The song criticizes the TAC public addresses concerning inebriated driving, in that they were violent and overall depressing. These addresses showed happy young adults living fun lives, until they got into a car, inebriated, and usually with friends, and were often met with incredibly violent traffic accidents.
The first verse talks about three stereotypes of kids in school: the one who throws away bad influences (yobs in the football team) and becomes a model in the community; the kid who experiments with drugs who eventually ends up in a court of law – but as a prosecuting queen's counsel; and finally, the model student whose life is cut short by a drunk driver missing a stop sign.
The second verse concerns specifically with how discouraging the advertisements are: how the students' lives could be ended in a single violent drive. The start compares Snoop Dogg and Ice T, controversial rappers, with the commercials; this, essentially, says "Rap isn't what you should be worried about, it's these damn PAs." By saying that whether you work intensely on homework or you graffiti the Dandedong line (a Victoria transit line), your life is eventually going to end horribly, so why do anything at all?
Third among the verses, after the chorus, talks a bit about the mindset the addresses gives. The speaker doesn't care about his end of year exams because he knows that, eventually, it won't even matter. I'll save the bit about the advertiser and the junkie for the next verse, but the line "Who cares what you sow when what you reap" is an exact statement: why work hard for yourself or others if someone's just going to miss a stop sign and kill you?
After the chorus, the next verse is about how there will always be a better car, but you -can- get the best cancer tumor. This ties into the previous lines about junkies and advertisers: it's always assumed that you could do better than just being an advertiser (hence, "tragic waste of potential") but nobody says much about doing the worst you possibly can, which is arguably easier than being an advertiser ("being a junkie's not so good, either").
The first four lines of the final verse is a summarization of their previous points: you feel as though your life is hardwired and eventually only summarized by your death, and so you don't actually give much choice in your future. The end of the verse, however, touches on a new point entirely. In the TAC commercials, there are few if any problems shown about the subject's lives -until- they begin drinking and getting the driver's seat of the car. The hurried "I'm OK! You're OK!" section is a way of dismissing all other problems that you might have in your life, while the final repetition of "Greg! You missed the stop sign!" saying that all of the attention that might be spent on our other problems is instead put on depressing and violent public addresses.
But, at the end of the day, who really gives a fuck?
@AllieAnarchy I didn't consider this interpretation. You can either interpret the song as depressing, saying we are all doomed so why bother, but it certainly seems more likely that they are being sarcastic. They are pointing out that it is foolish to say 'what's the point' when the cocaine addict can become a lawyer. At the end of the music video the quote on the wall makes their point quite well, saying the pain of regret is far worse than the pain of hard work. The cocaine addict worked to become a lawyer, and the...
@AllieAnarchy I didn't consider this interpretation. You can either interpret the song as depressing, saying we are all doomed so why bother, but it certainly seems more likely that they are being sarcastic. They are pointing out that it is foolish to say 'what's the point' when the cocaine addict can become a lawyer. At the end of the music video the quote on the wall makes their point quite well, saying the pain of regret is far worse than the pain of hard work. The cocaine addict worked to become a lawyer, and the guy that slagged the football team worked to become a real estate agent.
I wouldn't go so far though as to say they are criticising the TAC, the TAC is just trying to prevent deaths.
The song criticizes the TAC public addresses concerning inebriated driving, in that they were violent and overall depressing. These addresses showed happy young adults living fun lives, until they got into a car, inebriated, and usually with friends, and were often met with incredibly violent traffic accidents.
The first verse talks about three stereotypes of kids in school: the one who throws away bad influences (yobs in the football team) and becomes a model in the community; the kid who experiments with drugs who eventually ends up in a court of law – but as a prosecuting queen's counsel; and finally, the model student whose life is cut short by a drunk driver missing a stop sign.
The second verse concerns specifically with how discouraging the advertisements are: how the students' lives could be ended in a single violent drive. The start compares Snoop Dogg and Ice T, controversial rappers, with the commercials; this, essentially, says "Rap isn't what you should be worried about, it's these damn PAs." By saying that whether you work intensely on homework or you graffiti the Dandedong line (a Victoria transit line), your life is eventually going to end horribly, so why do anything at all?
Third among the verses, after the chorus, talks a bit about the mindset the addresses gives. The speaker doesn't care about his end of year exams because he knows that, eventually, it won't even matter. I'll save the bit about the advertiser and the junkie for the next verse, but the line "Who cares what you sow when what you reap" is an exact statement: why work hard for yourself or others if someone's just going to miss a stop sign and kill you?
After the chorus, the next verse is about how there will always be a better car, but you -can- get the best cancer tumor. This ties into the previous lines about junkies and advertisers: it's always assumed that you could do better than just being an advertiser (hence, "tragic waste of potential") but nobody says much about doing the worst you possibly can, which is arguably easier than being an advertiser ("being a junkie's not so good, either").
The first four lines of the final verse is a summarization of their previous points: you feel as though your life is hardwired and eventually only summarized by your death, and so you don't actually give much choice in your future. The end of the verse, however, touches on a new point entirely. In the TAC commercials, there are few if any problems shown about the subject's lives -until- they begin drinking and getting the driver's seat of the car. The hurried "I'm OK! You're OK!" section is a way of dismissing all other problems that you might have in your life, while the final repetition of "Greg! You missed the stop sign!" saying that all of the attention that might be spent on our other problems is instead put on depressing and violent public addresses.
But, at the end of the day, who really gives a fuck?
@AllieAnarchy I didn't consider this interpretation. You can either interpret the song as depressing, saying we are all doomed so why bother, but it certainly seems more likely that they are being sarcastic. They are pointing out that it is foolish to say 'what's the point' when the cocaine addict can become a lawyer. At the end of the music video the quote on the wall makes their point quite well, saying the pain of regret is far worse than the pain of hard work. The cocaine addict worked to become a lawyer, and the...
@AllieAnarchy I didn't consider this interpretation. You can either interpret the song as depressing, saying we are all doomed so why bother, but it certainly seems more likely that they are being sarcastic. They are pointing out that it is foolish to say 'what's the point' when the cocaine addict can become a lawyer. At the end of the music video the quote on the wall makes their point quite well, saying the pain of regret is far worse than the pain of hard work. The cocaine addict worked to become a lawyer, and the guy that slagged the football team worked to become a real estate agent.
I wouldn't go so far though as to say they are criticising the TAC, the TAC is just trying to prevent deaths.