Lyric discussion by SolSedano 

Cover art for Monkey Man lyrics by Dave Matthews Band

This song is about humankind’s relentless, however ironic, pursuit of utopia. While humans “build higher, still higher” and “dig deeper down to the ground till its found” in an attempt to make their world better, they are in reality only fooling themselves, by destroying the gift that is Earth. “Crazy, crazy, Monkey Man, who is the one in the middle?” is borrowed from the children’s game “monkey in the middle.” We think that the world is our property, that it is essentially “in the middle,” when in fact, we as humans are the ones getting the short end of the stick in the long run because of our actions. Global warming.