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Lyrics That Still Make No Sense to You


Anaïs.

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I don't see the problem with the lyrics to 'Sex Drugs & Violence' I just see it more as Billie is comparing one extreme to another. The idea of being out of control and the idea of being grounded with the safety of a 'real' job and education and a system to follow.

That lyric in missing you though...oh wow. It makes me cringe. I never really had much appreciation for that song - due to that lyric - but after hearing it live I love it so I don't care.

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"I like your BMW, I like you BM excellent tits"

I have not spent a lot of time learning the lyrics of the trilogy so... what song is that from? Never heard it but it sounds pretty awful :lol:

It's from Troublemaker. And you're correct, it is pretty bad. :D

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Nuclear Family.

First, Billie Joe writes about partying with "gonna ride the world like a merry go round". By the time the chorus comes round he makes this really weak attempt at social commentary: "like a Chinese drama and conspiracy, it's the death of the nuclear family...it's looking like another bad comedy, just as long as it comes in high fidelity for me too".

Someone please explain.

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I have not spent a lot of time learning the lyrics of the trilogy so... what song is that from? Never heard it but it sounds pretty awful :lol:

Just about the worst lyric Billie has ever written. It bugged me the first time I heard it and it hasn't stopped bugging me since. It's just bad.

I love Missing You but yeah the first time i heard that line i was like oh dear

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It's from Troublemaker. And you're correct, it is pretty bad. :D

Thanks! Even in context of the song it's bad...

I love Missing You but yeah the first time i heard that line i was like oh dear

'

It's such a shame! I really like the song as well but every time that lyric passes by it's like *small internal cringe*. It sounds like the kind of lyric a 9 year old would write. Like, oh, I'm saying that I can't find something and it has to rhyme with "head"... let's just say "I looked under the bed!" and then the "even" just sounds awkward like it was put there more to make the rhythm work than because it makes the lyric more meaningful.

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The first verse of Brutal Love... It's "Turn out the lights, close your eyes" but then right after the song goes, "dance forever, under the lights."

BUT THEY WERE JUST TURNED OUT!

(Unless I'm a total idiot and "turn out" is not synonymous with "turn off"....)

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I'm surprised that some of you have trouble understanding some of the lyrics to "Sex, Drugs & Violence". I don't know, I might be wrong, but here's my interpretation:

For me, the song is about a troublemaker (all my life trouble follows me like a mystery girl) who has now grown up and is feeling a bit bad about how he never made an effort in school and has missed out on learning many things useful to an adult (back in school it never made much sense, now I pay but I can pay attention, teaching me the hardest lessons of my life). He is trying to catch up on everything, but falls back to his old habits sometimes. So the "Sex, drugs and violence, English, maths and science" part is a comparison between the two very different ways of coping with life, and the "safety in numbers" line is pointing towards the fact that math formulas are always the same and thereby bores him and makes him look for danger (gimme gimme danger) instead.

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The first verse of Brutal Love... It's "Turn out the lights, close your eyes" but then right after the song goes, "dance forever, under the lights."

BUT THEY WERE JUST TURNED OUT!

(Unless I'm a total idiot and "turn out" is not synonymous with "turn off"....)

I never noticed that before! Maybe it could be explained by assuming he means a different kind of light? Like, turn out the physical lights but dance forever under some kind of light that comes from the brutal love...idk what I'm saying anymore :lol:

I agree with everyone else though about that line from Missing You. I love singing along to all the songs but I tend to subconsciously lower my voice or even hum during that line :P

Trying to think of other lyrics that I never quite worked out...it's really hard though when there are so many damn songs! Though I will say that I only just found out the proper meaning of the lyric 'a conscientious objector to the war that's in my mind' from Castaway the other day. I didn't know 'conscientious objector' was an actual term for someone refusing to perform military service, and the line makes so much more sense to me now and I love the song even more now, if that's possible!

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I'm surprised that some of you have trouble understanding some of the lyrics to "Sex, Drugs & Violence". I don't know, I might be wrong, but here's my interpretation:

For me, the song is about a troublemaker (all my life trouble follows me like a mystery girl) who has now grown up and is feeling a bit bad about how he never made an effort in school and has missed out on learning many things useful to an adult (back in school it never made much sense, now I pay but I can pay attention, teaching me the hardest lessons of my life). He is trying to catch up on everything, but falls back to his old habits sometimes. So the "Sex, drugs and violence, English, maths and science" part is a comparison between the two very different ways of coping with life, and the "safety in numbers" line is pointing towards the fact that math formulas are always the same and thereby bores him and makes him look for danger (gimme gimme danger) instead.

I agree and I think it's a pretty on point song, though Mikes line is strangely out of place. I wonder if he like wrote that one line or something. As for Nuclear Family I'd really like to think it's sort of about domestic abuse or at least dysfunction but it really doesn't make much sense. Actually it's not that the words themselves don't make sense but the lines together don't. However nothing bothers me more than the bridge of let yourself go, I remember before UNO came out there was a video of Let Yourself Go live, maybe in Texas, and he had a beard and the bridge was like "Everyone is fucking with my head now, don't stop fucking with my head now, your fucking with my fucking head always fucking with my head and i gotta let it go !" It was really cool but on UNO it sounded stupid with the "always fuck fucking with my head" and it ruined it for me. Also the way Billie sang the ending at the VMAs was better than the one on UNO but that's besides the point.

I never noticed that before! Maybe it could be explained by assuming he means a different kind of light? Like, turn out the physical lights but dance forever under some kind of light that comes from the brutal love...idk what I'm saying anymore :lol:

I agree with everyone else though about that line from Missing You. I love singing along to all the songs but I tend to subconsciously lower my voice or even hum during that line :P

Trying to think of other lyrics that I never quite worked out...it's really hard though when there are so many damn songs! Though I will say that I only just found out the proper meaning of the lyric 'a conscientious objector to the war that's in my mind' from Castaway the other day. I didn't know 'conscientious objector' was an actual term for someone refusing to perform military service, and the line makes so much more sense to me now and I love the song even more now, if that's possible!

I always thought that's a really cool line too ! That songs filled with badass lines.

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Am I the only one who doesn't mind that line from Missing You? I mean, I agree it's not the best written line to ever come out of Billie Joe's pen, but I don't think it "ruins the song" or anything.

I never noticed that before! Maybe it could be explained by assuming he means a different kind of light? Like, turn out the physical lights but dance forever under some kind of light that comes from the brutal love...idk what I'm saying anymore :lol:

no but that actually makes total sense. I never really thought about it that way.

Like, turning out the physical lights is obvious but maybe he's talking about some sort of eternal light that shines out because of how brutal and beautiful love can be, you know?

I totally made that sound corny, but what you said makes sense :lol:

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no but that actually makes total sense. I never really thought about it that way.

Like, turning out the physical lights is obvious but maybe he's talking about some sort of eternal light that shines out because of how brutal and beautiful love can be, you know?

I totally made that sound corny, but what you said makes sense :lol:

Could it also be like turning off the main, bright lights and then dancing under the softer lights on the dancefloor? I imagine it like that anyway.

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Trying to think of other lyrics that I never quite worked out...it's really hard though when there are so many damn songs! Though I will say that I only just found out the proper meaning of the lyric 'a conscientious objector to the war that's in my mind' from Castaway the other day. I didn't know 'conscientious objector' was an actual term for someone refusing to perform military service, and the line makes so much more sense to me now and I love the song even more now, if that's possible!

That metaphor is one of my favorites lyrics Billie's ever written. <3

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i hate this line and it's probably why i don't like missing you that much. you looked under the bed? is that really the best you can do billie?

Sounds more like Dr. Seuss

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I've never been able to figure out what the lyrics mean in Last Ride In. :happy:

You think Last Ride In is a difficult song to decipher? Try Espionage.

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I think poison oak is referring to whisky, which is made in oak barrels. And poison oak is also a poisonous plant. I think it's a way of referring to "poisonous" whisky while doing a series of plays on words with "fermented salmonella poison", "poison oak" and "oak no" (instead of oh no).

Yeah, I take the line as being beer - which is fermented - so, 'fermented salmonella', and whiskey, 'poison oak', as you say. All of it ties in with the thing of asking someone 'what's your poison?' when you're buying them a drink. Comes up in Murder City, too 'a bottle of your favorite poison'.

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I know what the Kool-Aid part is referring to. It's the grenade part that makes no bloody sense. As a couplet, it fails; the second line has no relevance to the first.

As a couplet it succeeds, very much so, because both lines are interchangeable, they say the same thing in different ways. Drinking the kool aid and jumping on the grenade are both referencing sacrificing yourself to someone blindly, while being under their spell.

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"She gave up on jesus for living on venus"

I think this means someone went crazy and stopped living the religious life, like being good and stuff, to focus on women (venus means women in many cultures). That's my perspective though

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You think Last Ride In is a difficult song to decipher? Try Espionage.

That one's about spying, DUH

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That one's about spying, DUH

Oh yeah that's right, I forgot about the part in the 2nd verse where it goes: Dududududdudududuuuudududududududu dudududududduuuududududduuudududududuudududu.

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"I'm drinking the Kool-Aid, I jumped on the grenade" is actually a great line and I knew nobody on here knew what it meant which is why I decided to join GDC. Drinking the Kool-Aid refers to Jim Jones cult who all drank (flavor-aid actually but it's usually thought to be Kool-Aid) mixed with cyanide and commited suicide. Actually just Wikipedia "Drinking the Kool-Aid". Either way it is a meaningful line and I personally find Wild One to be among the best of the trilogy, especially musically. It sounds so sinister. I don't know how to create a thread but I really think we should have one just for analyzing the trilogy lyrics because they're such a strange collection of songs with little meanings hidden all over. The trilogys actually a pretty revealing work though it's not as deep or clever or even on par with Billies usual writing.

Totally agree with you. 'Wild One' is my favorite song of the trilogy. Lyrically, I think it's well written. I love songs that have to be deciphered in a way. The line 'She gave up on Jesus for living on Venus' to me was saying she left traditional religion/values behind and is living a hedonistic/cult type life. The 'Kool-Aid and Grenade' line I pretty much thought of the Jim Jones story and that went along with the cult like feel of the song. It is a strangely sinister song, but I love it.

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The first verse of Brutal Love... It's "Turn out the lights, close your eyes" but then right after the song goes, "dance forever, under the lights."

BUT THEY WERE JUST TURNED OUT!

(Unless I'm a total idiot and "turn out" is not synonymous with "turn off"....)

Yes! You are SO right- good catch

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The first verse of Brutal Love... It's "Turn out the lights, close your eyes" but then right after the song goes, "dance forever, under the lights."

BUT THEY WERE JUST TURNED OUT!

(Unless I'm a total idiot and "turn out" is not synonymous with "turn off"....)

No unless he means to dance under the darkness? :P I dunno. That's the only reasonable idea I can come up with.

I love Missing You but yeah the first time i heard that line i was like oh dear

Actually, I like the lyrics to Missing You. xD It reminds me of when I was writing childish poems and lyrics.

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