I think it's about how a bunch of really crappy ironic stuff can happen in your life, but you just gotta grit your teeth and keep pushin' on. Ya can't just give up. Ya gotta keep your eyes open for the good because the bad will not drown out the good. The sun still shines.

This song gives me the chills for some reason, I agree with the meaning being about how irionic or bad things happen but you've got to move on.
"That was the afternoon her heart went."
My favourite line.

amazing song about all the "dumb little ironic stuff" that happens to people all the time.

This song is Radation Vibe for the 2000's. It has no meaning, but is still awesome.

"ok first of all major typo its definetly not "The wheels of promotion were set into motion" it is clearly "The wheels of COMMOTION were set into motion" have any of you even listened to this song?"

That's a little pedantic - the lyrics aren't that clear in this song to begin with, and it's not like your post was completely typo-free.

Anyway, yeah, this song is inspirational if a little too full of forced rhymes. To the person who said "I'll be yours if you'll be mine" is a bog-standard song lyric - agreed :) But it has at least SOME relevance... of some kind... maybe.

I love this song. It's about optimism, and staying on top of life whatever it throws at you. It's good. Mhm. Oh yeah.

to Rex Iudeorum .. must you dissect the song so proudlyl? no. music is different to everyone. you don't know everything.
this song reminds me of a certain summer, it has a good feel to it, and it's lyrics are beautiful and contemplative and the music is so catchy

I'm a little surprised that no one has suggested this yet (and I'd also like to put a vote in for 'wheels of PROmotion', which is what he clearly sings), but this song is certainly not a positive "everything will be all right" message.

The premise, as in most of the songs from this album, (and, really, most every FoW song in general) is of suburban desperation. It's the same idea as Hackensack, Fire Island, Bright Future in Sales, and even Stacy's Mom.

The most important thing to realize is that you have an untrustworthy narrator here. Listen to what he's saying in the chorus: "I tried to change but I changed my mind." When you put that together with "The sun still shines in the summertime / I'll be yours if you'll be mine" you've got a pretty solid presentation of the societal ills associated with the wealthy, suburban upper-middle class in America. (Specifically the New York metropolitan area, if you'd like. Long Island, if you wanna go deeper.)

It's a testament to the new post Gen-Y descriptor as the "Me Generation" - morally ambiguous [unbridled] selfishness in everything we do. Having the physical capability to change, but being so emotionally incapable and lazy that you just give up and use the excuse of "I could've, but I changed my mind." Even "I'll be yours if you'll be mine" is a barter, to pass the responsibility off on another. Everything else here is just a painting of banality. It's the theme for the whole album.

I felt this song was about death and endings and how life continues even after you've lost someone or something. The man dies from the cell phone and the water his ashed were in became baby lotion and the woman who lives across from the health department and who keeps her pills in her car forgot them the one day her heart gives out. Then there's they guy who's content with losing his job because he's happy now.
Very Ironic.

Does anyone else think think "he was killed in a cellular phone explosion" means he was killed in a terrorist attack? Bombs can be set off by calling a cell phone.
To be killed in a terrorist attack is terrible, but completely random -- just a result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It goes along with the whole theme of this song, namely, "shit happens, but life goes on." That's how I interpreted it, anyway :P

This song depresses me. Maybe I'm weird, but it seems to me like the lyrics are saying that sad, lonely people die all the time and no one even cares. Great message.

It's also an obvious allusion/subversion to the common poetic usage of the sun as a metaphor for a true love. "It is the east, and Juliet is the sun" etc. Even if people die, it won't be the end of the world.