For the moment I'll comment on the first four words of the song, because as I see it they are there to set up the concept, period, type of society that System want to talk about and the later verses sung by the guitarist fella.
"Yeah! Alright!
Yeah! Alright!"
When I heard this first I thought it sounded exactly like the constantly unoriginal introduction you hear in most modern pop-songs. It's quite prominent in rap and now in "White" pop where you'll hear "Awight, uh, uh, uh yeah, come on, lets get down with this." that sort of bullshit. These horribly pointless introductory pieces where an artists makes provocative noises are what they are trying to take off. They even stop the music just to say the "Alright" and the "Yeah" to make it ultra obvious that they are taking it off. I also think that this is a primary concept for setting the societal period of the song which is quite recent and to the present.
Now starting into the verse "Crack pipes, needles, PCP and fast cars", I think this verse is quite blatant as to what it's conveying. It's describing modern society in all its unfortunate reality. To sum it up crudely, in this world all you're told to look for, all you're worth, the only meaningfulness in it is trying to find the next high, the next thrill, stupidly searching for stardom ("...Movie Stars") or following public personalities in adoration. Becoming bigger than yourself because of that stardom and obviously trying to find bigger ways to bloat out your thrills to the point that you can't even think anymore, just anything goes. "Waiting for a mother that will get me high..." the person is just waiting, not thinking of any repercussions, for someone who will provide him with some kind of thrill (could be drugs, could be anything) "Just a stupid motherfucker, If I die I die" These thrills are so enormous and taking me so far away from sense that, well, if I die - I DIE, I don't care, I've gone past thinking.
"Midnight fistfight" - this reminds me of the macho antics of man and how completley irrational they are. This could remind you of a person that was so high and out of his depth with drugs that he would ask you to shoot him in the head because he had convinced himself that he wouldn't die - "I'm feelin' so good that nothing could kill me". Wanting to fistfight just for the adrenaline, uncaring again of that person and the fact that they'll probably receive a broken nose or more broadly, they'll have a negative impact on society by instigating violence for no other reason than the machismo and thrill of it which breeds more violence. But it doesn't matter, the person can't think anymore - he's looking for a thrill and it doesn't matter what he does to get it. In other words - Irrational society gone haywire all because of irrational construction of society - purposely, to keep people from thinking, to keep them angry at each other, to make them search for dangerous thrills rather than assisting them in developing their mind - that's dangerous - they might think society is worth changing.
For the moment I'll comment on the first four words of the song, because as I see it they are there to set up the concept, period, type of society that System want to talk about and the later verses sung by the guitarist fella.
"Yeah! Alright! Yeah! Alright!"
When I heard this first I thought it sounded exactly like the constantly unoriginal introduction you hear in most modern pop-songs. It's quite prominent in rap and now in "White" pop where you'll hear "Awight, uh, uh, uh yeah, come on, lets get down with this." that sort of bullshit. These horribly pointless introductory pieces where an artists makes provocative noises are what they are trying to take off. They even stop the music just to say the "Alright" and the "Yeah" to make it ultra obvious that they are taking it off. I also think that this is a primary concept for setting the societal period of the song which is quite recent and to the present.
Now starting into the verse "Crack pipes, needles, PCP and fast cars", I think this verse is quite blatant as to what it's conveying. It's describing modern society in all its unfortunate reality. To sum it up crudely, in this world all you're told to look for, all you're worth, the only meaningfulness in it is trying to find the next high, the next thrill, stupidly searching for stardom ("...Movie Stars") or following public personalities in adoration. Becoming bigger than yourself because of that stardom and obviously trying to find bigger ways to bloat out your thrills to the point that you can't even think anymore, just anything goes. "Waiting for a mother that will get me high..." the person is just waiting, not thinking of any repercussions, for someone who will provide him with some kind of thrill (could be drugs, could be anything) "Just a stupid motherfucker, If I die I die" These thrills are so enormous and taking me so far away from sense that, well, if I die - I DIE, I don't care, I've gone past thinking.
"Midnight fistfight" - this reminds me of the macho antics of man and how completley irrational they are. This could remind you of a person that was so high and out of his depth with drugs that he would ask you to shoot him in the head because he had convinced himself that he wouldn't die - "I'm feelin' so good that nothing could kill me". Wanting to fistfight just for the adrenaline, uncaring again of that person and the fact that they'll probably receive a broken nose or more broadly, they'll have a negative impact on society by instigating violence for no other reason than the machismo and thrill of it which breeds more violence. But it doesn't matter, the person can't think anymore - he's looking for a thrill and it doesn't matter what he does to get it. In other words - Irrational society gone haywire all because of irrational construction of society - purposely, to keep people from thinking, to keep them angry at each other, to make them search for dangerous thrills rather than assisting them in developing their mind - that's dangerous - they might think society is worth changing.