Honestly, while a lot of people are going the whole "suppressed dreams and aspirations as a child" route, I wanna go the whole "fading star" route. This may not have enough proof and as deep as the first, but I believe they are writing about why they tour everywhere and everyone knew them by name. "Why can't they remember what I'll never forget" may be referring to how they remembered all the fame and how they thought they made it, only to eventually fade into oblivion so that people don't even care too much and they never get any radio play too much anymore for their newer stuff. To further prove this, their hit song "Kryptonite" that came off their debut album that was so huge was about ten years prior to this song first being released. From their though, their album brought less and less attention each time they came out. Hell, look at their best of album, four of those songs are from their debut, three from their second, and only one from their third and fourth, and none, including this song, from their fifth album. And it has been said that it directly reflected on how popular those songs are.
Of course, this is just my interpretation of it, and probably the other route is more accurate.
Honestly, while a lot of people are going the whole "suppressed dreams and aspirations as a child" route, I wanna go the whole "fading star" route. This may not have enough proof and as deep as the first, but I believe they are writing about why they tour everywhere and everyone knew them by name. "Why can't they remember what I'll never forget" may be referring to how they remembered all the fame and how they thought they made it, only to eventually fade into oblivion so that people don't even care too much and they never get any radio play too much anymore for their newer stuff. To further prove this, their hit song "Kryptonite" that came off their debut album that was so huge was about ten years prior to this song first being released. From their though, their album brought less and less attention each time they came out. Hell, look at their best of album, four of those songs are from their debut, three from their second, and only one from their third and fourth, and none, including this song, from their fifth album. And it has been said that it directly reflected on how popular those songs are.
Of course, this is just my interpretation of it, and probably the other route is more accurate.