Major Minus

When I hear "crocodiles ticking," I can think of nothing other than Peter Pan.

I think that this song uses different aspects of driving as an analogy to life.

The first part of the song says that dwelling on the past can be a major distraction ("you got one eye on what you knew"), while you're trying to do something new with your life ("and one eye on what you do"). Another line that talks about the perils of indulging too much in the past is "So be careful when you're walking in the view" where "view" really means "rear-view mirror" - a mirror into the life that has gone by.

Chris Martin then switches gears and assures his lover (I assume that’s who he always talks to) that no matter what the "road" ahead (i.e. the future) looks like and what the dangers ("crocodiles"), he will always have "one eye on the road” (watching out for challenges of the future) and "one eye on you" (love/care for her).

illuminati? hahahaha maybe.... in "every teardrop is a waterfall" video you can see snippets of the all seeing eye around 3:27 seconds and on... this sounds like it could be illuminati referencing.

NOT SAYING IT IS DON'T HATE ME. just thought about it though.

They got one eye watching you And one eye, what you do?

yeah, it's very conspirative

I love how this songs sounds. Martin's voice seems to kind of drown in the music, as if he's standing right in the middle of it and singing out. The sounds swell around his voice and sort of echo. Love it.

I’m probably wrong about this, but this is what came to my mind while listening to this. As for the lyrics, now that I read through them, it seems the person in this song is being watched by some powerful source - "they/them". It could be some governmental power/higher power/etc. ("They got one eye watching you/One eye on what you do") The person, however, acknowledges this and wants to fight back against whatever is watching him. ("So be careful what it is you're trying to do/And be careful when you're walking into view")We can assume that whatever it is watching him isn't pleasant. ("So be careful cause nothing they say is true.")He's very against whatever "they" are and tries to convince others to rise up against whatever "they" is.(“No, no don't believe a word/It's just us against the world/And we just got to turn up to be heard.") In the end, "they" come for him ("You could hear them climbing the stairs") and while he wants to fight back, he's still afraid of what "they" will do/are capable of. ("I Got my right side fighting/While my left hides under the chairs.")

The lyric with the crocodiles (“Hear the crocodiles ticking round the world/Hear those crocodiles ticking, they go ticking round the world.”) reminds me of Peter Pan, for some reason. Captain Hook is deathly afraid of the crocodile that swallowed the alarm clock. The way I see it, the crocodiles could either be the things that comes for the man at the end of the song that he ends up fighting. Or they could be the small voices of rebellion that arise in the world due to the man’s efforts. (“they go ticking round the world”)

Overall, this songs reminds me of those dystopian novels- like 1984. A big, all powerful government watching its citizens and everything they do. It’s a creepy thought, but it doesn’t make me love this song any less.

Big Brother is Watching You. -1984

Its about the White Rose movement in Nazi Germany. Look it up, it was said by Chris himself.

This was released as the B-side of Coldplay's "Every Teardrop is a Waterfall" single. The song was inspired by Cormac McCarthy's book The Road. Martin described the cut to Billboard magazine as, "a sort of villainous, dark piece," adding "It's the idea of two people running away from a Kafka environment, or an Orwellian thing."

I think this song is about resisting conformity and peer pressure. The narrator is probably sarcastic when he warns the audience to "be careful what it is you're trying to do."

I think of the hacking by newspapers.

And this Leveson Inquiry going on in 2011.