In regards to the meaning of this song:
Before a live performance on the EP Five Stories Falling, Geoff states “It’s about the last time I went to visit my grandmother in Columbus, and I saw that she was dying and it was the last time I was going to see her. It is about realizing how young you are, but how quickly you can go.”
That’s the thing about Geoff and his sublime poetry, you think it’s about one thing, but really it’s about something entirely different. But the lyrics are still universal and omnipresent, ubiquitous, even. So relatable. That’s one thing I love about this band. I also love their live performances, raw energy and Geoff’s beautiful, imperfectly perfect vocals. His voice soothes my aching soul.
Now, diamonds are falling
Through a new wound in the sky
Obsessions, pink children
They are laid out in a line
They are screaming, they are polluting
They are demanding their life
These wrong feelings, they are calling
The red leper of time
I love you (I love you)
I need you (I need you)
Oh, show me (Oh, show me)
How to shine (How to shine)
I love you (I love you)
Young flower (Young flower)
Now give me (Now give me)
What is mine (What is mine)
Through a new wound in the sky
Obsessions, pink children
They are laid out in a line
They are screaming, they are polluting
They are demanding their life
These wrong feelings, they are calling
The red leper of time
I love you (I love you)
I need you (I need you)
Oh, show me (Oh, show me)
How to shine (How to shine)
I love you (I love you)
Young flower (Young flower)
Now give me (Now give me)
What is mine (What is mine)
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I don't think it's necessarily about sex. It's about wanting to start the day with some love and affection. Maybe a warm cuddle. I'm not alone in interpreting it that way! For example:
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I agree with idantlol - children being brought up destroying the world due to overpopulation, yet people still reproduce. Last few lines with the child repeating the lyrics stresses it.
Since I guess no one else wanted to post any ideas about this song, I thought I'd try to. It reminds me of "Welcome to My Nightmare" era Alice Cooper, in a lot of ways. Songs on that record presented a sanitized form of atrocity, an odd, often over-dramatic portrayal of insanity and ultimately murder. This song, however, deals with child murder and probably pedophilia. The diamonds falling are the little innocent unique jewels that are prepubescent (asexual) children falling into the narrators grasp. The 'new wound in the sky' is the simple fact that every time a kid is murdered people lose more faith in God above, if that's not too simplistic. The very possibility of what is occurring is an affront to all goodness. The "Obsessions, Pink Children" is showing that one word or the other is much the same for the pedophile. That 'they are laid out in a line' is the murderer/molesters' self-serving justification. Wherever he goes he finds the next victim. By screaming, they pollute whatever stupid idea he had about what he's doing to them, 'demanding their life'. The feelings that call are the feelings to extinguish his victims. The red leper of all time is the ultimate, eternal taboo, Blood. The killers love and need, his desire to shine, are all illusory. He has turned his victim, a precious young life, a barely-born soul, into a thing for himself to consume. Something that is his, utterly, completely "mine".
Rightfully, the song is a letter to every person out there like the killer, and it is a message with it's honest, clear and impossible to misinterpret lyrics. People who would do this are garbage; "You Fucking People Make Me Sick."
@Asshole246 I agree with your interpretation but I believe that is one side to the story. This song reminds me of Beautiful Child off Children of God by Swans as well which is a similar story about a narrators deluded justifying thoughts about pedophilia and murder and self deception but if you listen to the first third and last third of the song it is eerily relatable as a human and powerful and this is done intentionally in order to create a dual and parallel meaning about Self deception and entitlement in order to compare the delusions of a pedophile with the less visible delusions of society. In comparison this song recycles that formula in a more concise subtle, and nonrelatable way and as you said the narrator sanitizes the same sort of atrocity of destroying youth and innocence with language that suggests although "diamonds are falling through the wound in the sky" it is their fault and justified through their entitlment and his obsession and anger at their youth (They Fucking make him sick). This duality between loving and hating the children is further complicated by the songs references to overpopulation of entitled society contrasted with the narrators romanticizing youth as he succumbs to his obsession at the end of the song he is clearly a hypocrite as he is entitled as well and while peoples urge to reproduce is leading to overpopulation he cant resist his obsession. Fucking sick song.
The title should be read literally - as in "you sexually active people make me sick". Its about the paradoxically destructive instinct to reproduce. Read about Schopenhauer's "Will to Life" if you want to be pretentious about it.
About hipsters.
sfweekly.com/shookdown/2012/03/14/michael-gira-on-performing-solo-and-the-time-he-wanted-to-murder-some-hipsters
Q: I wanted to ask a couple things about the last Swans record. I read in an interview that you said the song "You Fucking People Make Me Sick" was written from the perspective of a murderer or a rapist. How often do you write from fictional points of view and why?<br /> <br /> MG: Well, I think that might be an oversimplification. I wrote the song when I was just surfing the net as people tend to do these days, looking at music sites, and a side of me was looking at these fashionable hipster young people and I just kind of wanted to murder them or kill them. [Laughs] So I started writing the song from the point of view of someone thinking about that, but it's not to say that I want to do that. This persona emerged and then those words came out, and then I had Devendra sing it because it seemed better for him. Considering the way the song was written, the tone, the register of the vocals seemed better for him. I thought I would remove it from being me, Michael Gira, singing it and make it more of a song in and of itself. So, that's how it evolved.
(I'm posting the link again, see if this time it works...)<br /> <br /> sfweekly.com/shookdown/2012/03/14/michael-gira-on-performing-solo-and-the-time-he-wanted-to-murder-some-hipsters
@mlsrez Broken link: archives.sfweekly.com/shookdown/2012/03/14/michael-gira-on-performing-solo-and-the-time-he-wanted-to-murder-some-hipsters