Starlite Diner Lyrics

Lyric discussion by bigcarbackseats 

Cover art for Starlite Diner lyrics by Ryan Adams

I doubt anyone will ever read this, seeing as the last time someone posted about this song was almost a year ago. I'm a 25 year old "grown" man. This is probably the only song that could make me tear up. It's magnificently airy and neurotically blissful. I remember the very first time I heard this album and song. I had just broken up with my girlfriend of several years, downloaded the advance and was sitting in my apartment in Austin drinking red wine feeling utterly lost and alone.

Though I have a new girlfriend now, and I am very happy in life, I always go to this song when I get a little too high strung, because it reminds me of how easily happiness/success/greatness of any measure can be gone. Fare thee well, my old friend.

Memory

I guess that with all great works of art, and this is unquestionably one, the meaning is in the consumer's interpretation. For me, this song, like many of Ryan's others, is about mourning the loss of his girlfriend to cancer.

Take the lines "the drugs are in the safe" - she doesn't need them any more! "and the clothes are on the couch intertwined, but none of them are your's and all of them are mine" - she doesn't throw clothes on the couch anymore.

"it's a blow out on a birthday cake" - for me...

I took the line

"and the clothes are on the couch intertwined, but none of them are yours and all of them are mine"

to mean she doesn't need him anymore, not she doesn't throw clothes on the couch anymore.

Their time is over, and he's meeting up with her for the last time, on her conditions.