Shine Acoustic

For me, this is clearly about family relations.

Who cares for the life we earned? Someone sold all the truth you yearned

The answer is our parents. They are the only ones that care about the life we've earned since we're born. The thing about selling all the truth has to be with life decisions that leds us to discover new concepts about things we were already certain that existed in the opposite way. The truth here isn't the real truth, but the character's.

Remember when you used to shine And had no fear or sense of time When it creeps up on you

The best I got from this part was that he's talking to his brother or his sister, who's nearly his age. He asks him/her if they remember when they used to shine, without worries nor enough knowledge to perceive the world. A cruel world. Fear is the pure definition of adulthood and sense of time becomes something you need to always be aware of after you turn 18, specially if you go to college, live by yourself and work. He's remembering when they were little kids. The line about creeping up is the notion invading their brain, making them realise that those times will never come back.

You can cry now there's nothing to feel No one's noticed our loneliness

When you are a child, the act of crying is seen as something that should be avoided, but when you grow up, crying becomes a good thing that people even motivate you to do so. So I assume Matthew is the older brother here, calming the other person about the crisis of becoming an adult. He is saying "cry, go ahead, we're not kids anymore". There's nothing to feel because they are now bathed in nostalgia and looking forward, they see nothing but work and money to be earned. No one noticed their loliness because when you are a child, people are always keeping an eye on you to see if everything's alright. Once you grow up, everybody normally thinks you are good by yourself and refuse to see or even help you, because you're a "grown up" already.

Remember when you used to tease And made us scream eternal joy

Now this can go two ways. He's either talking to his parents (most likely his mother) and saying that they wasted time with them while they were kids and now it's gone, or what I really think it is: he remains talking to a newer brother/sister about the times they used to tease one another frequently making them scream (of laughter and fun) in joy forever. This represents the wish for growing up as a kid and the wish for never growing up as an adult.

I believed that you'd always be here And once you promised a life with no fear

From my perspective, he's definitely talking with one (or both) of his parents. The thing about us growing up not being prepared for our parents to leave us by ourselves and the false promises that every dinner table spits on you: "Family is the most important, you can never leave us" sorta thing. The promise of a life with no fear is usually used with kids for calming them down about a problem or phobia. Fear is essencial for us to learn and keep getting better, have things to go through etc. Sometimes, these promises get in a child's mind more than you might think.

Please don't break my ideals And say what's fake was always real

He is basically saying: "Please don't tell me you filled my life with lies and tricks, don't say that all the bad things were actually good and I coudn't experiment them only because of your sick care".

Hope was the one, now I'm gone Take me back again

Hope was the only thing he was feeling by that moment of darkness and misery. But he's now gone, all by himself. The line about taking him back is just that old feeling we all have when looking at old pictures, wishing we could relive that time again. In the case of the song, that feeling doesn't come in a healthy way, but it's still there. With him to his end.