Know something about this song or lyrics?
Add it to our wiki.
Claire's turning blonde for the summer, I guess
The sunlight just soaks into her hair
And she sits next to me on the motorboat
And shyly replies as to which boy she likes
At her school
So I am reminded of things I've forgotten
The way doors can open and people just walk in
It's not unexpected, no, it's just how you planned it
I'm beginning to think that it might never happen
But now it is happening
There's a show we can see at the base outside of town
Where planes, they turn circles in the air
I watch you stand next to me with your hand over your mouth
And join the crowd's heavy gasp
One for each time they pass overhead
So we've been selected in this beautiful lottery
We struggled so long, but it ended so easy
It's starting to suface, all golden and god-like
This feeling we had every day and every night
It bursts in an energy
A door, it is opening
The sunlight just soaks into her hair
And she sits next to me on the motorboat
And shyly replies as to which boy she likes
At her school
So I am reminded of things I've forgotten
The way doors can open and people just walk in
It's not unexpected, no, it's just how you planned it
I'm beginning to think that it might never happen
But now it is happening
There's a show we can see at the base outside of town
Where planes, they turn circles in the air
I watch you stand next to me with your hand over your mouth
And join the crowd's heavy gasp
One for each time they pass overhead
So we've been selected in this beautiful lottery
We struggled so long, but it ended so easy
It's starting to suface, all golden and god-like
This feeling we had every day and every night
It bursts in an energy
A door, it is opening
Lyrics submitted by onelegedgirl
Track duration: 03:11
Add your thoughts
Log in now to tell us what you think this song means.
Don’t have an account? Create an account with SongMeanings to post comments, submit lyrics, and more. It’s super easy, we promise!
Anyway with that in mind, here's my interpretation:
I think Claire is Conor's cousin, a couple of years younger than him but maturing more quickly. As kids they were really close and hung out and talked about their crushes. Conor probably felt really protective of her and he would have always seemed so much older and wiser.
Then I think, in the space between the first and second verses, she suddenly seemed to be growing up so much faster than him and perhaps they started drifting apart. A 12 year old Claire could have been telling a 14 or 15 year old Conor about her first boyfriend and he didn't want to admit that he'd never kissed a girl, they gradually lost their places in each other's lives.
In the second verse, particularly the lines:
"The way doors can open and people just walk in
It's not unexpected, no, it's just how you planned it"
I think he's a little bit older, and now he's finally caught up and has met his own first girlfriend and, as un-Conor as it sounds, he's saying it really is a great as he expected. He's in love, in that intense, absolute way only teenagers can be.
In the third verse, I think he's using a kind of double meaning with the airshow. Perhaps he and Claire used to go to the Blue Angels Air Show as children, and he still kind of misses that, so that's what he's literally talking about. But also, he's using the airshow as a metaphor for sex, or perhaps still for love - I think sex, because it ties into Take it Easy better that way.
As for the fourth verse, I really don't know. It seems like a happy ending, maybe as simple as his becoming good friends with Claire again. I think it could be a little darker though, probably about his first breakup. I think the line "We struggled so long" is referring to the fact that maybe the relationship wasn't as perfect as he claimed, that it had been turbulent for a while but he thought that was normal, and the second half "but it ended so easy" says that suddenly she just finished on him, unexpectedly and quick, and he had no idea what he was supposed to do.
And Take it Easy, I think, is a deeper discussion into the same relationship, probably with a a perspective of a few years later. It seems to be the same story told more specifically from Conor's viewpoint than in this which is at times quite ambiguous.
i find it very funny how much my interpretation of this song differs from yours! :)
i didn't know it was about his cousin so i basically just made up something i could identify with most.
i thought it was about someone who could never imagine being lucky enough to be loved. someone you never thought he'd experience what love actually is.
so he meets this girl and discovers all the joy because before that he was looking for love way too hard. he thought it wouldn't happen so easily ... and yeah, thought that Claire girl was someone he loved ... ^^
"So I am reminded of things I've forgotten
The way doors can open and people just walk in
It's not unexpected, no, it's just how you planned it
I'm beginning to think that it might never happen
But now it is happening"
But the second love theme didn't fit with then being so young as well:
"And shyly replies as to which boy she likes
At her school"
So the cousine thing makes far more sense. I's different from his other songs :]
it's like when you've held these ideas of something great happening to you in your head for so long but you'd pretty much just given up hope when it happens.
"It's not unexpected, no, it's just how you planned it
I'm beginning to think that it might never happen
But now it is happening"
when i hear it i'm pretty much just reminded of renewed hope in life and yourself and everything.
When I heard this song I realised he was selected, his number finally came out. "It's not unexpected, it's just how you planned it, you were beginnging to think it might never happen, but now it's happening." and of course it isn't un expected when you've been waiting for ever for it to happen. The fact that he calls it "beautiful lottery" when before he was coursing it, and that he acknowlegdes that he found that person he thought he might be doomed never to find, just gives me hope.