It takes awhile for song meanings to sink in with me. The first few times I hear nothing but "the sound" and couldn't even begin to tell you what the lyrics were.
The first four times I heard this song, I liked it. It was pretty. Acoustic solo Ben Gibbard is always nice.
Fifth time around, I stop and take apart the lyrics, and I spaz out.
Did anyone else get the connotations of implied suicide in this song? "Someday you will die... If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks..." hints at his lover's death, and "...but I'll be close behind... I'll follow you into the dark..." says that he'll go to whatever lengths to always always be with her. Even... kill himself when she dies, so they can enter the Great Unknown together?
I think it's beautiful again, now, but I'm able to take anything Ben Gibbard throws at me these days and think it's beautiful. I accept the darkness and obscurity of his lyrics because the vagueness and ambiguity means there's room for it to mean something not so dark or obscure. So that's okay. "Maybe he's saying something... else. Ben Gibbard's voice is pretty anyway."
It takes awhile for song meanings to sink in with me. The first few times I hear nothing but "the sound" and couldn't even begin to tell you what the lyrics were.
The first four times I heard this song, I liked it. It was pretty. Acoustic solo Ben Gibbard is always nice.
Fifth time around, I stop and take apart the lyrics, and I spaz out.
Did anyone else get the connotations of implied suicide in this song? "Someday you will die... If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks..." hints at his lover's death, and "...but I'll be close behind... I'll follow you into the dark..." says that he'll go to whatever lengths to always always be with her. Even... kill himself when she dies, so they can enter the Great Unknown together?
I think it's beautiful again, now, but I'm able to take anything Ben Gibbard throws at me these days and think it's beautiful. I accept the darkness and obscurity of his lyrics because the vagueness and ambiguity means there's room for it to mean something not so dark or obscure. So that's okay. "Maybe he's saying something... else. Ben Gibbard's voice is pretty anyway."