My $0.02….its about rejecting both the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality of American capitalism and the never-indulge-your-temptations mentality of fundamentalist Evangelicalism.
Dude does not want a job of drudgery and boredom, which makes him feel hopeless and want to seek sensual fulfillment to cure it.
When he says “I just want to be evil” he is not saying he’s a comic book villain or a sadist or something. Its that he wants to give in to temptations…as we all do, thats why they are temptations. I think its a tongue in cheek use of the word “evil,” like the definition from a Christian fundamentalist but one he doesn’t believe is necessarily morally wrong.
From the music video, it appears those temptations for the singer are drugs and hookers. But in any case, the more we lead lives of drudgery, the more prone we are to falling into temptations (that may end up having bad consequences) to give our lives some sense of meaning, something at least we can look forward to. We need something to believe in, and in the absence of a spiritually/artistically meaningful life, the pleasure-seeking hedonism becomes something that we can believe in.
My $0.02….its about rejecting both the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality of American capitalism and the never-indulge-your-temptations mentality of fundamentalist Evangelicalism.
Dude does not want a job of drudgery and boredom, which makes him feel hopeless and want to seek sensual fulfillment to cure it. When he says “I just want to be evil” he is not saying he’s a comic book villain or a sadist or something. Its that he wants to give in to temptations…as we all do, thats why they are temptations. I think its a tongue in cheek use of the word “evil,” like the definition from a Christian fundamentalist but one he doesn’t believe is necessarily morally wrong.
From the music video, it appears those temptations for the singer are drugs and hookers. But in any case, the more we lead lives of drudgery, the more prone we are to falling into temptations (that may end up having bad consequences) to give our lives some sense of meaning, something at least we can look forward to. We need something to believe in, and in the absence of a spiritually/artistically meaningful life, the pleasure-seeking hedonism becomes something that we can believe in.
[Edit: Additional thoughts]