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"
In my mind I'm crawling on your floor
Vomiting and defeated
Total absence of grace
Your reluctant voice saying
You decide your own fate but
I wear rubber bands round my soul
They keep me from crawling
And these rubber bands round my soul
They keep me from falling
In my repeated dreams
You stare at me with an empty gaze
You turn your back on me
And you search for more intriguing days
Loathing this
Controlling this
Let me get a hold of this so
I wear rubber bands round my soul
They keep me from crawling
And these rubber bands round my soul
They keep me from falling
So then when you are not in my dreams
And not in my mind
But we are at the same place at the same time
Rubber no longer holds
The borders of my soul
Vomiting and defeated
Total absence of grace
Your reluctant voice saying
You decide your own fate but
I wear rubber bands round my soul
They keep me from crawling
And these rubber bands round my soul
They keep me from falling
In my repeated dreams
You stare at me with an empty gaze
You turn your back on me
And you search for more intriguing days
Loathing this
Controlling this
Let me get a hold of this so
I wear rubber bands round my soul
They keep me from crawling
And these rubber bands round my soul
They keep me from falling
So then when you are not in my dreams
And not in my mind
But we are at the same place at the same time
Rubber no longer holds
The borders of my soul
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The Night We Met
Lord Huron
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Overall about difficult moments of disappointment and vulnerability. Having hope and longing, while remaining optimistic for the future. Encourages the belief that with each new morning there is a chance for things to improve.
The chorus offers a glimmer of optimism and a chance at a resolution and redemption in the future.
Captures the rollercoaster of emotions of feeling lost while loving someone who is not there for you, feeling let down and abandoned while waiting for a lover. Lost with no direction, "Now I'm up in the air with the rain in my hair, Nowhere to go, I can go anywhere"
The bridge shows signs of longing and a plea for companionship. The Lyrics express a desire for authentic connection and the importance of Loving someone just as they are. "Just in passing, I'm not asking. That you be anyone but you”
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.
Magical
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
How would you describe the feeling of being in love? For Ed Sheeran, the word is “Magical.” in HIS three-minute album opener, he makes an attempt to capture the beauty and delicacy of true love with words. He describes the magic of it all over a bright Pop song produced by Aaron Dessner.
Punchline
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
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.
jrlaffrey's vision of this song could explain a lot of things. But the way I viewed it, the song doesn't speak about any form of a happy ending. There's her heartbreak and that's all there is--how she lives through it, how she sees it and what it is to her.
"If my mind I'm carawling on your floor/Vomiting and defeated" might refer to how she feels before or as the relationship's falling apart. She's stuck trying to pick herself together and trying to make sense of the situation, sickened by everything. "Total absence of grace" registered, to me, as her begging not to be cast away, not to be rejected and left to herself. "Your reluctant voice saying/You decide your own fate" seems to reflect the other party, the one breaking up. He's torn to see her that way--still cares, we assume--and we know here that she's done something, inched the relationship forward into the abyss. He doesn't want to leave her like that, in the state she's in, but she's going to have to pick herself up, chose how she wants to live this.
She says she wears rubberbands around her soul; like anyone else, we have ways of coping with hard situations. She's trying to hold herself together with what little she has. You know it isn't much. It's a classic joke, fixing pipes with rubber bands, duct tape and paper clips.
The following verse, "In my repeated dreams/you stare at me with an empty gaze", could maybe be taken literally. Or it could be interpreted as her thinking about after the breakup, how she feels about what's ging to happen and how things will be between them. "You turn your back on me/and you search for more intriguing days". She knows he's going to turn around and go look for another girlfriend, someone else.
"Loathing this/controlling this/let me get a hold of this" seems to talk about the fact that it breaks her even more to think about how miserable she is over everything, how she hates that he still has so much control over her even if it's over, how she wishes she could just take her life in her hands and move on, too.
The last part talks about he seeing him afterwards. Either alone or with another girl; she says that when they're in the same room together, she can'T keep it up. She's able to keep herself together when they're apart, but if she sees him... she's done for. She'll come apart, and what little she has holding her togeter is just going to vanish and she'll be right back where she started.
...That's how I saw the song anyways.