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"
A last time for everything
My head is burning inside
Once again they've found me
Their swirling voices fill my ears
Leave this all behind you
Screaming their way into my mind
Leaving everything you know behind
I'm in fast-forward and you are in rewind
The song plays when life and death align
The shaking seems so still
When you're shaking as well
In time we all crossoveralive inside our death
Fear escapes alongside of my breath
A last time for everything
Time stops for one
But not for another
Sever the great strings of the earth
The fear is what keeps us here
My head is burning inside
Once again they've found me
Their swirling voices fill my ears
Leave this all behind you
Screaming their way into my mind
Leaving everything you know behind
I'm in fast-forward and you are in rewind
The song plays when life and death align
The shaking seems so still
When you're shaking as well
In time we all crossoveralive inside our death
Fear escapes alongside of my breath
A last time for everything
Time stops for one
But not for another
Sever the great strings of the earth
The fear is what keeps us here
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More Featured Meanings
The Night We Met
Lord Huron
Lord Huron
Gentle Hour
Yo La Tengo
Yo La Tengo
This song was originally written by a guy called Peter Gutteridge. He was one of the founders of the "Dunedin Sound" a musical scene in the south of New Zealand in the early 80s. From there it was covered by "The Clean" one of the early bands of that scene (he had originally been a member of in it's early days, writing a couple of their best early songs). The Dunedin sound, and the Clean became popular on american college radio in the mid to late 80s. I guess Yo La Tengo heard that version.
Great version of a great song,
Amazing
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran tells a story of unsuccessfully trying to feel “Amazing.” This track is about the being weighed down by emotional stress despite valiant attempts to find some positivity in the situation. This track was written by Ed Sheeran from the perspective of his friend. From the track, we see this person fall deeper into the negative thoughts and slide further down the path of mental torment with every lyric.
Page
Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran
There aren’t many things that’ll hurt more than giving love a chance against your better judgement only to have your heart crushed yet again. Ed Sheeran tells such a story on “Page.” On this track, he is devastated to have lost his lover and even more saddened by the feeling that he may never move on from this.
Plastic Bag
Ed Sheeran
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.
the album's "killing time until it's time to die" deals with perverse motivations behind euthanasia and suicide in our modern, medically dominated culture. "we were born into this curse," i.e. our lives are woven together with tragedy and so therefore, you can't do anything to solve the situation. "there are no controls..." The Fear is a social album, emphasizing especially the modern dependence on technology for security, even spiritual security. That's what the "great strings" are. They are the technologies by which we attempt to control our fates. To sever them is to yield up a vulnerable existence to some transcendent power. The fear of that vulnerability is the very thing that prevents us to destroying ourselves in suicide, in war, in euthanasia. The so-called "culture of death" is a culture of insecurity, of incompatibility with basic human existence. Greek Mythology names the three sister-Fates as the beings that determine the times of our birth, the length of our life, and the time of our death. Our lives are strings, handmade by their care. That's why "time stops for one but not for another" but "in time we all cross-over". Divinity can weave a pattern from our lives if we are willing, willing to sever the strings that we make ourselves, in a futile attempt to keep what will not keep.
Was there any significance to the bass getting very powerful at the end and the quality of the music just sounded....pixelated. hm? was there a reason for that or was it just to close the album?
I don't know, I'm sure there is but I can't think of it right now, but it's possibly the best end to any album ever.
I think the increase in bass was just to build up to the climatic ending for when it sounds like a fuse is blown. They got the idea from an older band. I think that band held a heat lamp up to the fuses in the recording studio to get the fuses to blow and get the cutoff ending. I'm pretty sure Zao's chaotic ending was just Mr Albini working his magic.