Seen It All

I normally don’t like to give interpretations of lyrics, mostly because the music I usually listen to has “stream of consciousness” type lyrics and it’s hardly any use to start interpreting those. But since Jake Bugg has quite a narrative style of writing perhaps some things can be said of his lyrics. Anyhow, after a few listens I figure the narrator of the story (not necessarily Bugg himself) is actually the one who ends up dead. So when he says “and then they took a guy outside and someone stabbed him with a knife”, the narrator is the one being stabbed. I figure this because the last sentences are “I've seen the light but not the kind I would have liked”: the light he’s seen being the proverbial ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ instead a light of ‘insight’. On this interpretation, which is arguably a bit of a stretch, the words “I’ve seen it all, nothing shocks me anymore after tonight” are quite literally true; if you’re dead, you have seen all you’ll ever see and nothing can shock you anymore. To give this interpretation some credibility, I would recommend checking out the video. SPOILER ALERT: Jake Bugg is not the protagonist in it (as he has been in some of his other videos such as “two fingers”), and the protagonist who is not Bugg ends up being dead, but he only figures this out at the end of the video.

I'll admit that my first impression of this song was, "This 18-year-old kid is really singing about having seen it all?" But that's a subjective hang up.. your age ultimately doesn't preclude you from having a legitimate sense of despair for the worst that the world can offer, which is what this song represents for Bugg. Super catchy too, anyway.

I think the lyrics can be taken very literal. He is describing what happened one night that turned bad. I think he speaks of this song in an interview. He tells about people thinking he is trying to look cool by singing about smoking and taking drugs. But what he is trying to say is the opposite. He says: “I did this this night and it didn’t end to well. I’m just being honest you know, I’m not trying to look cool I’m just singing about the way life was at that time you know, evaluating it.” I think it’s about ‘two fingers’ as well.

Awesome song...underrated in my opinion.

It’s easy for critics to not credit the guy with the intelligence he deserves an assume (incorrectly) that he is literally saying “I’ve seen it all”.

It’s a turn of phrase that is commonly used, either by someone in “shock” or someone that arrogantly believes that they have had experiences that others haven’t and are therefore better for it.

He used this double use perfectly when he sums up in the final stanza

“I've seen it all nothing shocks me anymore after tonight I've seen the light but not the kind I would have liked”

Like a person in genuine shock, he is viewing what is happening to him as something happening to someone else