(dog playing tug-of-war)
All my rivals will see what I have in store. My gun.
I've been harboring fleets in this reservoir. Red sun.
And this nation's about to explode.
Your disciples are riddled with metaphors. Well hung.
Better pony up and bring both your barrels full. Not one.
As we release this unspeakable toll. Woh.
Every grain of sand equals all the stars around the world.
Ahh.
How's our mother to damn these contributors. With mud.
How will the man who made chemicals difficult. Shed blood.
How's our father supposed to be told.
I don't... ...know.
I've been harboring fleets in this reservoir. Red sun.
And this nation's about to explode.
Better pony up and bring both your barrels full. Not one.
As we release this unspeakable toll. Woh.
Ahh.
How will the man who made chemicals difficult. Shed blood.
How's our father supposed to be told.
I don't... ...know.
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this song is about columbine...it makes reference to this in the lyric page in the album booklet. the first line is the most obvious allusion to it, the rest makes sense....mostly
the columbine thing does make sense, especially with the parenthetical title of the song ("growing up gay in littleton", littleton colorado being the city in which columbine is located, if i'm not mistaken) as mentioned in the booklet. "barrels full" (as in the barrel of a gun, duh) , "unspeakable toll", etc, also make a case for that.
this is one of my favorite songs.
Im pretty sure columbine was in middleton
Does anyone have a clue to what Vedder is mumbling during the bridge of this song??
The correct lyrics are "All the stars and everyone", not "All the stars around the world."
"Rivals" (which opens with the growling of Blake's dog, Dakota) is a vengeful, ominous song that begins with the words, "All my rivals will see what I have in store."
"I just came up with the riff and we played with that for a while," Gossard said. "I kind of saw it as a cartoon exploration of competition and paranoia and people's perspective on who's out to get them. I thought of relating that to how nations deal with each other and sort of push each other around.
"And then while we were working on the album the whole Columbine High School tragedy happened and it started reflecting some of that stuff, too. So it just kind of has a weird mishmash of influences."
“Supposed to be what the Columbine Killers were thinking the night before.”
(Talking about the Binaural Head Mic) And the dog too, the dog barking right before Rival. It sounds like it's being panned back and forth really hardcore, that's just Tchad. He has a hold of the head, and he's shaking the head in front of his dog. Jeff O: That was Tchad's dog? Jeff A: Yeah. Jeff O: What's the dog's name? Jeff A: Dakota. Jeff O: Dakota. Dakota got a credit actually. Jeff A: Yeah, he did.
I always thought it was sort of thoughts from right before WWII from Japan's point of view because of the "red sun" line.
Double-0 9: I live your interpretation. It fits perfectly. Especially later with the part about the man that made "chemicals difficult". Sounds like Oppenheimer and Hiroshima.
This song is so sinister and evil. The slow gringing churn of the guitars reminds me of Not For You. But even nastier. The repeitive driving riff just sounds like the embodiment of insanity... almost makes me think of Dark Side of the Moon a little :P
And the poetic scheme makes it sound like a child's riddle. Even more evil sounding. This used to be one of the few PJ songs I literally hated. But it grew on me.
This is definitely about Columbine. The first few lines point in that general direction but one of the key lines is "How will the man who made chemicals difficult shed blood". This is about killing the chemistry teacher. Also when I saw that interview with Stone saying it was from the perspective of the night before it all connected.