Mike Patton is notorious for bullshitting reporters. I don't believe the Madonna thing at all.
Midlife Crisis is about a child's father who lusts for his youth and abandons the family and then that child grows up and has a Midlife crisis himself. The whole time he's going through it, he remembers the pain of being selfishly abandoned by his own father and is both sickened by the pain he's causing as well as with the sudden sympathy and renewed anger towards his father who left so many years ago for the same reasons.
The song is riddled with double-meanings.
A lot of times, men going through a Midlife crisis feel as though they've wasted their youth and potential and have regrets. They suddenly feel "weighed down" by the burdens of family and want to be young again.
"Suck ingenuity
down through the family tree"
Refers to that sense of having wasted potential to pass it on to the kids. It also refers to the "passing on" of the crisis itself from father to son.
"Your menstruating heart
doesn't bleed enough for two"
Another dual meaning:
it refers the anger he felt as a child at his father expressing sorrow but leaving anyway...like saying "I'm sorry I have to do this, kid" and walking out the door.
it refers to his own understanding of the emotional hemorrhaging he is causing his family and realizing that he's going to abandon them anyway.
Now read the rest of the lyrics and you'll understand.
Mike Patton is notorious for bullshitting reporters. I don't believe the Madonna thing at all.
Midlife Crisis is about a child's father who lusts for his youth and abandons the family and then that child grows up and has a Midlife crisis himself. The whole time he's going through it, he remembers the pain of being selfishly abandoned by his own father and is both sickened by the pain he's causing as well as with the sudden sympathy and renewed anger towards his father who left so many years ago for the same reasons.
The song is riddled with double-meanings.
A lot of times, men going through a Midlife crisis feel as though they've wasted their youth and potential and have regrets. They suddenly feel "weighed down" by the burdens of family and want to be young again.
"Suck ingenuity down through the family tree"
Refers to that sense of having wasted potential to pass it on to the kids. It also refers to the "passing on" of the crisis itself from father to son.
"Your menstruating heart doesn't bleed enough for two"
Another dual meaning:
Now read the rest of the lyrics and you'll understand.
That's a good thought as well. Perhaps we could agree that perhaps this song could be about all cases of midlife crisis?
That's a good thought as well. Perhaps we could agree that perhaps this song could be about all cases of midlife crisis?