This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
I was walking with my neck out
In some ways I wish I was
I was walking with my neck out
Some ways that I wish that I was
Out on the bevel sound
It sounds like everything else
You'll know it when you hear it
Cause you know the way my voice felt
Ignore my tone and everything
I sing, I sing for me
Ignore the phone on your bed
It rings it rings it rings
Shirt collar wringing me out
My collar bone got all red
Already severing prose I wrote so I sing instead
I hold you put your neck out
Tell me the ways you wish you were
Keep your confident sound
Your hook, my eye, my spur
So when I went to hang out
I hung behind your eyes
My eyes still flicker with doubt
Quickly oh I cant decide
I'm tapped out
Dont it always seem to go that
You could hold it right in your hands
Collapsing and still not know
In your hands
Collapse and still not know
Say what it is
Say how it is with everybody I know
I got no temper for that
I send you this cadmium red one, every (layer I shed?)
And I shed one layer for this
Say what it is
It's so impossible
But if I just say what it is
It tends to sublimate away
When I was looking
To drop my life away
More every year
I shine light on edges I try to unfeel
But we got to do better than that
Some sorting out so I'll be sitting on the outskirts
If you want to talk about it
Things in there were just getting so loud
Say what it is
It's so impossible
But if I just say what it is
It tends to sublimate away
When I was looking
To drop my life away
In some ways I wish I was
I was walking with my neck out
Some ways that I wish that I was
Out on the bevel sound
It sounds like everything else
You'll know it when you hear it
Cause you know the way my voice felt
Ignore my tone and everything
I sing, I sing for me
Ignore the phone on your bed
It rings it rings it rings
Shirt collar wringing me out
My collar bone got all red
Already severing prose I wrote so I sing instead
I hold you put your neck out
Tell me the ways you wish you were
Keep your confident sound
Your hook, my eye, my spur
So when I went to hang out
I hung behind your eyes
My eyes still flicker with doubt
Quickly oh I cant decide
I'm tapped out
Dont it always seem to go that
You could hold it right in your hands
Collapsing and still not know
In your hands
Collapse and still not know
Say what it is
Say how it is with everybody I know
I got no temper for that
I send you this cadmium red one, every (layer I shed?)
And I shed one layer for this
Say what it is
It's so impossible
But if I just say what it is
It tends to sublimate away
When I was looking
To drop my life away
More every year
I shine light on edges I try to unfeel
But we got to do better than that
Some sorting out so I'll be sitting on the outskirts
If you want to talk about it
Things in there were just getting so loud
Say what it is
It's so impossible
But if I just say what it is
It tends to sublimate away
When I was looking
To drop my life away
Lyrics submitted by getthoselyricsright
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The Night We Met
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Evan from reddit AMA in March 2016.
"Cadmium is about the pressure that builds when you don't say what you're thinking about, and how it always feels so much better to just talk about what’s on your mind. Also I wanted to explore different representational strategies, i.e. different ways to ‘say it’…. there are no answers, just questions."
In an email to FADER, Evan said:
"The song’s a lot about correspondence and communication. There’s a book called 'I Send You This Cadmium Red' by John Berger and John Christie that collects the letters the two Johns sent to one another. The first letter sent was just a square of that colour. I was writing a lot of letters with my friend out west at the time, and we liked the idea. We started sending colours and art sometimes and found it to be a different and good (and sometimes more direct) way to say what we were feeling".