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"
Would you leave me alone, my sweet Simone?
If I lay on my back down below on the track
Remember the night, how I'd wade in the water
Be counting the stars and starting me over
They shine your eyes
Gonna make me rain, gonna make you rise
When I'm gone baby, don't you forget it
I did all I did just to get through to heaven
Got no mother, she can't find me
Got no father, he gonna blind me
Little girls might twitch at the way I itch
But when I burn it's a son of a bitch
Hold on, hold on
Hold on, all misery gone
Hold on, hold on
Hold on, all misery gone
Make me, shake me, bleed all over
Going down to the ground in deep black water
Let's ride, suicide
Say what you want but you make it, don't lie
Don't let me down, baby, on a bed of hard thistle
Gonna die when I drown just to have it away
Those lies in my eyes
Push you down in the river till you testify
My mother, she don't know me
And my father, he can't own me
Little girls might twitch at the way I itch
But the way I burn is a son of a bitch
Make me, shake me, deep black water
Gonna run through my pain, gonna make it rain
Baby I'm gone, so don't you forget it
I did all I did just to get through to heaven
Hold on, hold on
Hold on, all misery gone
Hold on, hold on
Hold on, all misery gone
If you could hear me love
I'd tell to you my story
To you and only you
So love that you might save me
I woke up from a dream
I woke up, I was crying
I saw an animal
With eyes like mine on fire
I saw my own true love
She was there selling flowers
Has she forget-me-nots
White lilies or red roses?
And then from far away
Who's that I see come riding?
Upon a pale white horse
Come riding fast as lightning
Oh, if you can hear me love
I'd tell you my story
So that you might save me
So that you might save me
So that you might save me
So that you might save me
If I lay on my back down below on the track
Remember the night, how I'd wade in the water
Be counting the stars and starting me over
They shine your eyes
Gonna make me rain, gonna make you rise
When I'm gone baby, don't you forget it
I did all I did just to get through to heaven
Got no mother, she can't find me
Got no father, he gonna blind me
Little girls might twitch at the way I itch
But when I burn it's a son of a bitch
Hold on, hold on
Hold on, all misery gone
Hold on, hold on
Hold on, all misery gone
Make me, shake me, bleed all over
Going down to the ground in deep black water
Let's ride, suicide
Say what you want but you make it, don't lie
Don't let me down, baby, on a bed of hard thistle
Gonna die when I drown just to have it away
Those lies in my eyes
Push you down in the river till you testify
My mother, she don't know me
And my father, he can't own me
Little girls might twitch at the way I itch
But the way I burn is a son of a bitch
Make me, shake me, deep black water
Gonna run through my pain, gonna make it rain
Baby I'm gone, so don't you forget it
I did all I did just to get through to heaven
Hold on, hold on
Hold on, all misery gone
Hold on, hold on
Hold on, all misery gone
If you could hear me love
I'd tell to you my story
To you and only you
So love that you might save me
I woke up from a dream
I woke up, I was crying
I saw an animal
With eyes like mine on fire
I saw my own true love
She was there selling flowers
Has she forget-me-nots
White lilies or red roses?
And then from far away
Who's that I see come riding?
Upon a pale white horse
Come riding fast as lightning
Oh, if you can hear me love
I'd tell you my story
So that you might save me
So that you might save me
So that you might save me
So that you might save me
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This song seemingly tackles the methods of deception those who manipulate others use to get victims to follow their demands, as well as diverting attention away from important issues. They'll also use it as a means to convince people to hate or kill others by pretending acts of terrorism were committed by the enemy when the acts themselves were done by the masters of control to promote discrimination and hate. It also reinforces the idea that these manipulative forces operate in various locations, infiltrating everyday life without detection, and propagate any and everywhere.
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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,
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.
I take this as a man who's direly depressed (as to the reference to laying on the track-railroad tracks) who's awaiting his destruction. He's deep in deep black water and as he tells his story to this girl, he's crying more and more drowning in this water of depression as she just continues to rise up. He's trying his best to become less depressed "I did all I did just to get through to heaven", where heaven is the peak of happiness. "Little girls might twitch at the way I itch" he continues to live in depression which is just the way he happens to go "..but when I burn it's a son of a bitch" and the more the pain hurts, the more it kills him.
He's trying to hold on until the misery's gone from the relationship.
The reference to water is a sense of suffocation, deep black water, as of drowning in his own depression. He's in such pain he's pleading to this girl not to let him down.. But then she does and wishes she was the one he drowned to make her testify but instead pleads to be shaken into the deep black water to finally drown himself and be done with the pain she brought on to him.
<i>[The following paragraph is about the next song, <a href="songmeanings.net/songs/view/3530822107858708038/">Flowers</a>; I split the lyrics - Mod.]</i>
He wants to tell this girl his story so that she could save him after all the pain she's brought him to. Dreams are made through things we see and absorb during the day, including our subconscious, so the reference to this dream, "I woke up I was crying. I saw an animal, with eyes like mine on fire" he's eyes are burning from all the bullshit lies he's gotten and is in rage. He believes that their relationship could be like a sullen flower and grow. It would be sullen of course because it takes time to get over her lies and be content. The dream continues, "And then from far away, who's that I see come riding? Upon a pale white horse, come riding fast as lightning" She comes on this beautiful white (which stands for pure and good) horse, which means she comes back and saves him from drowning in this pain. But this is all just what he dreams for.
If only she could hear his story so that she'd might save him.
They look pretty right to me. Good job. Need to get the title changed tho - it's All Misery Flowers.
Best song on the album.
About giving up and drowning yourself I reckon.
the lyrics are unbelievable. it sounds like something william blake would write. it's nice to know there is some talent left in the world
This song reminds me a lot of Brother Justin's storyline in the show, "Carnivale," down to all the religious imagery, the parental problems, the apocalyptic imagery, and the true love who's a flower seller (forget-me-nots, lilies, roses, and....irises, perhaps?).
I think it's more about drugs than depression. Though of course, drug use/ abuse can cause depression.
"I did all I did just to get through to heaven" being high can be seen as a heaven
"Little girls might twitch at the way I itch" itch of drug craving or withdrawl
"If you could hear me love I'd tell to you my story To you and only you So love that you might save me" - she might save him from drug addiction
some of the lines strike my ears as being there primarily because they rhyme nicely:
"Would you leave me alone, my sweet Simone"
and
"Let's ride, suicide"
I actually don't like the use of the word "suicide" in the song. It sounds flippant to me