When you're smoking tin foil in the morning
It's gonna be a cold day
When you're keeping everything inside you
It can only hurt you

Unrelated sounds
The sun will shine again
You hold it in your hands

This land is a young land, let it stay that way
Its pollution only turns you into
Something you don't want to see in the water
A reflection of them that you receive

You don't own the sun
And the sun won't shine again
So maybe you're all in love
With aluminium

The cling and a clang is the metal in my head when I walk
I hear a sort of, this tinging noise
Cling clang, the cling clang
So many things happen while walking
The metal in my head clangs and clings as I walk
Freaks my balance out
So the natural thought is just clogged up, totally clogged up
So we need to unplug these dams and make the natural flow

It sort of freaks me out
We need to unplug the dams
You cannot stop the natural flow of thought with a cling and a clang

And wake me up again until
We're aluminium
You hold it in your hands
The sun will shine again
The sun will shine again
The sun will shine again
The sun will shine again
The sun will shine again


Lyrics submitted by forgetmyname, edited by GLaDOSexe

Stop the Dams Lyrics as written by Jamie Hewlett Damon Albarn

Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Lyrics powered by LyricFind

Stop The Dams song meanings
Add Your Thoughts

32 Comments

sort form View by:
  • 0
    General Comment

    It's an anti-drug song. Period. "When you're smoking tinfoil in the morning, it's gonna be colder day." Junkies often use tinfoil to smoke crack and whatnot. Drugs are like Dams, plugging up our Rivers, or minds. We need to unplug the dams, as in, quit using drugs.

    23Tonalityon January 12, 2013   Link

Add your thoughts

Log in now to tell us what you think this song means.

Don’t have an account? Create an account with SongMeanings to post comments, submit lyrics, and more. It’s super easy, we promise!

More Featured Meanings

Album art
Fast Car
Tracy Chapman
"Fast car" is kind of a continuation of Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run." It has all the clawing your way to a better life, but in this case the protagonist never makes it with her love; in fact she is dragged back down by him. There is still an amazing amount of hope and will in the lyrics; and the lyrics themselve rank and easy five. If only music was stronger it would be one of those great radio songs that you hear once a week 20 years after it was released. The imagery is almost tear-jerking ("City lights lay out before us", "Speeds so fast felt like I was drunk"), and the idea of starting from nothing and just driving and working and denigrating yourself for a chance at being just above poverty, then losing in the end is just painful and inspiring at the same time.
Album art
Dreamwalker
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.
Album art
Magical
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.
Album art
Head > Heels
Ed Sheeran
“Head > Heels” is a track that aims to capture what it feels like to experience romance that exceeds expectations. Ed Sheeran dedicates his album outro to a lover who has blessed him with a unique experience that he seeks to describe through the song’s nuanced lyrics.
Album art
Plastic Bag
Ed Sheeran
“Plastic Bag” is a song about searching for an escape from personal problems and hoping to find it in the lively atmosphere of a Saturday night party. Ed Sheeran tells the story of his friend and the myriad of troubles he is going through. Unable to find any solutions, this friend seeks a last resort in a party and the vanity that comes with it. “I overthink and have trouble sleepin’ / All purpose gone and don’t have a reason / And there’s no doctor to stop this bleedin’ / So I left home and jumped in the deep end,” Ed Sheeran sings in verse one. He continues by adding that this person is feeling the weight of having disappointed his father and doesn’t have any friends to rely on in this difficult moment. In the second verse, Ed sings about the role of grief in his friend’s plight and his dwindling faith in prayer. “Saturday night is givin’ me a reason to rely on the strobe lights / The lifeline of a promise in a shot glass, and I’ll take that / If you’re givin’ out love from a plastic bag,” Ed sings on the chorus, as his friend turns to new vices in hopes of feeling better.