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"
Time flies
Time crawls
Like an insect
Up and down the walls
The light pours out of me
The light pours out of me
The conspiracy
Of silence ought
To revolutionize
My thought
The light pours out of me
The light pours out of me
The cold light of day
Pours out of me
Leaving me black
And so healthy
The light pours out of me
The light pours out of me
It jerks out of me
Like blood
In this still life
Heartbeats of love
The light pours out of me
The light pours out of me
Time crawls
Like an insect
Up and down the walls
The light pours out of me
The light pours out of me
The conspiracy
Of silence ought
To revolutionize
My thought
The light pours out of me
The light pours out of me
The cold light of day
Pours out of me
Leaving me black
And so healthy
The light pours out of me
The light pours out of me
It jerks out of me
Like blood
In this still life
Heartbeats of love
The light pours out of me
The light pours out of me
Lyrics submitted by nightandday
The Light Pours out of Me Lyrics as written by John Alexander Mcgeoch Howard Devoto
Lyrics © DOMINO PUBLISHING COMPANY, Universal Music Publishing Group, Mute Song Limited
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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song with the most recognizable music. i see it as resembling some sort of paranoia or something that's making one week and an overall dark person by draining "the light" out of them. great, great song.
For me this song is about the deletion of a person, almost an erasing of the soul. As all energy to illuminate the world is depleted like a battery, he is left in a state of darkness that is a "healthy" state as he no longer is conflicted by what he perceives. As time passes the individual becomes increasingly a being living in darkness, and the more the light leaves him the nearer death he becomes as his life force is drained. He becomes increasingly numb and loses the ability to love as heart beats pumps the bleed out. Devoto despairs that life is draining of him of life itself and this is because he is deeply unhappy with the society in which he lives.
I agree with @Retroperiscopes interpretation. I wanted to add that the line about the light being drained, seemingly paradoxically leaving him "black" and "healthy" does make a lot of sense, if you think of it in terms of being leeched dry, a bloodletting. He pronounces "healthy" with emphasis on the "HELL," as a Lydonesque pun, which reinforces the message that the situation is actually hellish, barbaric and anything but healthy. That's how we view bloodletting via leeches now, but at one point this was widely accepted medical practice. The health effects of being in toxic environments are widely acknowledged now. It's common sense. PTSD hadn't yet been included in the DSM until a year after this song was released.
I love this song, especially on the live album 'Play' which shows how musically great this band was. Can't imagine why there there's only on comment on this song. I reckon the previous comment nails it, but what is meant by "in this still life, heart beats up love'?
Brilliant song, especially the Real Life album version. I suppose it's about loss of enthusiasm/youthful naivety and embarking on the slippery slope to world-weariness. I'm not sure. Perhaps the great man himself will tell us.