The song also has a darker meaning, clarified by the video. The narrator hopes to maintain her courage to commit suicide, or murder/suicide with her lover. As several comments have noted, this is a doomed love, a relatively innocent girl with a dark lover. (This trope is also in the song Video Games, and here is underscored by the references to "insane girls," "wild side," and in the video, the clean-cut girl with the heavily-tattooed smoking guy with a street-rod type of car (it looks like a vintage Mustang or a Trans-Am). in the video, she is clearly meant to be in an after-life type of setting, as suggested by the Renaissance church, her white dress (like an angel or a virgin sacrifice), the funereal flowers in her head covering, the supernatural restful tigers by her side (as in a 'peaceable kingdon'). She has hoped that the doomed love might be redeemed at the "gates", (the Pearly Gates), where she hoped to find out that upon death her lover is hers; however, she is in a relatively passive state (not as passionate as in life), alone (Talking Heads: "heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.") She also felt her love redeemed her in a religous sense, using terms that are familiar to certain religions (I was lost but not I'm found, I can see but once I was blind). The American flag at the beginning (and the car) perhaps such this is a particularly American kind of story. Her act of attempted murder/suicide is shown in the video, but it both succeeds and fails, she dies, but he lives, so the reunion in death is also frustrated (and her revenge on her lover is also fulfilled by her death by not by his). Amazing song, amazing artist!
The song also has a darker meaning, clarified by the video. The narrator hopes to maintain her courage to commit suicide, or murder/suicide with her lover. As several comments have noted, this is a doomed love, a relatively innocent girl with a dark lover. (This trope is also in the song Video Games, and here is underscored by the references to "insane girls," "wild side," and in the video, the clean-cut girl with the heavily-tattooed smoking guy with a street-rod type of car (it looks like a vintage Mustang or a Trans-Am). in the video, she is clearly meant to be in an after-life type of setting, as suggested by the Renaissance church, her white dress (like an angel or a virgin sacrifice), the funereal flowers in her head covering, the supernatural restful tigers by her side (as in a 'peaceable kingdon'). She has hoped that the doomed love might be redeemed at the "gates", (the Pearly Gates), where she hoped to find out that upon death her lover is hers; however, she is in a relatively passive state (not as passionate as in life), alone (Talking Heads: "heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.") She also felt her love redeemed her in a religous sense, using terms that are familiar to certain religions (I was lost but not I'm found, I can see but once I was blind). The American flag at the beginning (and the car) perhaps such this is a particularly American kind of story. Her act of attempted murder/suicide is shown in the video, but it both succeeds and fails, she dies, but he lives, so the reunion in death is also frustrated (and her revenge on her lover is also fulfilled by her death by not by his). Amazing song, amazing artist!