| Bloc Party – Blue Light Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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There is a YouTube video of the band performing this at Bristol Academy and in the description of the video, the user goes to talk about how he and his friend think the song is about drug addiction. I'll just copy and paste what he said... Just thought I'd throw this in: I was discussing this song with my friend and his response absolutely blew me away. He said it was about being addicted to drugs but then he fell in love and she keeps him from going back to drug use. Prepare to be amazed: Blue light is installed in public toilets in seedy areas so that drug addicts can't see their veins. Verse one relates to addiction, and the "shadows" and "cupboards" being the dark places in the mind where the addiction grows and is found. "It will...every night" relates to the feeling of invincibility that some drugs can give you; ditto for "It will...remember" and the feeling of clarity. Verse two is about a lover no longer at hand; "What could I ever run to?" is the narrator's pathetic plea that drugs were the only possible substitute for the love he has lost. Lines three and four are ambiguous; either, as conventionally assumed, they are about the lovers having been parted and as such being torn apart and unable to sleep; or the lover is also addicted and the drugs are wrenching her body apart and stopping her from sleeping. "And you didn't even notice..." is about beautiful moments of love that were numbed by drug use. The "And you couldn't tell..." line is often misinterpreted; rather than saying that the lover couldn't tell the difference between them, the narrator in fact refers to an event (that she "didn't even notice") of the-sky-turning-blue-and-one-not-being-a ble-to-tell-the-difference-between-them (I hope this is clear). The final repeated line ("You are the bluest light") is a sober realisation that her love is the only thing that will stop his addiction. She acts as the blue light hiding his veins from view; the light that prevents him from reentering the dark "shadows" and "cupboards" of his mind. |
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| Bloc Party – Signs Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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I think it's just too easy to write this off as "it's a song about death". If we're to believe this song is in keeping with the album's theme (Intimacy) then perhaps it's more figurative. Sure, there are songs like Ares on Intimacy that aren't about relationships or romance, but the majority certainly are (Trojan Horse, One Month Off, you get the idea). My interpretation of this song is that it's about a man hung up on a recently crumbled relationship. When Kele sings 'At your funeral, I was so upset... in your life, you were larger than this, statuesque", I'm reminded of the break-up, and he wonders how she could be so uncaring and cold when breaking up with him, as if nothing previous mattered. The "So like you to visit me, to let me know you were okay" section suggests to me that the girl came back for one night of passion out of her guilt for the emotional pain she's inflicted on him. When he's saying "I see signs now all the time that you're not dead, you're sleeping", he's referring to the little things that he sees his ex do that suggest that the relationship can, in fact, be salvaged: that the relationship is not dead, it's sleeping. For any fellow Bloc Party fans, I think the song is quite similar to Biko in the sense that it deals with the end of a relationship metaphorically with death. |
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