Humiliation

Someone who's led a very interesting life of everything, but has gotten older, given up, and passed into the gates of maturity. I love the "I was in guns and noses". "roses" in the previous line means this is obviously a play on "I was in Guns n' Roses." I take this as a reference to those random people occasionally popping up who talk about being an unknown and brief member of a famous band, just as a routine part of their sort of past life. This is also in the stanza 5, with the mention of losing the previous, interesting job, but not providing any details on why the job was lost. It's as if the narrator is relaying a piecemeal story and considers those details inconsequential. But then there are the obvious references to the child in stanzas 3 & 6. "baby to pound me" could be a reference to how babies will often just randomly hit you for no reason before they learn that they shouldn't. At the shows, Berninger actually makes a fist and brings it down in singing this line. The child would be where the narrator has gone into maturity and settled down.

I am really glad I feel not the necessity to analyze these songs to death. It is in the feel rather than in the intellectual content I find joy.

Definite reference to David Lynch's 'Blue Velvet' at the end.

To me, this song could be about growing up and out of your home town. The lyric: "All the L.A. women Fall asleep while swimmin' I got paid to fish 'em out And then one day I lost the job"

This could be about a loss of youthful beauty and no longer having things so easy.

"Tunnel vision" focusing on the future and living your little life in between you future plans.

Just some thoughts, great song!

Sounds to me like the life of an artist. Social climbing white society treats artists like scum, unless they happen to be famous and top of the pop-culture table. The guy in this song is struggling with his art, an inability to hold a menial job, the condescending and offensive remarks of his girlfriend's family. She tries to comfort him, but ironically the only thing that keeps him afloat is the same thing that makes him socially unacceptable.

Matt Berninger himself said this song partly is about "A bomb that randomly comes down and kills you". The fact that these crazy things may happen to you that you don't see coming and how people would react.

"Tunnel Vision Lights my way" essentially means he is blind to change, blind to this bomb, blind to his impending doom, blind to things happening around him because he is so focussed on his little life that he is leaving today. "Leave a Little Life Today".

Social anxiety can be really overwhelming

This song is about being really drunk... he drinks because of the social anxiety--- "I'm the moron who dances I was teething on roses I was in guns and noses".. I mean clearly he's intoxicated--- the song is called humiliation because he is embarrassed about how he acts when he is drunk.

I truly believe that the only songwriters who really understand how terrifyingly crippling social anxiety can be are Morrissey and Matt Berninger.

All the theories posted here are pretty sound. I would assume however that "in guns and noses" aside from being a play on guns and roses would mean 'powder'.

Aka cocaine/gun powder. The opening lyrics would probably also contribute to an LA upper class drug scene.