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"
One day my skeletons appeared
And I knew where they were coming from
Hung by a rope I volunteered
And I never thought the day would come
Some boundaries I once overstepped
Shortcomings I must now accept
Secrets that could not be kept
I wish my skeletons had slept
You're not being honest really
You're really not and ought to be
Take an honest look at yourself
Try a little honesty
To further add to my demise
Demons never exorcised
Appeared before my very eyes
To no one's just my own suprise
A scenario just so surreal
Demons once so well concealed
Were now throughout my whole ordeal
So real and painfully revealed
You're not being honest really
You're really not and ought to be
Take an honest look at yourself
Try a little honesty
You're not being honest really
And honestly you've never been
You ought to take a look at yourself
Let the honesty begin
In flew the accusations, the razor-toothed insinuations
Each ghost my own creation, and every monster my invention
Beasts they came to burden, hell I let whatever stirred in
And I couldn't get a word in, at this unearthly intervention
They let up when they knew they got through
They knew I'd never be the same
With little left to say or do
They left as quickly as they came
The life was scared half out of me
Some way somehow I survived
A part of me was proud of me
The day my skeletons arrived
You're not being honest really
You're really not and ought to be
Take an honest look at yourself
Try a little honesty,try a little honesty
And I knew where they were coming from
Hung by a rope I volunteered
And I never thought the day would come
Some boundaries I once overstepped
Shortcomings I must now accept
Secrets that could not be kept
I wish my skeletons had slept
You're not being honest really
You're really not and ought to be
Take an honest look at yourself
Try a little honesty
To further add to my demise
Demons never exorcised
Appeared before my very eyes
To no one's just my own suprise
A scenario just so surreal
Demons once so well concealed
Were now throughout my whole ordeal
So real and painfully revealed
You're not being honest really
You're really not and ought to be
Take an honest look at yourself
Try a little honesty
You're not being honest really
And honestly you've never been
You ought to take a look at yourself
Let the honesty begin
In flew the accusations, the razor-toothed insinuations
Each ghost my own creation, and every monster my invention
Beasts they came to burden, hell I let whatever stirred in
And I couldn't get a word in, at this unearthly intervention
They let up when they knew they got through
They knew I'd never be the same
With little left to say or do
They left as quickly as they came
The life was scared half out of me
Some way somehow I survived
A part of me was proud of me
The day my skeletons arrived
You're not being honest really
You're really not and ought to be
Take an honest look at yourself
Try a little honesty,try a little honesty
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The Night We Met
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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.
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Great version of a great song,
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“Blue” is a song about a love that is persisting in the discomfort of the person experiencing the emotion. Ed Sheeran reflects on love lost, and although he wishes his former partner find happiness, he cannot but admit his feelings are still very much there. He expresses the realization that he might never find another on this stringed instrumental by Aaron Dessner.
Punchline
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Ed Sheeran sings about missing his former partner and learning important life lessons in the process on “Punchline.” This track tells a story of battling to get rid of emotions for a former lover, whom he now realized might not have loved him the same way. He’s now caught between accepting that fact and learning life lessons from it and going back to beg her for another chance.
The song is about the singer's past and secrets catching up with him and the memories leaving him in a sad state. He had to face the challenges that these memories brought, or his skeletons (referring to the term "a skeleton in the closet," meaning a secret) and unexorcised demons (referring to inner demons, a common saying for inner turmoil) would drag him down.
Oh, and the closing is telling people to be honest with themselves now so they won't realize, surprisingly, that they don't like where they've trodden.
Sorry, the song is catchy, but he says honest WAY too much...