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"
Another night slips away
In other words I should say
There are no words he should say
There are no words
In his eyes I see the fear
That only time could disappear
If only time could re-appear
Now's the time
Somethin' to take it away to take it away to take it
Don't let it stay don't let it stay don't let it
The butterflies are passive aggressive
And put their problems on the shelf but they're beautiful
He'll realize the only thing that's real
Are the kids that kid themselves
And the demise of the beautiful
What is beautiful?
The multi-life is better than
The one we're in the one we knew
Cause everyone is seein' through everyone
They're steppin' on
His gold terrain
He's movin' on with bold refrain
His blatantly old campaign
Is movin' on
Somethin' to take it away to take it away to take it
Don't let it stay don't let it stay don't let it
The butterflies are passive aggressive
And put their problems on the shelf but they're beautiful
He'll realize the only thing that's real
Are the kids that kid themselves
And the demise of the beautiful
What is beautiful?
What can't stay goes away
It starts stopping when it stops stopping
In other words I should say
There are no words he should say
There are no words
In his eyes I see the fear
That only time could disappear
If only time could re-appear
Now's the time
Somethin' to take it away to take it away to take it
Don't let it stay don't let it stay don't let it
The butterflies are passive aggressive
And put their problems on the shelf but they're beautiful
He'll realize the only thing that's real
Are the kids that kid themselves
And the demise of the beautiful
What is beautiful?
The multi-life is better than
The one we're in the one we knew
Cause everyone is seein' through everyone
They're steppin' on
His gold terrain
He's movin' on with bold refrain
His blatantly old campaign
Is movin' on
Somethin' to take it away to take it away to take it
Don't let it stay don't let it stay don't let it
The butterflies are passive aggressive
And put their problems on the shelf but they're beautiful
He'll realize the only thing that's real
Are the kids that kid themselves
And the demise of the beautiful
What is beautiful?
What can't stay goes away
It starts stopping when it stops stopping
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Page
Ed Sheeran
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There aren’t many things that’ll hurt more than giving love a chance against your better judgement only to have your heart crushed yet again. Ed Sheeran tells such a story on “Page.” On this track, he is devastated to have lost his lover and even more saddened by the feeling that he may never move on from this.
FYI.. passive aggressive means stubborn. "butterflies," which are usually symbols for innocence, as in the weezer song "butterfly," avoid their problems and never deal with them, but they're still beautiful even if they're not perfect. such as..children are beautiful in all their naivety. and the rest of the stanza goes on to say that beauty is always corrupted, even if we lie to ourselves.
mmhmm. :)
Finally someone discussing the MEANING.
This song really gets to me. Although the butterfly line has puzzled me for some time, I've been thinking and reading all of these quotes and I've tried to synthesize the entire chorus into a meaningful concept.
Butterflies are fragile, soft, and innocent. Passive-aggressive to me has to do with taking a situation in which you should stand up for yourself, and instead avoiding conflict and complaining about the situation later. So the passive-aggressive butterflies are ignoring and avoiding their problems (putting them on the shelf, so to speak), but they're beautiful. Incidentally, in conflict, girls are often guilty of passive-aggression, which relates back to the gentle, soft, innocent connotations that butterflies carry as stereotypical perceptions of femininity. To deny your problems like this would probably be described as "kidding yourself"--nobody can deny that problems exist and need to be dealt with. If Ben is singing this song to some male character who sounds heartbroken, then I think the chorus is about someone breaking your heart because they let all the resentment and unpleasantness build up. But everyone he finds will be like that. Sociologists say that anything perceived as real will resultingly have real consequences (the Thomas dictum). The real consequences of kidding yourself must be "the demise of the beautiful." So, the end of the butterflies--their innocense, or maybe just their life. But then Ben asks "What is beautiful?" to remind us that there are more butterflies than we might initially see. I'm not sure that this made any sense.
I think this song is about coming out of depression.
i think, butterflies are passive aggressive because even they live only for a short time they don't seem like they're making it a big deal. they just show their beauty, flying happily... and for people mortallity is a huge problem and we spend our days worrying about death instead of seeing the beauty inside us. and to see the butterflies flying with their beautiful wings and not caring shortness of their lives, makes you feel sick.... this is the harm they give but it's not obvious. they're being passive aggresive in this way.
all i can say is that this song is beautiful. I heard it when he played in ATL. It's a great song..that one line "what is beautiful?" just makes you think about beauty and all the things we think are beautiful, and those things that we think arent, but really are.
this song is AMAZING...no other word to describe it...the lyrics are just so...great...hes an amazing kid.
this song is so beautiful, anyone who's hooked up, just how much of a trip and a journey it all is, about all the things that you wish for, all the things that you trod through, all the things you come to learn, all the things you find that you love. and how when you find that you two have come to some end, your starting all over again. i absolutely love this song,
it is ok but Im think some one should produce it
this song is really really beautiful
I just downloaded this song and all I have to say is...wow. This song is amazing.