I wanted to write a song about the time I'd spent with this girl who used to love me. At the time I'd started seeing a wonderful girl and I didn't really want to piss off by writing songs about old lovers.
I just had to bend the lyrics a little to keep the whole thing reasonably ambiguous. To the casual listener it should be impossible to discern if the song is about anything in particular. It essentially means whatever it means depending on what you want to read into it.
lyrics
LYRICS
I took the harder line
And I ran so fast I left them all behind
Never finish what you start, just keep living in the past
Its your best move.
I fell sick for a while,
But I've paid the ones I owed, I toed the party line,
So take the best of what you've got left, but what you gonna do about this hole in my chest,
When you shoot through
You tried to smile and all the while you fought the things you knew
Let me hide
Let me slide
It's nothing to do with you
I'm old and I know I turned away
But be that as it may,
I think it's safe to say,
I really hate the way that we left you,
It hits and it hurts just like a slap,
I flinched, but I never took it and I'll never take it back,
It's like paper cuts and cigarette butts,
They say one door opens when another one shuts,
But it's not true
You tried to smile and all the while you fought the things you knew
Let me hide
Let me slide
It's nothing to do with you
So I'll sleep but wake me when you're done,
Because it seems, the things I hate are the things that I've become
But so what - now you find Im changing my mind,
Well you can keep the pieces that I'm leaving behind,
Because I am not you
You break the ones you want to save,
It seems that lovers take the things you never gave,
I never slept and tears that I wept,
Soaking through the pages of the letters I kept,
When I wrote to you (I should never have wrote to you).
You tried to smile and all the while you fought the things you knew
Let me hide
Let me slide
It's nothing to do with you
credits
from Means What It Means,
released July 4, 2011
Written by The Ellis Collective
Recorded and mixed at Infidel Studios by Duncan Lowe
Mastered at Studio 301 by Steve Smart
The Ellis Collective create a patchwork of emotion that recounts the sadness, sickness, love and indecision that weaves its way through the fabric of everyday Australian life.
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