White Coats

This song is essentially about a lovesick obsession that has created some sort of mental illness and serves as a metaphor for the true nature of love. She insists that love is a form of insanity and only a reciprocating love will cure it. From the beginning, soft and unintelligible words echo in an eerie fashion. This serves to create the illusion of having voices in one's head. Then the first verse comes in, talking to her mother giving her life tips that she completely ignores for this one person. She continues to say that she thinks she may be going astray, but choses to ignore those thoughts because the person she is in love with serves as a guiding light for her. The chorus refers to "the men in white coats" coming around and her lover defeating them. The men in white coats are the orderlies at a mental hospital who are taking her away, referring to the idiom "the men in white coats are coming". In the end, she says her lover just watches them take her down as opposed to saving her, suggesting that her "lover" may not be a lover at all, but rather a person she has a deep and powerful unrequited love for this person who does not really feel the same way. The song tells a story of a woman being held in a mental hospital, but it actually serves as a metaphor for what falling in love with someone who doesn't love you back feels like, which is like you're going insane.

It's hard to say what music videos have to do with any song, but if there is a connection, the opening scene has the protagonist portrayed as an updated Opelia, from Shakespear's Hamlet. Her hair is splayed out across a bed of ivy like the hair of the famous drowned character through lillypads.

The character of Ophelia suffers the same kind of problems as described in the lyrics, but opinion varies about the cause. Since Ophelia doesn't actually make any approaches to Hamlet as a lover, one idea is that her love is directed at her father, which if you think about that while listening to these lyrics, it makes things even more complex. The suggestion of wolves being a threat goes back even further than Shakespear's era. Perhaps she is dealing with some problems with grandparents or family history, or perhaps an inherited disease?

There are also suggestions of gender and identity crisis, betrayal and sudden awareness and I think this is what the song overall creates: not so much a defined cause and effect, but a feeling of a confused miasma of psychological difficulties the girl is trying to break free from to become "her own woman". The song seems to end on a positive note, a bridge between awareness and loss. No one drowns in this version. I like it.

I believe this song is not about love itself, but rather the false expectations that people hold about how falling in love always improves your life.

The first verse: 'As a child, my mother said to me,"Don't be afraid to lead the way you see. "And it's only you who knows. Nobody else can see'

This implies that this person received encouragement in her upbringing, and there is probably high expectations or pressure for them to be someone great: a "leader" Someone special: "nobody else can see"

Second Verse: But do I chase myself into the dark? In the thousand ways to lead me back to the start But you make it easier To be who I want to be

Chasing herself in the dark and going back to the start are metaphors for failure. She has no clear direction in life (i.e. darkness) and she has to keep starting over. But then she finds a man who doesn't put this kind of pressure on her. "She can be who she wants to be"

The chorus expresses her trust in this man to make all of her problems go away during the metaphorical craziness of life. (to chase down the wolves around us).

last verses: "And I was so scared, I could not see the light I didn't want to be alone But you just stand there, watch them hold me down"

Here she realizes that even though she is in love with this man, he is unable to make her stress and problems go away. Maybe he loves her too, maybe he doesn't, but either way, she is expressing her frustration and anger that he is not doing anything to intervene. This is where the metaphor is truly important. There is nothing you can do to help a mentally ill person. Regardless of how much you love them, you have to sit and watch the men in white coats (life problems) take them away....

Sad story, but a great song. She sings with convincing emotion, and the music is layered and intricate. Big Foxes fan.