Eden

I might be wrong, but to me at least it seems obvious that 'Eden' is supposed to be Los Angeles. She moved there to go to college and said that was really her first experience in the wider world, which kind of explains the bridge where she says basically that she used to think this city must be the best place on earth (and that she somehow got lucky and ended up there, and in the entertainment industry). But then she started to see the dirty underbelly - the people who just wanted to be famous for the sake of it, the people behind the scenes who just want to exploit you, who think that looking a certain way is more important than having integrity.

And then during the making of this record she moved to New York, so it makes sense that she can say she's now looking back from the outside in and realized that she had to leave because her life in LA had changed and she'd been "choking on the air" there. Also if she really is talking about LA "all those angels started acting the same" makes sense, because "Los Angeles" literally means "the Angels".

As said before, this song is really about Sara moving from her hometown and having to take risks and adjust.

However, personally, I perceive this song talking about fame. Fame always starts out good (Threw a lucky pair of dice, ended up in a paradise) but eventually gets dark.

Examples of this are "All those angels started acting the same," saying the 'goodies' of fame eventually all become superficial sellouts. "No way to make the pain play fair, it doesn't disappear just because you say it isn't there" Fame causes great pain and there's no privacy to allow you to deal with the personal struggles of fame.

Then the obvious "When they ask, 'Why'd she go?' You can say, ' 'Cause life in Eden changed.'" Stating how people bail out of what some people think must be the dream life because the lifestyle starts to get dangerous.

The second verse represents the change fame undergoes in the middle. The serpent represents the evils that start enticing stars. "Less than beautiful is worse than unholy," showing that famous people have to be perfect or they get torn down by the media. "Idolized my innocence, stole it from me in the end...still paying for the poison they sold me" Saying that famous people all start out innocent and nice, but fame steals their personality and they pay for it long after.

The bridge also supports this. "I was placing bets...this was even better than as good as it gets...Looking back,... I was choking on the air in Eden" Stating that fame seems so wonderful, but in retrospect it restricts you, your privacy and your personality.

I realize this isn't what the song is about, but that's what I imagined and I think it still fits well!

I wasn't sure what this song was really about but once I read the last two comments I realized that is exactly right. I mean she literally says "You know if I could change anything, I think I would start with the name". She would change the names of Los Angeles. Didn't realize how straight forward this song was

Sara’s first words are a statement of intent: she will retell an epiphany she had. She had spent some time in a place called Eden, which represents a suspended state of “eternal happiness” and contains attractive angels. One day, she “landed on a snake’s eyes” and “took a bite,” obviously leading to it “[ending] up bleeding.” But linked to the detail that she met and spoke with a serpent-shaped heart in the garden, the possibility rises that she figuratively took in the perspective of the snake. The snake is wise about the ways of deception, which drives business and pretty much the entire universe. She is grateful for his advice and begins to resent the supposed jolliness of Eden’s pretty, predictable people. The snake’s teachings against the ignorant existence that is happy-go-lucky innocence is appositely phrased his theft of hers, as crime is not the simple evil that it used to be. Nothing is simple anymore, not peace, not wounds. After these conclusions, Eden’s air, with its lethargy and “eternity,” is figuratively asphyxiating and poisoning. She left its “paradise,” as if riding the momentum of the machine-like and steady melody of the song.

Eden Township is a town in Castro Valley, California, up in the bay area.