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Lifetime Piling Up Lyrics
I have tried marijuana
I get nervous every time
There will come a knockin' at the door
Why is everybody makin' eyes at me?
I don't want to know
Excuse and pardon me
Stay for a while
Maybe we'll never
meet again
I can see my lifetime piling up
I can see the days turn into nights
I can see the people on the street
Open those windows up
A hundred floors below me
Pilin' those houses up
Pilin' them higher, higher, higher
I can feel them swayin' back and forth
Building it higher, higher
This tower's learning over
I got bad coordination
Stuck a pencil in my eye
I can hardly wait to get back home
Why is everybody gettin' paranoid?
I's only havin' fun
Scum-bags and superstars
Tell me your names
I'll make a bet, you're
both the same
I can see my lifetime pilin' up
Reaching from my bedroom to the stars
I can see the house where I was born
When I was growin' up - they say that
I could never keep my trousers up
I remember days and crazy nights
Are there any pirates on this ship?
And if they sober up - they'll have us
Home by morning
Cry, cry, cry
It's just you and I
Like an automobile
with no one at the wheel
Spinning out of control
We're all over the road
In our sexy machine
All the passengers scream
Scream, scream!
I can see my lifetime pilin' up
I can see it smashin' into yours
It was not an accident at all
Open your window up - I hear you laughin'
Goin' one, two, three, four, five
Goin' from the bottom to the top
Maybe I'm holding on too tight
And now I'm growin' up
I got a funny feeling
Pilin' those houses up
Pilin' them higher, higher, higher
Building that highway to the stars
And turning the music up - Hey!
I got a winning number
I get nervous every time
There will come a knockin' at the door
Why is everybody makin' eyes at me?
I don't want to know
Excuse and pardon me
Stay for a while
Maybe we'll never
meet again
I can see the days turn into nights
I can see the people on the street
Open those windows up
A hundred floors below me
Pilin' those houses up
Pilin' them higher, higher, higher
I can feel them swayin' back and forth
Building it higher, higher
This tower's learning over
Stuck a pencil in my eye
I can hardly wait to get back home
Why is everybody gettin' paranoid?
I's only havin' fun
Scum-bags and superstars
Tell me your names
I'll make a bet, you're
both the same
Reaching from my bedroom to the stars
I can see the house where I was born
When I was growin' up - they say that
I could never keep my trousers up
I remember days and crazy nights
Are there any pirates on this ship?
And if they sober up - they'll have us
Home by morning
It's just you and I
Like an automobile
with no one at the wheel
Spinning out of control
We're all over the road
In our sexy machine
All the passengers scream
Scream, scream!
I can see it smashin' into yours
It was not an accident at all
Open your window up - I hear you laughin'
Goin' from the bottom to the top
Maybe I'm holding on too tight
And now I'm growin' up
I got a funny feeling
Pilin' those houses up
Pilin' them higher, higher, higher
Building that highway to the stars
And turning the music up - Hey!
I got a winning number
Add your song meanings, interpretations, facts, memories & more to the community.
This song to me is about how you can careen wildly out of control, and if you relax and remember your destination, you find a winning number at the end. It's a song that says don't take yourself so seriously to me.
It's cool that you're so much less cynical than me. I understood the lottery as being the easy way to end the song, the easy way to solve your problems. I just don't feel that winning the lottery makes you a better person, just like having a sexy car or a ton more cookie cutter houses. But maybe these are just the musings of a have-not... I like to justify myself by saying I don't want it all.
It's cool that you're so much less cynical than me. I understood the lottery as being the easy way to end the song, the easy way to solve your problems. I just don't feel that winning the lottery makes you a better person, just like having a sexy car or a ton more cookie cutter houses. But maybe these are just the musings of a have-not... I like to justify myself by saying I don't want it all.
I really don't know exactly what it's about other than memories and stuff, but here's my favorite line:
"I can see my lifetime pilin' up I can see it smashin' into yours It was not an accident at all"
well, when a song begins with the words 'i have tried marijuana'... so blantantly, not even using some new metaphor, you can be pretty sure that this is supposed to be about that miraculous drug and how it feels to be 'higher, higher' than everyone around you... as you look down on their silly conventional lives. Actually it reminds me of that other TK song, The Big Country, except with a very different feeling of being excited and fulfilled by being seperated from humanity, instead of disparagingly judging them.
I actually have really bad anxiety, like it's debilitating.. and can completely relate to this song. lol especially the first line. I'm not saying marijuana is bad, but whenever I smoke weed I like to be alone in my house, watching documentaries on alien conspiracies, lol. I think weed is really overrated and I highly doubt this song is about "a drug trip". He could be talking about his memories from his lifetime "I can see my lifetime piling up - a hundred floors below me." But to me, the words that he is using actually are a good description of how anxiety...
I actually have really bad anxiety, like it's debilitating.. and can completely relate to this song. lol especially the first line. I'm not saying marijuana is bad, but whenever I smoke weed I like to be alone in my house, watching documentaries on alien conspiracies, lol. I think weed is really overrated and I highly doubt this song is about "a drug trip". He could be talking about his memories from his lifetime "I can see my lifetime piling up - a hundred floors below me." But to me, the words that he is using actually are a good description of how anxiety controls you, and how a panic attack just hits you.
What I find especially interesting is: "cry cry cry/ it's just you and i/ like an automobile/ with no one at the wheel/ spinning out of control/ we're all over the road/ in our sexy machine/ all the passengers scream/ scream scream" Now if you notice, the beginning he is saying "cry cry cry" but by the end of it, he's evolved the emotion from just an unpleasant feeling, to a hysterical one.. and on a timeline. Also, when writers use words like "like", or "as" - these are similes. So I assume that he is describing his experience by relating it to a car out of control. Now I don't know if he meant to do this on purpose or not, but the car analogy is so redundant and plain. Perhaps he decided to use this analogy because of its overuse. Just a thought.
Also, "reaching from my bedroom to the stars" relating this back to anxiety again, I often spend a lot of time in my room trying to manically plan my future, or fix my present, just by thinking. and it's funny because my bedroom is where I feel most safe, and as if I can get to my destination from my room, simply by obsessively planning and thinking until it happens.
"pilin' those house up/ pilin' them higher, higher, higher" When he is talking about houses, I have two thoughts: 1. people's lives and experiences are shaped by by heredity and environment. We spend most of our early lives in our homes creating our experiences, learning our behaviours, etc. So I think he could be referring to the idea that "pile" their experiences up, manifest them into problems, i.e., mental disorders like anxiety disorder, bipolar disorder, schizotypal, ocd, etc. (yes, a lot of this is chemical, but there are learned behaviours within them). It's like we compile and suppress everything. And I think that's what this is all really about. the 2nd thing I wanted to mention was simply that the repetition could be referring to the looping thoughts/ repeating thoughts, that people who do have anxiety suffer from.
Anyways, that's just my take. Love the band, love the songs.
@cerberusalpha well, he says at the beginning that he has tried weed, but he doesn't like it.
@cerberusalpha well, he says at the beginning that he has tried weed, but he doesn't like it.
In my opinion, it's about both an optimistic view of human progress and sensory/information overload - a very modern affliction which Byrne and Co have referenced in many songs. He wrote this before the internet was a major influence - but not long before.
He starts by talking about a supposedly relaxing drug that doesn't relax him. Then we move to social interactions full of questions and apologies. The first chorus brings in urban sprawl gone out of control - to the extent that he is pushed up to the 100th floor.
Next verse, the overstimulation is taking its toll - bad coordination, garbled communication, everybody being paranoid. Scumbags and superstars have lost their individual identities in the ubiquitous media circus, obliterating the difference between them. In the chorus, he's talking again about the partying and sex ('I could never keep my trousers up') we use to make ourselves comfortable with the craziness of the world and memories we can't process. Which takes us 'from my bedroom to the stars', but will only take us 'home' if it starts -or stops- making sense ('Are there any pirates on this shıp? ıf they sober up they'll have us home by mornıng')
The bridge is full of ımagery about going out of control, all over the road in 'our sexy machıne' ... technology/intoxication/mass media. the passengers screaming seems like both a disaster and a roller-coaster ride.
The last two stanzas seem to capture the ambition we are using to develop this techno-culture, which 'was not an accident at all'. Seems to imply that if we could connect with each other. 'open your windows up', we could buıld our highway to the stars and find the 'winner number'.
From the 80s, but captures the enthusiasm of the early 90s.
this song is incredible. i love it. it makes me scream and dance and...cry... i'm not sure what it is supposed to be exactly but i get a hopeless vibe from it and ...this person is trying to be crazy and have fun but maybe it just isn't the same as it used to be? like..all of a sudden you're a grown up and it's just ...awkward. so even if you tried to party hard it wouldn't feel good anymore? and at the end it just seems like..that's the way it goes and there's not much else you can do about it. everything happens for a reason. like...i went to a crazy blowout party and got shit faced and instead of having fun and feeling "young" ...i felt stupid lol.
Memories....I can see my lifetime piling up
Their last single as far as I know and boy what a way for the greatest band ever to say goodbye!
This song is about the anarchy, the beautiful insane anarchy, of life. I adore this song so much. You can't help but jump and dance around to it.
I think it's about becoming an adult, probably from the viewpoint of someone who really doesn't want to become one
I think it's about becoming an adult, esp from the viewpoint of somebody who doesn't want to become one, and how adulthood rolls around even when you try to put it off.