The song 'Fortnight' by Taylor Swift and Post Malone tells a story about strong feelings, complicated relationships, and secret wishes. It talks about love, betrayal, and wanting someone who doesn't feel the same. The word 'fortnight' shows short-lived happiness and guilty pleasures, leading to sadness. It shows how messy relationships can be and the results of hiding emotions. “I was supposed to be sent away / But they forgot to come and get me,” she kickstarts the song in the first verse with lines suggesting an admission to a hospital for people with mental illnesses. She goes in the verse admitting her lover is the reason why she is like this. In the chorus, she sings about their time in love and reflects on how he has now settled with someone else. “I took the miracle move-on drug, the effects were temporary / And I love you, it’s ruining my life,” on the second verse she details her struggles to forget about him and the negative effects of her failure. “Thought of callin’ ya, but you won’t pick up / ‘Nother fortnight lost in America,” Post Malone sings in the outro.
What solace lies in the arms of fate
-The ill embrace of uncertainty
When did I leave this in other hands
-To be pulled down at chance
Ripped away by destiny-claws
Am I another of fate's possessions
Dwelling the lie of freedom
Just another straw pulled at random
Reclaimed by deceiving time
A silent judgement I can not overrule
Drawn back into the origin-vortex
Uprooted and ground to dust
Retracted into anti-existence
A magnet repelled by life's polarity
Denied the self control of fate
we flow suspended in semi-life
Until the ever imminent day
when oblivion claims our breath
Nowhere indefinitely
Not dead, not alive
Existence-patterns ripped of symmetry
as will and fate divide
Have I appeased the gods of fate
Am I allowed another day
Must I die to escape
the scanning eyes of death
-The ill embrace of uncertainty
When did I leave this in other hands
-To be pulled down at chance
Ripped away by destiny-claws
Am I another of fate's possessions
Dwelling the lie of freedom
Just another straw pulled at random
Reclaimed by deceiving time
A silent judgement I can not overrule
Drawn back into the origin-vortex
Uprooted and ground to dust
Retracted into anti-existence
A magnet repelled by life's polarity
Denied the self control of fate
we flow suspended in semi-life
Until the ever imminent day
when oblivion claims our breath
Nowhere indefinitely
Not dead, not alive
Existence-patterns ripped of symmetry
as will and fate divide
Have I appeased the gods of fate
Am I allowed another day
Must I die to escape
the scanning eyes of death
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Fortnight
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift
Light Up The Sky
Van Halen
Van Halen
The song lyrics were written by the band Van Halen, as they were asked to write a song for the 1979 movie "Over the Edge" starring Matt Dillon. The movie (and the lyrics, although more obliquely) are about bored, rebellious youth with nothing better to do than get into trouble. If you see the movie, these lyrics will make more sense. It's a great movie if you grew up in the 70s/80s you'll definitely remember some of these characters from your own life. Fun fact, after writing the song, Van Halen decided not to let the movie use it.
The Night We Met
Lord Huron
Lord Huron
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"
Dreamwalker
Silent Planet
Silent Planet
I think much like another song “Anti-Matter” (that's also on the same album as this song), this one is also is inspired by a horrifying van crash the band experienced on Nov 3, 2022. This, much like the other track, sounds like it's an extension what they shared while huddled in the wreckage, as they helped frontman Garrett Russell stem the bleeding from his head wound while he was under the temporary effects of a concussion. The track speaks of where the mind goes at the most desperate & desolate of times, when it just about slips away to all but disconnect itself, and the aftermath.
No Surprises
Radiohead
Radiohead
Same ideas expressed in Fitter, Happier are expressed in this song. We're told to strive for some sort of ideal life, which includes getting a good job, being kind to everyone, finding a partner, getting married, having a couple kids, living in a quiet neighborhood in a nice big house, etc. But in Fitter, Happier the narrator(?) realizes that it's incredibly robotic to live this life. People are being used by those in power "like a pig in a cage on antibiotics"--being pacified with things like new phones and cool gadgets and houses while being sucked dry. On No Surprises, the narrator is realizing how this life is killing him slowly. In the video, his helmet is slowly filling up with water, drowning him. But he's so complacent with it. This is a good summary of the song. This boring, "perfect" life foisted upon us by some higher powers (not spiritual, but political, economic, etc. politicians and businessmen, perhaps) is not the way to live. But there is seemingly no way out but death. He'd rather die peacefully right now than live in this cage. While our lives are often shielded, we're in our own protective bubbles, or protective helmets like the one Thom wears, if we look a little harder we can see all the corruption, lies, manipulation, etc. that is going on in the world, often run by huge yet nearly invisible organizations, corporations, and 'leaders'. It's a very hopeless song because it reflects real life.
i think you guys are both way off. it's about death, and how we don't have control over when we're going to die, it's completely random, like straws being pulled. when you get the short one, you die, are "ground into dust," "reclaimed by deceiving time"
big one: "drawn back into the origin vortex"...origin being, where we came from, which is...we don't really know, an origin vortex, as he says.
the lyrics are constantly repeating ideas of death and not having control. it's pretty obvious.
@sortilegus definitely gives the impression of someone upset that they have no "control" over their death (and perhaps subsequently their life?) Sounds like the narrator is terrified of death, not only because of it's apparent randomness but perhaps also what awaits them after life.
I think that this song is about not being able to change where we go, as if everything has already been chaotically decided.
And if fate governs over everything in our life, people lose the will to change things for themselves.
"Must I die to escape the scanning eyes of death?" I think that says it all right there.
I have to wonder, though, the theme is so depressing, so what's the deal with the song's transformation at the end? Maybe it's death gently embracing us? Or maybe it symbolizes the acceptance and understanding that we, as humans, are completely insignificant, and being okay with it.
@Ampulex_Compressa perhaps as you suggest at the end ... embracing / accepting that it is better to concern yourself with living than death.
A very strong song.
I think the beautifully harmonic part at the end of the song could represent the essential sadness and grief that one would experience upon realizing that death is all, we are nothing, we came from nothing and whatever actions we make it means nothing. The invevitable nothingness at the end makes us futile.
To me, this part of the song indeed sound like tears falling.
I think the above poster somehow confused Meshuggah with Morrissey.
Anyway, going off of what's already been said: humanity is governed by the all-encompassing force known as Chance. Fate is arbitrary and indifferent, and cares not for human concerns. Our lives are subject to "destiny-claws"; we are torn from existence as if merely a straw pulled at random.
The anguish expressed over this sense powerlessness reminds me of a great quote from Stephen Crane's short story "The Open Boat":
"When it occurs to a man that nature does not regard him as important, and that she feels she would not maim the universe by disposing of him, he at first wishes to throw bricks at the temple, and he hates deeply the fact that there are no bricks and no temples."
Our rage is impotent; we are utterly unable to control or escape Fate/Nature/Chance.
I think sortilegus has it right on the money. This song is about how death can hit us at anytime and how we have no control over it. This might be a personal account about how frustrating it is to not know when it's going to happen and how noone ever chooses to be here to be subject to such a cruel situation. This is song ties in great to the whole connection of the album. We as humans are Nothing (the title of the album) and each song shows us a different chapter of why that is. Tomas Haake is a genius at showing us our own human defects. This album dives into the subects of addictions, emotions, mind, and sickness. Meshuggah bleeds misanthropy and I love it.
I think this song basically says:
If we are all destined to our own fate, then life is meaningless without control over ones own life, the will to go on is diminished
I think all meshuggah songs give off the whole "your world is collapsing around you and you cant do anything about it" vibe, its pretty powerful. especially in "I" and both "in death" songs
or
"you are falling into a void of nothingness, and as you reach for the walls of this solemn well in a pitiful attempt to escape your own fate, your hands only shrivel and turn against you, if only to make you feel even more hopeless than before."
This song kicks all forms of ass!! I dont know exactly what it means but I think it could be about someone who's life takes a huge fall for the worst out of nowhere(as if fate picked him out at random, hence the title of the song) and it never seems to get better
I agree with you Korn, that the song is basically a guy having a real bad string of bad luck and he's practically at wits end wanting to know what he can do to stop bad things from happening...
At 3:05 the song transforms beautifully into a graceful butterfly...Ok bad analogy, but at this point it seems the melody gives a hint that he finally did find something to turn his life around...
Yeah, now that I read more into the lyrics I see that your meaning sounds better than mine.