Per the FAQ on Keane's website, Keane's drummer Richard Hughes, stated the following:
"We've been asked whether "Somewhere Only We Know" is about a specific place, and Tim has been saying that, for him, or us as individuals, it might be about a geographical space, or a feeling; it can mean something individual to each person, and they can interpret it to a memory of theirs... It's perhaps more of a theme rather than a specific message... Feelings that may be universal, without necessarily being totally specific to us, or a place, or a time..."
With the nostalgic sentiment and the overall tone of the song, I think Keane is attempting to express a Portuguese term known as 'saudade', which does not have a direct English translation but roughly means "that which we remember because it is gone."
There’s a white limousine with Massachusetts plates
And on the loose its occupants, those 90s prom dates
Careen
I tongue at my molar, you’re my only consoler
You’re my midnight buyer in the back of the Meijer
Yeah
My world’s a comprehensive private diorama
Unpunctuated by any comma
You got
I was a queer balladeer, so proud of our new minivan
You know your dad gave all he had, he does his best for you just when he can
Greenfield Village and a field trip version
Of young faces on every person
I knew
Now all the modern dilettantes, they typed out their privileged isms
In their moronic fonts and hyped-out syllogisms
With some get-well cards from my date-stamp aunt
Yeah, I’d frame all that minor fame, but I just can’t
When my best friend Doug’s brother had some flashy two-seater
All the sleepover soda when we explode a splashy two-liter
The stoplights are cherry red, or very greenish blue
Like the mushy color of the 7-Eleven slushy hue
And the liquid wicked warping
Of an ambling ambulance’s distancing pitch
I hooked my thumb through your belt loop from which I hitched to every twitch
You made
What we found stashed in the trashed-out woods behind the Taco Bell
Is why I identify early sex with the oily smell
Of WD-40 and a blindness to the ways
Of the kindness behind us and the lukewarm heat lamp buffets
Now we report all our pathos to the food court police
Where the pity and the loss grow so shitty and obese
And sad
But in Baker’s frozen woodlot
With the smiling sniffling good snot
You tried to wipe away but you could not
When the sun’s explosion
And slow plummet
Can look so frozen
As we glow from it
All our disastrous love, it goes by many titles
It froze inside the snows where I’d dropped it with its broken vitals
But I remember your sorrow outside of Espresso
With all you wanted to borrow, and all I said was “I guess so”
And I wish I had
Just granted you that
And on the loose its occupants, those 90s prom dates
Careen
I tongue at my molar, you’re my only consoler
You’re my midnight buyer in the back of the Meijer
Yeah
My world’s a comprehensive private diorama
Unpunctuated by any comma
You got
I was a queer balladeer, so proud of our new minivan
You know your dad gave all he had, he does his best for you just when he can
Greenfield Village and a field trip version
Of young faces on every person
I knew
Now all the modern dilettantes, they typed out their privileged isms
In their moronic fonts and hyped-out syllogisms
With some get-well cards from my date-stamp aunt
Yeah, I’d frame all that minor fame, but I just can’t
When my best friend Doug’s brother had some flashy two-seater
All the sleepover soda when we explode a splashy two-liter
The stoplights are cherry red, or very greenish blue
Like the mushy color of the 7-Eleven slushy hue
And the liquid wicked warping
Of an ambling ambulance’s distancing pitch
I hooked my thumb through your belt loop from which I hitched to every twitch
You made
What we found stashed in the trashed-out woods behind the Taco Bell
Is why I identify early sex with the oily smell
Of WD-40 and a blindness to the ways
Of the kindness behind us and the lukewarm heat lamp buffets
Now we report all our pathos to the food court police
Where the pity and the loss grow so shitty and obese
And sad
But in Baker’s frozen woodlot
With the smiling sniffling good snot
You tried to wipe away but you could not
When the sun’s explosion
And slow plummet
Can look so frozen
As we glow from it
All our disastrous love, it goes by many titles
It froze inside the snows where I’d dropped it with its broken vitals
But I remember your sorrow outside of Espresso
With all you wanted to borrow, and all I said was “I guess so”
And I wish I had
Just granted you that
Lyrics submitted by nickjones724
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