Too Dumb To Die Lyric Video

[emmericanidiot]

Tbh I wanted the entire video to be a cello just wandering round wondering what it's feeling

[Hero_Of_The_Hour]

4 minutes ago, emmericanidiot said:

Tbh I wanted the entire video to be a cello just wandering round wondering what it's feeling

Ask any inanimate object how it feels, you always get the same response. It doesn't have to be a cello. So next time you want to know what a cello feels like ask a chair or a lamp

[Hermione]

19 minutes ago, Hero_Of_The_Hour said:

Ask any inanimate object how it feels, you always get the same response. It doesn't have to be a cello. So next time you want to know what a cello feels like ask a chair or a lamp

To be fair I do think they did a good job of representing the cello line without a cello in the video, as @pacejunkie punk said like teetering on the edge trying to keep balance. Don't you think that explanation makes it more than just nonsense/interchangeable with any inanimate object? My only issue is I was watching it the first time with my sister and as soon as we saw things were being represented literally we said "there's going to be a cello in this video" and then we couldn't believe it each time when there wasn't one  

[Hero_Of_The_Hour]

16 minutes ago, Hermione said:

To be fair I do think they did a good job of representing the cello line without a cello in the video, as @pacejunkie punk said like teetering on the edge trying to keep balance. Don't you think that explanation makes it more than just nonsense/interchangeable with any inanimate object? My only issue is I was watching it the first time with my sister and as soon as we saw things were being represented literally we said "there's going to be a cello in this video" and then we couldn't believe it each time when there wasn't one  

Well the person tasked with making the video was probably like wtf am I supposed to do with this line?! Clearly they hadn't seen the fan asking Billie what it meant and his explanation of it being a sad instrument. So if Billie actually intended the line to mean I feel sad, the lyric video now represents it as I feel on the edge/off balance. I guess the person making it was trying to figure out a logical conclusion as to what it could mean given the following line of being lost somewhere over a rainbow or maybe Billie actually did tell him a different meaning than he had given the fan in the interview. Regardless, it's such a ridiculous line it's painful. It's literally a case of just randomly deciding a word means something it doesn't and trying to convince everyone else it makes sense. I'm sorry Billie but if you had decided that a jam jar was a really happy thing because you really love jam and you really love jars and they look so happy and make people smile, saying "I feel like a jam jar" would still have been ridiculous. Oh and the guy making that lyric video probably would have thought you meant sticky

[DeJennsitized]

8 hours ago, pacejunkie punk said:

I think the lyric video helped me understand that cello line. Every time they say "I feel like a cello" it shows someone or something balancing on a point and teetering back and forth. You know how a cello has that wand that comes out and it balances on? It made me think of that. So feeling like a cello can mean many things having to do with keeping one's balance in life or wavering over thoughts or ideas.

Not bad huh? Lyric videos are useful. That line always befuddled me.

I love this! I'm guessing it was the idea of the guy who made it, and that's cool that he interpreted that way. Feeling off balance/on edge fits with the rest of the line "too scared to dream but too dumb to die". And it also made me realise that the two lines "I feel like a cello" and "lost over the rainbow" could be two separate things. It's not a cello lost over the rainbow necessarily, it's someone who feels like a cello and who also feels lost over the rainbow. Say what you want about that lyric but I love how open it is for interpretation  

7 hours ago, Hermione said:

Yeah they did, but I think they made it too glaringly/distractingly obvious that they were trying to avoid it. They should've stuck a little cello in there one of the times for fun  

Maybe there is a cello in there somewhere but we have yet to spot it???  

[pacejunkie punk]

1 minute ago, Jenn. said:

I love this! I'm guessing it was the idea of the guy who made it, and that's cool that he interpreted that way. Feeling off balance/on edge fits with the rest of the line "too scared to dream but too dumb to die". 

And it's consistent with lyrics in other songs  like Still Breathing: "As I walked out on the ledge, are you scared to death to live?" And Forever Now: "From the edge of the world"

Yes, I agree "lost somewhere over the rainbow" is a separate thought, but contributes to this idea of feeling unbalanced, lost and confused.

[Eric]

It's cool ,but like any other music video or lyric videos I see it one time then move on. Way better than the actual music videos they film from REVrad. The one wrong word in a lyric isn't a super big deal as people are making it to be.

[The Bellie]

17 hours ago, pacejunkie punk said:

And it's consistent with lyrics in other songs  like Still Breathing: "As I walked out on the ledge, are you scared to death to live?" And Forever Now: "From the edge of the world"

Yes, I agree "lost somewhere over the rainbow" is a separate thought, but contributes to this idea of feeling unbalanced, lost and confused.

For some reason, "lost somewhere over the rainbow" makes me feel to those lyrics in Mother Mary, Foxboro Hot Tubs :

In hell we'll run in rows of sunshine
We'll watch it rise and shine forever

The rows of sunshine have turned into a rainbow, which means there's rain at the same time, and I can't either not think to the line "I'm in for nasty weather" in Going To Pasalacqua and the sunny rainy thing in Ordinary World - the movie. 

A rainbow seems to me like the perfect word to describe rain and sun, it's ephemeral. So if Billie sings he's "lost somewhere over" it, I don't know if I'm supposed to feel confused, sad or relieved. The rainbow may symbolize the up-and-downs in life, the fact life is "not pretty" but also potentially "beautiful" as Billie says, and you don't want to get lost in that rainbow, that would equal to be lost in life and the "ephemerality" that characterizes the balance between... mostly all the things in it.

So maybe being lost over it is somehow different and means he just got over all this, you know? It reminds me an interview in 2016, The Talk, where he says he stopped trying to make sense of anything. The fact he says to live our life in the present seems also correlated to me. What you've got right now is all what you've really got, as well as being still breathing.

So yeah, this song brews lots of stuff, the video invites us to think and reflect a lot; and in a general way, in Billie's lyrics, even though they are undeniably evolving, I find endless cross-referencing to make.