Lyric discussion by Fals3Alarm 

Cover art for Chop Suey! lyrics by System of a Down

The whole band have never stated an official meaning to any of their songs so that fans can interpret songs for themselves. Well this is my interpretation.

A lot of interpretations are heavily religious tied, mine is slightly different.

To me this song is about someone who really wants to kill them self, but everyone around that person doesn't understand why.

This is going to be lengthy but bear with me In their life they "grab a brush and put a little makeup" on and "hide the scars and fade away the shakeup" so that everyone else doesn't see how depressed/traumatized the person really is.

Then the verse repeats with "YOU WANTED TO!" on the end of each line. To me this symbolizes everyone else blaming the person for not taking control of his/her life. In "Why'd you leave the keys up on the table - you wanted to", the keys symbolize the tool to control the person's life, and he/she just left it out for anyone to take. As in "you wanted to hide the scars, you couldn't even take control of what's happening in your life".

In the pre-chorus sections, where we hear "I don't think you trust, in my self righteous suicide". The change in tempo and new instruments symbolizes that another person is talking, it's the suicidal person trying to explain that he/she has had enough and it would be best that their life is ended.

Now we hear "I cry when angels deserve to die" and later on "Father!... Why have you forsaken me?" - this symbolizes the person looking at the world and seeing the injustice and cruelty in it. As in, there are so many people who claim to be 'angels' but in reality they have done horrible things and deserve to die than most people, as well as thinking 'so many bad things are happening in the world, how could god let this happen, how could god forsake us, how could he forsake me?'.

By definition "Chop Suey" is a Chinese dish made with a lot of mixed ingredients, similar to how modern society has mixed views on suicide.

In some interviews System of a down said that they wanted to put the word 'suicide' in the name. But didn't because everyone would censor it, so they named it Chop Suey(cide) as a play on words.

Daron Malakian (System of a Down guitarist) stated in an interview that - "The song is about how we are regarded differently depending on how we pass. Everyone deserves to die. Like, if I were now to die from drug abuse, they might say I deserved it because I abused dangerous drugs. Hence the line, 'I cry when angels deserve to die'".

So yeah, to my this song is about someone contemplating or attempting suicide - in the album version you even hear Serj say at the start "We're all in suicide".

My Interpretation

FYI at the start of the song Serj says "We're rolling 'Suicide'", as in they are going to record the song 'Suicide' which was the song's original title before 'Chop Suey!'. As you said above they wanted to include the word 'suicide' in the name but didnt.

Thanks! The song makes much more sense now. But for the line "when angels deserve to die" after reading this I recalled how I felt for a while not so long ago. There was a time when I was suicidal and the only things that went through my head was "why am I surrounded by assholes?" "Nobody cares if I live or die" And "I am the one with the purest heart around, a white spot surrounded by black matter, I don't belong, I deserve to get out of this shithole, I deserve to die"....

This is exactly the meaning that I'd given the song, even before reading your post. I still couldn't figure out what it meant by "Father" but now it makes sense. :)