"Bottle Up and Explode" as written by and Steven P. Smith....
Bottle up and explode over and over
Keep the troublemaker below
Put it away and check out for the day
And in for a round of overexposure
The thing Mother Nature provides to get up and go
Bottle up and explode, seeing the stars surrounding you
Red, white, and blue
You look at him like you've never known him
But I know for a fact that you have
The last time you cried, who'd you think was inside?
Thinking that you were about to come over
But I'm tired now of waiting for you
You never show
Bottle up and go, if you're going to hide it's up to you
I'm coming through
Bottle up and go, I can make it outside
I'll get through becoming you
Becoming you
Becoming you
Keep the troublemaker below
Put it away and check out for the day
And in for a round of overexposure
The thing Mother Nature provides to get up and go
Bottle up and explode, seeing the stars surrounding you
Red, white, and blue
You look at him like you've never known him
But I know for a fact that you have
The last time you cried, who'd you think was inside?
Thinking that you were about to come over
But I'm tired now of waiting for you
You never show
Bottle up and go, if you're going to hide it's up to you
I'm coming through
Bottle up and go, I can make it outside
I'll get through becoming you
Becoming you
Becoming you
Lyrics submitted by EnjOy IncUbus, edited by Jate
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hence the "i'll get though becoming you, becoming you"
sometimes we find ourselves doing what we used to hate others for doing, esp. if the person you are with, or want to be with, hides from you. in order to move on away from someone who is hiding their feelings from you, you can find yourself hiding your feelings from them.. if that makes sense.
you can't wear your heart on your sleeve all the time.
This is my song for freedom on the 4th of July!
...bottle up and explode seeing the stars surrounding you
red white and blue...
Reading here, I think it makes more sense that it's about the two sides of himself.
One oddity that I have to point out: Saab cars make this very specific "BING bong" noise to indicate warning. One will be driving down the road and suddenly hear BING bong and have to look down and find out that, in my case once, the car has turned off. This sound is played in the song! Very quietly in the background during the instrumental break, around 1:52. It gets me every time. However, it also makes me wonder - was it intentional? I doubt it, but how ironic, since the song does seem to be somewhat about warning.
Elliott Smith was a self confessed drug addict and alcoholic. "Bottle up and explode" refers to the tendency for alcoholics to hide their pain/intense emotions with booze. It only works for so long before all the bottled emotions come pouring out, often in inappropriate ways. The "troublemaker" is the demon, or demons we're hiding when we get wasted. "In for a round of overexposure," is a reference to Elliott's personal issues with anxiety. Anxiety is "the thing mother nature provides to get up and go," because that's what it's been useful for historically - to get out of the way of serious threats to the well-being of an organism. I'm not sure what the "stars," or "red, white and blue" stand for.
"You look at him like you've never known him," refers to the person we're hiding from the world when we get wasted. We have to face them eventually. But just as there's a person we're hiding from the world when drunk, there's also a part of ourselves that we’re suddenly free to expose when we’re under the influence. That's the person Elliott wants to be. The calm, witty, confident, deep, caring human, that's always been overpowered by the other parts, until he uses a drug and is free to release it. He's tired of waiting for that person to show himself, and because it's an impossibility for him, he'll release that person in the only way he knows how. "I'm coming through," means he's getting drunk/wasted and he's done waiting. He's going to demand that person to show up..
but probably you can find many different interpretations.