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"
By the light of the LED display of the VCR recorder
You kiss my neck, I whisper in your ear: this is my downfall
As you squint and you grimace, we both know your heart's not in it
By the glow of a thousand fireflys in a travelodge en-suite
They think the future's bright as halogen, we know it's pretty bleak
And I am trying to be sexy, biting at the air that falls in front of me
Your telegrams are more and more less detailed by the day
And all the characters are strangers and the pubs have different names
I tell a joke, I'd like to meet them but they loathe me and I hate them back
Absence makes the heart grow fonder, fondness makes the absence longer
Length loses my interest, I'm a realist, I'm insatiable
Swapped counting days until I fly, with hours before your reply
You said he got his teeth fixed
I'm gonna break them
I've got a heart on fire
He said he's got his sights set
On getting to you
I've got fist on fire
And you feel terrified at the thought of being left behind
Of losing everybody, the necessity of dying
Oh we kid ourselves there's future in the fucking
But there is no fucking future
I'm just practising my accents, picking at old sutures
I taught myself the only way to vaguely get along in love
Is to like the other slightly less than you get in return
I keep feeling like I'm being undercut
Charlotte says it's more constructive than the one in Canada
When you got drunk, ate loads of crisps
And threw up by a football pitch
I know it is
And really that's what worries me
I feel like I should hurt
You said he's got his teeth fixed
I'm gonna break them
I've got a heart on fire
He said he's got his sights set
I'm getting to you
I've got fist on fire
I cannot emphasise enough that my body
Is a badly designed, poorly put together vessel
Harbouring these diminishing, so called vital organs
Hope my heart goes first
I hope my heart hoes first
We are beautiful
We are doomed
You kiss my neck, I whisper in your ear: this is my downfall
As you squint and you grimace, we both know your heart's not in it
By the glow of a thousand fireflys in a travelodge en-suite
They think the future's bright as halogen, we know it's pretty bleak
And I am trying to be sexy, biting at the air that falls in front of me
Your telegrams are more and more less detailed by the day
And all the characters are strangers and the pubs have different names
I tell a joke, I'd like to meet them but they loathe me and I hate them back
Absence makes the heart grow fonder, fondness makes the absence longer
Length loses my interest, I'm a realist, I'm insatiable
Swapped counting days until I fly, with hours before your reply
You said he got his teeth fixed
I'm gonna break them
I've got a heart on fire
He said he's got his sights set
On getting to you
I've got fist on fire
And you feel terrified at the thought of being left behind
Of losing everybody, the necessity of dying
Oh we kid ourselves there's future in the fucking
But there is no fucking future
I'm just practising my accents, picking at old sutures
I taught myself the only way to vaguely get along in love
Is to like the other slightly less than you get in return
I keep feeling like I'm being undercut
Charlotte says it's more constructive than the one in Canada
When you got drunk, ate loads of crisps
And threw up by a football pitch
I know it is
And really that's what worries me
I feel like I should hurt
You said he's got his teeth fixed
I'm gonna break them
I've got a heart on fire
He said he's got his sights set
I'm getting to you
I've got fist on fire
I cannot emphasise enough that my body
Is a badly designed, poorly put together vessel
Harbouring these diminishing, so called vital organs
Hope my heart goes first
I hope my heart hoes first
We are beautiful
We are doomed
Lyrics submitted by shrodes, edited by Angelireland
We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed Lyrics as written by Oliver Briggs Aleksandra Berditchevskaia
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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That's where the title originates from.
There's a Phonogram reference in "Ways to Make It Through the Wall" as well.