boat
[Chorus]
I feel this, truly proclaimed will help the curbing of this tendency
I know this sharing of shame will ensure that I won't forget myself so easily
I'll be low-maintenance and agreeable
I will not talk about my dreams so much
I'll listen to you for hours, won't need anything
[Chorus: x2]
I feel this, truly proclaimed will help the curbing of this tendency
I know this sharing of shame will ensure that I won't forget myself so easily
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I think this song is saying how so many people become "spineless" when trying to impress someone, for example a boyfriend. It's trying to say "I'll become who you want me to be, I'll change all my opinions and beliefs, and I'll be no trouble for you". I like this song, because I've seen this kind of thing happen to so many girls when trying to impress a guy. They pretend they're something they're not.
I always thought this song was a sarcastic response to a boyfriend. Maybe someone very jealous who didn\'t like her having other friends. So this song shows him what he\'s really asking for an \"appendage\".
The part where she sings:
I feel this, truly proclaimed, will help the curbing of this tendency I know this sharing of shame will ensure that I won't forget myself so easily
Is very confessional. She saying that by laying out her tendency to submit in a relationship and suppress her personality to avoid rocking the boat, that it will help her to not do it. She doesn't want to lose herself and give up who she is or what she wants just to make the other person in the relationship happy, but it seems she's done it in the past.
Yeah, I agree with all of you - spot on. It's very very sarcastic - like making a general comment on how girls behave but also one to a boyfriend - she doesn't mean she'll do all these things for him - she's in fact saying like hell I'm gonna sacrifice what being me means to suit you! She's mocking the fact that some boys seriously expect this of girls
Has anyone considered this song as a master vs. slave theme? I think it looks like that pretty much...
Do you mean this in a sexual sense...? I'm pretty sure that's not what she's implying. I think she's just referring to having changed everything about herself to cater to/please a partner(s) in past relationships, but that now, she's refusing to keep doing so and instead going to just "be herself"<br /> <br /> I feel like I get the overall meaning of the song, but the reason I came across this site is because I'm wondering what the hell "lick your boots as empty shell" means???
EXACTLY it.
Yup I agree. She's being sarcastic and facetious.
THIS is the most direct lyrical address of co-dependence (look up Pia Mellody, Ann Wilson Schaef, Melody Beattie and James Rapson, as well as Timmen Cermak) in a romantic framework in her library. (Did she read Mellody's =Facing Love Addiction= or Schaef's =Escape from Initimacy?= Maybe.)
Al's been down this road before ("Not the Doctor," "Precious Illusions"), but never so bluntly. Perhaps she's, err, frustrated with her own (or others) apathy?