Tears

Epic song. The great thing about songs\poetry is the ambiguity allows the listener\reader to project the meaning from their own lives onto it, and hence it becomes far more significant and enjoyable.

To me, this is a man in a long-term relationship ("We gotta love to last for a million years"), who knows he doesn't love her ("Our love, girl, is going through changes. I don't know if I'm alive, dead, dying, or just a little jaded"). He's once again in bad-books ("send home your hard-working jury, I'm going down this time"). He knows the relationship is doomed, knows he must end it, yet can't tell her ("So if you hear me crying, or talking in my sleep. Don't be afraid, it's just the hours that I keep"), because he knows it will destroy her ("I've seen the future in the tracks of your tears").

He thinks the only way she'll ever get over him is if he splits because of some failure in his own life, perhaps drug-addiction, then he'll never have to break her by telling her he's fallen out of love ("All I can do is hope that you will see me fall"). He knows it's coming ("I cast a shorter shadow with every passing day ... I'm just fading away"), and when he does leave her, he desperately wants her to be strong enough overcome her loss ("Do your best to smash my picture on your wall"). But he knows he means the world to her ("Some kind of magic in all your hopes and fears") and he's beset with worry that she'll never recover ("All those tears") ("I've seen the future in the tracks of your tears").

Utterly haunting and brilliant.

This is my favourite Stone Roses song. Stone Roses has some brilliant songs on but Second Coming seems to flow better. Forget Johnny Marr, John Squire is the best indie guitarist and this is the best guitar driven indie album ever written.

anyone else think this sound abit like the second half of Stairway to Heaven?

I dunno, but it sounds to me like he loves this woman so much, but he can still feel his pain, in spite of how much he loves her, and want to do right. He feels empathy for the pain he is causing her, because she loves him, and she feels HIS pain. Kind of like a catch 22. On one hand he is feeling he must separate from her, and wants her to separate from him (smash my picture on your wall), because of the painful empathy. On the other hand, that painful empathic bond is also keeping him hanging on, even as he feels he is close to the end (Some kind of magic in all your hopes and fears Shows me the future through the tracks of your tears). The tracks of your tears is about the pain she feels because of his suffering...those tears are for him. And on the one hand he does not want to cause her suffering, on the other hand, it is like a lighthouse in his own pain, that is dragging him under.

That is how it feels to me.

Realizing that you have found someone who makes you contemplate your whole way of living. But even though you want to change a reckless way of living for this person, you feel like you can't do it yourself - that you need another person to hold your hand along the way. This song hopes for the other person to see your fading and carry you to better things.

sorry bo the second coming is good but the stone roses is in a league of it's own.

Absolute masterpiece. Profoundly honest and tender. For me it is about a moment when someone is going through a kind of fatal change in their life and no longer knows how to face themselves, and because of that, they can’t face the one they love either. A couple that do know each other deeply would share the same fear and loss when one of them is caught in an identity crisis, when self-awareness becomes a curse and a source of pain. They want to reach out, saying “throw me a line, you know I need it”, but deep down they know that nothing can actually save them. They are just so desperate that they have to turn to the one that they love most and ask for a lifeline. But weeping is all the other can do. Love is something that can’t be saved by effort; both of them know that there is nothing left to do but pray: speaking in the weakest tone, hoping that their being true, although apparently useless, could still do some good.

the second coming is better than the stone roses, sorry

yeh supose

my shadow is hrot and getting shorter every day, no matter how hard I try to hold on....this song is jesus