Paper Sun

This song is about the Omagh Bombing, Northern Ireland, 1998.

To me this is easily the best track off Euphoria (which by their earlier standards is distinctly average). Anyway, the meaning. I don't know why but to me the lyrics seem at least in part to describe a boy who is abused by their father. For example "hurt to remember", "help to forget", Is the anger inside of you, a gift from father to sun" (He has great anger at the thought of his abuse and his father abused him hence "a gift from father to sun". The lines "Blind to all the damage done", and "Waiting for the tide to turn" suggest that they are doing nothing at the moment to stand up for themselves and make it stop. That would seem to be the main meaning of this song. A boy being abused by his father and doing nothing about apart from wishing it would stop.

There's so much more depth I could go nto but i feel i should leave that to other posters.

For me,Paper sun is a song about that i have bipolar disorder, and that my mental disorder when i was hypomanic went beyond young girls in a bad way,and that i was living on a paper sun when i treated the girls bad when i was hypomanic,a metaphor for that i thought the bad way i treated the girls was right of me, and didnt understand the seriousness of what i did to them.

And that when i knew what i really did to them beginned to regret what i did to them, so i got very depressed and felt very bad.

i associate the part of the text: you will discover the way to suffer with this.

Cause your living on a paper sun,blind to all the damage done: I feelt joy when the girls felt discomfort of nasty words i said to them,and thought it was okay of me to take revenge on them that way,and didnt understand the seriousness of what i did to them.

But for me also Paper sun general is a song about when people with bipolar disorder are manic or hypomanic,and are bad to people and feel proud of it,and so begin to regret what they did to people and begin to feel very bad when they realize what they actually did.

I've always interpreted this as someone looking at their life and seeing how bad it is. Something is ruining their life. Their life is burning up, like a sun made of paper.

A powerful song about the saddest day in Northern Ireland

This song IS about blotter acid. If you grew up in the 70's like I did, you probably did your share of acid. If not, you have no clue what this song is all about. I remember the picture of "Mr. Natural" on a 4 way hit of blotter, "window pane", "orange sunshine", "green blotter", brown blotter", etc. You could buy blotter acid on a page of 100 hits (blots of LSD on a white page of typing paper). Listen to the words in the song! Now look up LSD. For reference, I looked up "paper sun" in the Urban Dictionary. "A slang term for LSD (acid) that was coined by the unheard-of single by the 1960's psychedelic rock group Traffic due to their first single: 'Paper Sun'."

I agree

When I first heard this I kept thinking what on earth a "Paper Sun" could mean. A "Paper tiger" is something we think is powerful but has no strength and is a chimera. So what on earth is a false sun? Def Leppard has always disliked organized religion. Could several lines be a cryptic play on words with Sun meaning "Son" or "Savior"...The Son of God? Could it be a statement that Christianity is a joke and that people who rely on Christ are living on a "paper son" or "dream", putting their faith in something false. "I don't believe in you" (No belief in God or the Savior) you've come undone (people get carried away in religion) Blind to all the damage done (how organized religion hasn't been helpful.

I know this is a stretch, but I'm convinced some of the lines are a sly jab at religion.
Of course Cheesemaesto's take is probably the best straightforward meaning.