On the Sly Lyrics

Lyric discussion by tempguy 

Cover art for On the Sly lyrics by Metric

The first section of this song seems to disenchant the idea of growing up. "Putting back a few" could be a reference to getting drunk, I'm not sure. The rest of this verse/intro is about growing up and getting older.

Her old boyfriend isn't a DJ he's a musician who revolutionized music somehow "Broke the 12 bar blues" and is very rich and popular because of that "He pays the airline DJs now. He is everywhere". I don't think this actually happened to the singer as there is no mention of it on wikipedia.

I find it hard to say exactly what this song is about but I find it very depressing/amazing at the same time. It is definitely about some sort of love affair and being disenchanted about growing up in a north American consumer culture as metric has written other songs criticizing American culture.