The song lyrics were written by the band Van Halen, as they were asked to write a song for the 1979 movie "Over the Edge" starring Matt Dillon. The movie (and the lyrics, although more obliquely) are about bored, rebellious youth with nothing better to do than get into trouble. If you see the movie, these lyrics will make more sense. It's a great movie if you grew up in the 70s/80s you'll definitely remember some of these characters from your own life. Fun fact, after writing the song, Van Halen decided not to let the movie use it.
How low are you willing to go
Before you reach all your selfish goals
Punch line after punch line
Leaving us sore, leaving us sore
Absorbed in your ill hustling
Feeding a monster, just feeding a monster
Invasion after invasion
This means war, this means war
Someday you'll be up to your knees
In the shit you see
All the gullible that you mislead
Won't be up or it
Where to, will you relocate
Now that it's war, now that it's war
Before you reach all your selfish goals
Punch line after punch line
Leaving us sore, leaving us sore
Absorbed in your ill hustling
Feeding a monster, just feeding a monster
Invasion after invasion
This means war, this means war
Someday you'll be up to your knees
In the shit you see
All the gullible that you mislead
Won't be up or it
Where to, will you relocate
Now that it's war, now that it's war
Lyrics submitted by chanyinkeen, edited by Lyssavirus
How Low Lyrics as written by Hugh Thomas Morgan Brian Andrew Leiser
Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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"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"
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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.
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.
"this next song is about mindless consumerism...."
jose gonzales at a show in Milwaukee, spring of '08. makes sense to me.
this is just my take on that comment and his lyrics. we're the monsters being fed. we'll be up to our knees, quite literally, in the pollution that is a result of "mindless consumerism". where will we relocate once we've irreparably fucked up earth, where will we go?
i don't hear shit you seed or shitty seas or shifting seas.<br /> i hear "shifty scene".<br /> <br /> shifty. deceptive. consumerism makes sense.<br /> <br /> think of how many people buy pointless shit trying to make themselves happy because they lack some kind of emotional comfort.<br /> companies advertise their bullshit items trying to make people think if they buy it, they'll live happily ever after or something.<br /> think of all the infomercials on tv for "shifty" products.<br /> "this item changed my life!" - yeah right.<br /> people are going to keep buying stupid crap trying to fill the void.. and it ends up making people materialisticly (that is so not a word) greedy.<br /> so people buy more and more, companies make more and more.. people keep trying to fill the void - money ends up running the world even more so than it already does.<br /> people still can't find the happiness that they're looking for so they continue buying and buying and buying until one day they've fucked everything up for themselves and they're so far in a hole they can't get out. <br /> <br /> materialistic happiness is fake. <br /> you're fucked in the end anyway.
sometimes i think he says "you'll be up to your knees in the shifting seas" don't know though.
Anyways, this song points us in the general direction of the entire album. Illusion, selfishness, and the pointless of human life. "It's in our nature" reflects the general inability of humanity to escape these hindrances because of the way we are constructed biologically, and the problem of having to deal with others of the same sort.
I do believe, as I've said in other posts relating to songs from this album, that Jose is trying to lay it all on the table so we can see the situation and perhaps cause us to realize how we manage to do more harm than is necessary sometimes while living with such realizations.
Even though the pointlessness and impossibility of conclusions and complete peace is present in our lives, we can still carry on with a little more grace if we reassess and come back in touch with the consequences of various behaviors and actions.
"this next song is about mindless consumerism...."<br /> <br /> jose gonzales at a show in Milwaukee, spring of '08.<br /> makes sense to me.<br /> <br /> this is just my take on that comment and his lyrics.<br /> we're the monsters being fed.<br /> we'll be up to our knees, quite literally, in the pollution that is a result of "mindless consumerism".<br /> where will we relocate once we've irreparably fucked up earth, where will we go?
whoooops. did mean to post as a reply.
haha. <br /> and i meant didn't..
Win.
shitty seas* i think thats what it is.
really? NO one has commented on how annoying it is that EVERY lyrics site with this song on it says "shit you seed"?
shit you seed?
no.
i love googling it and seeing the hundreds of people who've reposted it to various blogs and social networking sites this way, too.
anyway, beautiful song. mindless consumerism, indeed.
sorry.<br /> <br /> inseed*
there's something about the way he says "someday you'll be up to your knees, in the shit you see" that is so stark and chillingly beautiful
Beautiful way of saying, "Bring it on, bitch!"
It's about doing things without seeing the external effects. He refers to large companies and stupid countries. His words :) He tells it in an video of it and I think it makes sense.