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"
It was only one hour ago
It was all so different then
Nothing yet has really sunk in
Looks like it always did
This flesh and bone
Is just the way that we are tied in
But there's no one home
I grieve, for you
You leave, me
So hard to move on
Still loving what's gone
They say life carries on
Carries on and on and on and on
The news that truly shocks
Is the empty, empty page
While the final rattle rocks
It's empty, empty cage
And I can't handle this
I grieve, for you
You leave, me
Let it out and move on
Missing what's gone
They say life carries on
They say life carries on and on and on
Life carries on in the people I meet
In everyone that's out on the street
In all the dogs and cats
In the flies and rats
In the rot and the rust
In the ashes and the dust
Life carries on and on and on and on
Life carries on and on and on
Life carries on and on and on and on
Life carries on and on and on
Just the car that we ride in
The home we reside in
The face that we hide in
The way we are tied in
As life carries on and on and on and on
Life carries on and on and on
Did I dream this belief
Or did I believe this dream?
Now I will find relief
I grieve
It was all so different then
Nothing yet has really sunk in
Looks like it always did
This flesh and bone
Is just the way that we are tied in
But there's no one home
I grieve, for you
You leave, me
So hard to move on
Still loving what's gone
They say life carries on
Carries on and on and on and on
The news that truly shocks
Is the empty, empty page
While the final rattle rocks
It's empty, empty cage
And I can't handle this
I grieve, for you
You leave, me
Let it out and move on
Missing what's gone
They say life carries on
They say life carries on and on and on
Life carries on in the people I meet
In everyone that's out on the street
In all the dogs and cats
In the flies and rats
In the rot and the rust
In the ashes and the dust
Life carries on and on and on and on
Life carries on and on and on
Life carries on and on and on and on
Life carries on and on and on
Just the car that we ride in
The home we reside in
The face that we hide in
The way we are tied in
As life carries on and on and on and on
Life carries on and on and on
Did I dream this belief
Or did I believe this dream?
Now I will find relief
I grieve
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The chorus offers a glimmer of optimism and a chance at a resolution and redemption in the future.
Captures the rollercoaster of emotions of feeling lost while loving someone who is not there for you, feeling let down and abandoned while waiting for a lover. Lost with no direction, "Now I'm up in the air with the rain in my hair, Nowhere to go, I can go anywhere"
The bridge shows signs of longing and a plea for companionship. The Lyrics express a desire for authentic connection and the importance of Loving someone just as they are. "Just in passing, I'm not asking. That you be anyone but you”
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Plastic Bag
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“Plastic Bag” is a song about searching for an escape from personal problems and hoping to find it in the lively atmosphere of a Saturday night party. Ed Sheeran tells the story of his friend and the myriad of troubles he is going through. Unable to find any solutions, this friend seeks a last resort in a party and the vanity that comes with it.
“I overthink and have trouble sleepin’ / All purpose gone and don’t have a reason / And there’s no doctor to stop this bleedin’ / So I left home and jumped in the deep end,” Ed Sheeran sings in verse one. He continues by adding that this person is feeling the weight of having disappointed his father and doesn’t have any friends to rely on in this difficult moment. In the second verse, Ed sings about the role of grief in his friend’s plight and his dwindling faith in prayer. “Saturday night is givin’ me a reason to rely on the strobe lights / The lifeline of a promise in a shot glass, and I’ll take that / If you’re givin’ out love from a plastic bag,” Ed sings on the chorus, as his friend turns to new vices in hopes of feeling better.
In my opinion this song is definitely about loss in the sense of death. Personally, I know when I lost someone I kept saying to myself that 1,5,8 hours ago they were alive and everything was different. He goes on to mention the denial part of grief where it simply just does not feel real. You go home and all of their things are still in the same place and it does not look different it looks like it did yesterday.
The lyrics continue on to talk about the body, I believe. If you believe in a soul and in heaven or whatever then when you look at the body it truly is just something that "tied" the soul into it. Though the body remains, "no one is home" because the soul no longer resides within it.
The lyrics then talk about the difficulty of moving on when there's still so much love. The next part of the song is still confusing to me as to exactly what the artist meant. Personally, I'm thinking that it's about the funeral in which the body is buried. When the coffin is dropped into the ground perhaps that is the "empty cage" again because the body is empty itself. Funerals are definitely difficult, so exclaiming that he can't handle it sounds like that's what he's writing about.
Then he goes on to sound more painful, and he sings that we have to let it out and move on, which is what he is trying to do by raising the volume of his voice.
Eventually, life does indeed carry on, but we never truly recover completely. We have days where we are upbeat but then we go right back to the pain we've always felt but hid so well. We put on a face during the day and at night when we are alone we take that face off and again continue to grieve.