Mirror in the Bathroom

The song is about narcissism. Narcissism itself in extreme cases leads to mental illness - there is a line that mentions this - in fact there is a Narcissistic Personality Disorder characterised by self obsession arrogance and heartless crue behaviour to others.

I can see the links to cocaine addiction but have read that Dave Wakeling himself says the song is about narcissism. I might be wrong but this is what I understand.

Anyway what a cracking song from a cracking band! First band I ever saw live in about 1979 I think. Aged about 14 I had a huge crush on Dave lol. Plus I saw Ranking Roger at some scooter rally in Devon performing live about 5 years back. Still loving the the band's stuff over 30 years later. Don't get bands like this anymore.

found this online

Yeah. I was working in construction at the time, and it was the winter, I had forgotten to hang my jeans up to dry overnight, so when I got into the bathroom to shower up, I noticed my jeans were still on the floor, soaking wet, covered in sand. So I hung them up thinking well, it's probably best to have them steaming hot and wet. I went to shave, and it was snowing, and I really, really didn't want to go. So I started talking to myself in the mirror as I was shaving up. And it was weird, because I looked deeper in the mirror, and I could see the little caption on the door behind, and I said to myself, Look, David, there's just me and you in here. The door's locked. We don't have to go to work. Of course we did. Got on the motorbike, and I just started pondering as I skated my way to the construction site on this motorbike. And that's how it started. It was thinking about how self-involvement turns into narcissism and how narcissism turns into isolation, and then how isolation turns into self-involvement again, and how what a vicious cycle that can become. So then I just started thinking about different situations where people would ostensibly look like they were doing something, but in fact they were checking their own reflection out. And you'd see it perhaps on Saturday afternoon with people window shopping, half the time they're actually just looking at their own reflection. Then this restaurant opened, and it was a big deal at the time because it had glass tables, and I was like, oh, you can watch yourself.

Then, in America in the early '80s, everybody gave me knowing winks and said, "Oh, I know what that one's about, then, Dave." And it wasn't that mirror in the bathroom at all, it was the one on the wall, and not the one on your knee. And oddly, songs can become sort of strangely prophetic, though. But certainly at the time of writing, nobody had any money or any access to cocaine... until after the song was out.

Why? Why say stuff like that? It's getting more difficult to find songs that don't have interpretations involving drugs on this site. Couldn't it just be about vanity and being introspective to the point of not being able to function socially?

It’s about vanity.

When I first heard this song, I thought it was funny. And I believed it was about narcissism. After reading posts, it seems that it was about narcisissim. Someone said it was about cocaine in the bathroom? When the song talks about sitting down and watching yourself eat, it seems that would give more weight to narcissism? But I guess you could throw coke in there as well? It’s tied into vanity/narcissism as well.

Yes, it's about a cocaine addiction, but it's also about the associated narcisism and paranoia which typically accompany such an addiction..so both of you (hoyden, unlikelyadict) are correct.

This song is obviously about narcississm and being a vain mirror gazer, always checking out your reflection in shopping windows and glass tables and everthing.

i think this song could be about being obsessed with yourself, yet not really knowing yourself..

either way i have no idea what this song is about, but either way it has an awesome catchy tune with a great brass line!

This is their best song...hands down. Now it's going to be stuck in my head for the rest of today.