Happiness III

Seems that Wilson is describing the general boredom and fatigue of modern society. The first stanza describes this quite well, and the line "I hide it well" is suggestive of how many deal with their mental health. The other verses are along the same lines and can easily be interpreted, discussing the mundane repetition of life when we fall into patterns that never seem to change.

The chorus is a bit harder to decipher. I feel that the snow/ice is symbolic of the often uneasy terrain of friendships and relationships; perhaps we conjure problems or overreact to small ones so we can illicit a reaction from other people that's more interesting than our stale lives. "I only meant for you to lose your balance in the snow; slip on the ice so I can catch you fall" and "I just made it up so I could watch you crawl" are suggestive of this.

I also believe it's "I'm getting anxious", not "I'm getting at your side". "It's always worse in the shopping malls" maybe refers to being overwhelmed or overstimulated by the world. I think this song, generally, describes depression and anxiety, but that may just be me relating it to my own experiences. Either way, fantastic tune.

The wording in this song sounded suspicious to me. It seems that the protagonist is not much of an honest person, since everything he says about himself seems vague or hard to believe (if you ever smoked you know that you dont just do it because you are bored, you might have started it for that reason, but as soon as u are smoking full on, you cannot just quit for the next hundred years). I think the intentions of the protagonist become much clearer in the chorus. He always apologises which means he fucked up. Also the words snow and ice might be references to drugs like cocain=snow and crystal meth=ice.

So to me he is a bad person, that made someone else take drugs out of boredom/sadism "just to watch them crawl" or "catch them fall" or so he could control this person easier. Apparently the person died of an overdose, hence the line " I didn't think that you would take it all to heart"