Head Rolls Off

Scott says, "It’s not about relationships – just dying and leaving something behind."

Pop Cap asks, "Is it about atheism?"

Scott says, "Yeah, but it doesn’t matter so much, you can still believe in that [God] - what matters most is what you do whilst you are alive rather than what you do when you are dead... nothing to be done then!"

:]

I really see this as a rejection of religion (or at least Christianity), but an assertion that being an atheist doesn't mean you're amoral. He declares himself an unbeliever in the first verse "Jesus is just a Spanish boy's name / How come one man got so much fame? / To any me [I don't think it's "to enemy", that doesn't make much sense), it's pointless to anybody / That doesn't have faith / Give me the cloth and I'll wipe my face"

Then later on he talks about the house in the clouds and God and all his dead friends - it sounds to me like he's ridiculing the whole notion of an afterlife! Even the line "So you can burn me" seems like a provocation, kind of like "OK, so I'm a heretic but what are you going to do? Burn me at the stake?"

But the rest of the song is about how you shouldn't need religion, or a rulebook handed down by some supposedly perfect source to tell you how to act. We're all responsible for our own actions - we should understand that what we each do has an effect on everyone else and we should take ownership for our own actions, not justify them in the name of some mystical greater plan.

Great song. I think the meaning is pretty straightforward-- Eventually we all die and turn into the same stuff, life will move on without us, but while we are here we can still do some good. It comes off to me as a sort of combination of optimism and agnosticism, and it works better than you'd expect.

i thought 'so you can burn me' is about him being cremated,

'Cause we'll all be the same, the same way, Dirt in someone's eyes cried down the drain'

• we'll all be cremated, we'll all end up as ashes, the dirt that is cried down the drain is the ashes of a dead body, which is cried down the drain becuse of people close to him mourning his death.

i'm probably wrong, it's just what i thought, anyone else see what im getting at? x

I think it's similar in nature to the idiom "from dust were ye made, and dust ye shall be". Simon and Garfunkel's Sparrow had that lyric, in the moving song.

"and it's not mod at all" -> "and it's not morbid 't all"

"dirt in someone's eyes flies down the drain" -> "dirt in someone's eye that's cried down the drain"

"and god's got his best friends round" -> "and god's got his dead friends 'round"

I think you can hear what you want but I think the lines, "I believe in a house in the clouds, and God's got his dead friends round" go against the concept of agnosticism. But that's not even the true focus of the song...

The idea and the hope is that while we are here, while we're alive, we can have a positive effect on the earth and on the whole of existence.

this is one of the best songs of 2008 and it's only got 4 comments? depressing

Five now! Just heard about this band for the first time about an hour ago and I've been trawling myspace and youtube. This is just a superb song. Didn't really catch the meaning on first listen but very obvious now. Video would melt the hardest heart.

I'm not sure whether the singer's faith is made clear, but you're all right in that it dosn't seem very important. To expand on what everyone's been saying, I believe this song deals with the uncertainty of death as well as the expansiveness of the world today and how these factors things can cause apathy. When contemplating whether or not to live a life of piety and self-sacrifice (a life like Jesus, for instance) people often opt out because they can't see the point: some people opt out because they don't believe in an afterlife where they will be rewarded for their good deeds, some people don't believe they will be remembered for it, especially in comparison with people like Ghandi or Jesus, some don't believe that their hard work and good deeds will make a difference in such a large world, and some don't believe that positive change is worth fighting for if they never live to see it carried it out. I think his response to these claims is that the world keeps turning after you die; Just because these positive changes we can make are "tiny" dosn't make them less significant; you may die but these changes will continue to have a positive effect on people for awhile after you are dead, even though you won't be around to see it, and while you may not be as famous or well-remembered for doing them as someone like Ghandi, you will either be equally rewarded by god in the afterlife, or, if there is no afterlife, then you'll both end up as dust and be equal in death. The ultimate message, I believe is to not let uncertainty about the risks and rewards force you into inaction, but rather start doing some more good. Don't try and change the world; start with yourself, and work your way up from there.

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,: courage to change the things I can,: and the wisdom to know the difference."