Lyrics for Monkey Gone to Heaven as interpreted by numb

Monkey Gone to Heaven Lyrics
There was a guy
An underwater guy who controlled the sea
Got killed by ten million pounds of sludge
From New York and New Jersey

This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven

The creature in the sky
Got sucked in a hole now
There's a hole in the sky
And the ground's not cold
And if the ground's not cold
Everything is going to burn
We'll all take turns
I'll get mine, too

This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven

Rock me, Joe!

If man is 5
If man is 5
If man is 5

Then the devil is 6
Then the devil is 6
Then the devil is 6
Then the devil is 6

And if the devil is 6
Then God is 7
And God is 7
And God is 7

This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven
This monkey's gone to heaven

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bayernunion
01-12-2006

Rated 0 
guess i didn't explain some stuff enough. 1 is the ultimate goal because it is the smallest interger man could be, thus it is a pure condenced man, undiluted by foreign influence.

And while the inital heathen deieties (posideon) are destroyed by later faiths, that fear the rebirth, the later faiths will be destroyed by the supporters, their over dependence will suck their lord a part.

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TomcatRenar
02-17-2006

Rated 0 
Damn, and I really HAVE NOT understood HOW can a MONKEY go to HEAVEN. Its just completely irrational and unbelievable. And I rhink I'll NEVER undertsnad. Actually, this makes me want to cry. Go away, Pixies, you aint foolin' me no more, Im goin' back listening to 50 Cent, at least he's straight and clear man, y0

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otohp
05-13-2006

Rated 0 
What The hell was that.....Tomcatbeaner? r u retarded .....no song has any rational thought, most are not believable....expesially 50 cent!

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plank201
05-27-2006

Rated 0 
'he is more responsible for pain, suffering and destruction than man and devil put together'
6+7=13
5+6=11
Track 11 = No. 13 Baby
Hence, 13=11
So, if Devil and man join forces they can equal the power of God and the Devil put together?
Hence, Man=God.
Er...maybe not.

Anyway, am I the only one to notice that the theory of evolution (man coming from monkeys) and the religious view of creation are in conflict? So the monkey going to heaven could symbolise the two theories being united.

OR, to take another viewpoint, the monkey going to heaven could mean that the evolution theory has been disproved (killed) by the Second Coming and man has been sent to hell for embracing the evolution theory. Just thoughts.

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plank201
05-27-2006

Rated 0 
One more thing. I just looked at the 'Hey' lyrics, and one line reads thusly:

'Hey, must be a devil between us'

So is man (5) trying to get through to God (7), but can't because the Devil (6) seperates them? Maybe the 'hole in the sky' IS the Devil, i.e. The sky separates man and God, and there is 'a Devil between us'. See what I'm saying?

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Passer-bye
06-19-2006

Rated 0 
if man were being referred to as the monkey, then why are they going to heaven after all the shit they've done?

Unless in the first verse the monkey is referred to as the guy who controlled the sea, and then in the second verse it's referred to the creature in the sky. It's almost like ticking them off from a list.

what i love about this song is the imagery, the language they use is very simple yet effective. sometimes you don't need a lot of words to get an image across, it's very cool and that's what i like about it.

And as Teniel first suggested (and it seems everyone has ignore), man is 5 because its our own magic number. we have 5 fingers, 5 toes, and just to spice it up a bit, the vitruvian man by da vinci shows man in the shape of a 5 pointed star.

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cruz
12-08-2006

Rated 0 
I think that the people speculating on the number thing are overlooking the main point of the song and missing it completely (then again it's interesting to hear how they tie in all the songs together).

First off, this songs theme is about the destruction of our planet. In the begining it describes the pollution of the oceans/waters/whatever. The phrase "This monkeys gone to heaven" shouldn't be taken literally; I think it's more of a state of mind more than anything. Possibly a dilusion of some sort that even though we think that we are living an ideal/perfect existence we tend to miss/overlook all the bad...we create pollution to make our lives easy (ie nuclear energy for electricity though overlook nuclear waste). Simply put "ignorance is bliss".

The next part of the song describes "creatures in the sky" getting sucked into a hole. I thinks this describes birds getting tar from an oil spill; as they look down the oil resembles a hole by it's color.

Next is the hole in tha sky which describes the holes in our ozone... and no ozone things heat up and the "grounds not cold".....global warming.

Finally comes the numbers verse. I don't know where this comes from though when I hear it it sounds like this:

If man is fine (3x)
Then the devil is sic (5x)
then gone is heaven (3x)

I don't know if Frank intended it to sound like this though I know he used words and phrases that sounded interesting.

Maybe I'm hearing something that's not there and just coincidence though when I hear this part of the song that's what I tend to hear.

As a final note I think this song is genious; to describe something so complex with so little.

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Grovergee
12-23-2006

Rated 0 
The monkey part is a bit of a contradiction. It refers to 2 opposing constructs - Darwinism/evolution(the monkey) vs God/Creationism(Heaven).
The whole numbers thing is used to humble humankind putting us at the bottom but also acknowledges that a higher power exisits - God - in spite of Darwinistic attempts to dismiss.
The song closely entwines nature and religion and humankinds arrogance in destroying both.

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DevastatorJr.
01-16-2007

Rated 0 
I think the key is in the chorus and title. The phrase "Monkey Gone to Heaven" is obviously an ironic comment on the continued, seemingly absurd belief in religion in the face of Darwinist evolution.

The "underwater guy" who gets killed by pollution in the first verse is really a stand-in for any sort of religious belief, swamped by the proliferation of industrial modernism. Here, Frank seems nostalgic.

The creature in the sky is God, sucked through the hole of disbelief (also the hole in the ozone, very clever). The uncertainty of modern industrial conditions also produces reactionary tendancies, such as Fundamentalist Christianity and it's apocalyptic scenarios.

The final verse is indeed a parody of Judeo-Christian numerology, necessarily undercut by the chorus. The singer pleads, screaming out for the intervention of the higher power represented by God in the number 7. But deep down inside he knows that there is no god, and there is no heaven. We are all just monkeys, after all.

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rivotskickmyhat
01-17-2007

Rated 0 
i thought man was 9?

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Selenie
02-11-2007

Rated 0 
I just watched the Devil and Daniel Johnston- and while daniel johnston is slipping into dementia he sings (at a NEw York gig filled with "underground types") almost these exact lyrics "man is five, devil (or satan) is six, jesus is seven and eight is eternal (something I can't remember) and #9, #9, #9" (imitating revolution #9), I think black francis probably just copped it from him.

Also, whoever said we are descended from apes- while we may have a common ancestor we are not descended from apes. We can't be descended from something we live in contemporary times with.

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lisap86
03-05-2007

Rated 0 
When I was a kid I always thought this song said "This Monk Has Gone To Heaven" - that made more sense to me than "This Monkey". The song still doesn't really make sense to me, but I love it nonetheless.

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rkpetersen
03-15-2007

Rated 0 
I like the environmental interpretation of this song. And the title could be mocking religion and humanity; wouldn't be surprising for Black. The numerology at the end of song makes for GREAT lyrics but I don't think I'd attach too much more significance to them than that.

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axhacker
03-28-2007

Rated 0 
Whoa! You're all freaking me out! AAAAAahhhh.
And here I always thought they were singing, "this Monday's gone to heaven." As apposed to, "this day just went to hell." Freaky.

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OpinionHead
05-07-2007

Rated 0 
I was just surfing the internet today, bored out of my mind, waiting for the school year to come to an inexorable conclusion. Somehow, I was playing around, writing mathematical equation using nothing but 6's and mathematical operations to make 666. As I surfed though, I found that a fragment, a snippet really, of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri has the number 616 listed for the number of the beast.

Now, I remember awhile back that the Bloodhound Gang wrote the song "Fire Water Burn" and mentioned the same numerological words as in this song, but with monkey renamed as 'honkey'.

So, I pondered today, what if 666 is wrong?

What if man really is 5 and the devil really is 6? Is the AntiChrist really 56 and not 666?

And then I found 616. 616 equals 56 * 11, which is 56 * (5 + 6).

Weird stuff, huh folks?

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OpinionHead
05-07-2007

Rated 0 
By the way, I've never listened to this song until now.

As I figured, it rocks!

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outcesticide121
05-18-2007

Rated 0 
To me... part of what the last verse is saying is that man is closer to satan than god.

simple enough, right?

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MistLeavesandForest
05-20-2007

Rated 0 
This song is about mans relationship with the evironment and the divine, the man being neptune, god of the sea. Ask wikipedia. Wikipedia knows all.

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MistLeavesandForest
05-20-2007

Rated 0 
This song is about mans relationship with the evironment and the divine, the man being neptune, god of the sea. Ask wikipedia. Wikipedia knows all.

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DecoyRobot
07-05-2007

Rated 0 
To me the song seems to be criticizing modern ways and religion. The old gods (“an underwater guy who controls the sea”, “The creature in the sky”) are killed off by pollution and a hole in the ozone layer. The sludge is from New York and New Jersey, emphasizing the contrast between modern ways and archaic gods. Saying “monkey gone to heaven” is like saying “non-believer gone to heaven,” because you would have to believe in evolution, not creationism, to consider yourself a monkey. The “man is 5, etc.” section seems to be a poke at empty Bible verses that Sunday school kids have to memorize. The references are genuinely biblical, but no real meaning comes from them. The devil is 6, so what? But the monkey is repeating it back and so he gets to go to heaven.
The meaning of the song in a nutshell: we’re killing the planet and the spirits, and we have no faith, but we think we’re going to heaven because we know what’s in the Bible.

or maybe i'm reading to much into it.

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patchwork cat
07-23-2007

Rated 0 
5,6,7 it's just a ladder of acension. But seriously that's just bull. This monkey will sort out his own shit- Man is a monkey?- monkey's just throw theirs.
Great song though- they played this on BBC2 and i got turned on to the pixies.
Oh, i 'got mine 'too' when that hole went round the Northern Hemisphere, i got some changes on my hands. Has held out ok so far.
It's not 666, that's certain. Anyway, numerology is wobbly as a dolphin on a bike.

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caurus
08-01-2007

Rated 0 
ok the whole monkey got to heaven thing could be a ref to the fact that we are victims to ourselfs you know like global warming etcetc and that we are primitive enough to do it in the first place.
"underwater guy who controled the sea" and the "creature in the sky" if their was anything magical/better we would have killed it/already have. the man is 5 thing has been covered in what people already said about the hebrew stuff i guess xxx

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bafflewit
09-27-2007

Rated 0 
People are reading way too much into a song that is about vasically nothing, as per Frank Black. While it is open to various interpretations, when the writer of the song says it is about nothing in particular, I tend to take them at their word.

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psipunk
10-02-2007

Rated 0 
Firstly, I'd like to agree with the many people who have noted biblical/numerological meaning behind the 5,6,7 "phenomenon" on this song. I just want to add a few comments, though.

I tend to agree with the idea that "this monkey's gone to heaven" is a play on the schism between the church and evolutionist beliefs. Its an ironic phrasing, really, considering Frank is referring to both types of beliefs at the same time within the same phrase. Whether he intended it or not, that's how it comes across. He's referring to the man who dies as a monkey (born from evolution), but a monkey can't really go to heaven because if you believe we descended from monkies then you don't believe in creationism. They're two seperate ideologies combined into an ironic duo.

In terms of the 10 million pounds of sludge, I believe I have a different idea. The Exxon/Valdez spill of 1989, which is the same year this album was released, is quite possibly the largest spill of oil in history. Actually, it is said that 11 million gallons of oil was lost into the sea.

Anyone who grew up during this time period or who can vaguely remember the spill can recall the images of washed up fish covered in black oil along with birds and other marine mammals suffering from exposure to the toxic "sludge". This may be part of the inspiration for this song. It alludes to the destruction of our environment by humankind while also referencing a very real, significant event in human history.

I strongly feel that Frank is referring to "sludge" not as mere garbage, but as a specific thing: the oil that spilled into the sea that year.

Take this as you will.

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psipunk
10-02-2007

Rated 0 
And furthermore, to prove this is accurate (I forgot to include this in my original posting), the sludge coming from New Jersey and New York is in reference to thus:

"from New Jersey and from New York" refers to the Exxon/Mobil merger in 1999. Exxon became the new name for "Jersey Standard" which was the common name for Jersey Standard Oil Company and Mobil became the new name for "Socony" which was the common name for "Standard Oil Company of New York".

Thus, Frank is referring to the sludge from the oil spill as an environmental catastrophe on behalf of both Exxon and Mobil (from New Jersey and from New York).

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