Can you feel a little love?

As your bony fingers close around me
Long and spindly
Death becomes me
Heaven, can you see what I see?

Hey you pale and sickly child
You're death and living reconciled
Been walking home a crooked mile

Paying debt to karma
You party for a living
What you take won't kill you
But careful what you're giving
Mmm

There's no time for hesitating
Pain is ready, pain is waiting
Primed to do its educating

Unwanted, uninvited kin
It creeps beneath your crawling skin
It lives without, it lives within you

Feel the fever coming
You're shaking and twitching
You can scratch all over
But that won't stop you itching

Can you feel a little love?
Can you feel a little love?

Dream on
Dream on

Mmm
Mmm

Blame it on your karmic curse
Oh shame upon the universe
It knows its lines
It's well-rehearsed

It sucked you in, it dragged you down
To where there is no hallowed ground
Where holiness is never found

Paying debt to karma
You party for a living
What you take won't kill you
But careful what you're giving

Can you feel a little love?
Can you feel a little love?

Dream on
Dream on

Can you feel a little love?
Can you feel a little love?

Dream on
Dream on

Dream on
Dream on

Dream on
Dream on


Lyrics submitted by gasmask

Dream On Lyrics as written by Martin Gore

Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.

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Dream On song meanings
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23 Comments

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  • +6
    General Comment

    Like in many others of Martin's songs this one, too, is about the ambiguity and difficulty of coping with the most fundamental human emotions and needs.

    It's about the longing to feel alive even if you ruin your health by the means you use in the course of it. It's about the desperate need to receive love and affection and the deep fear of being turned away. So you're not daring to open yourself to someone, to give something in return. Desire comes like a sickness over you because of the moral implications, the implanted guilt in you.

    Like in a self-fulfilling prophecy you expect to get hurt and so you act in a (self-)destructive way that allows no other outcome. But feeling pain seems to be better than feeling nothing at all. Thus instead of pursuing your own free will or dreams you yield to something you call fate (or karma in this case). You're like a martyr for your own philosophy - it's pointless.

    After all this you're then left with one last question that may lead you out of your gloomy existence: Are you still able to feel that bit of love, to live that bit of dream that will keep you alive and give you at least the hope on happiness? Or do you settle in your darkness, find some modus vivendi.

    Sounds depressive? Well, it's Depeche. But I think in many people's lives you will find aspects of those conflicts Martin's songs describe. Love is a many splintered thing.

    licdamicon August 10, 2008   Link
  • +1
    General Comment

    This is an awesome song. It's got a wonderful beat to it. The lyrics are so freakin powerful too. "Blame it on your karmic curse, oh shame upon the universe. It knows it's lines; it's well rehearsed..." :nod:

    wlraider_girlieon September 10, 2002   Link
  • +1
    General Comment

    I think bana had it right. Martin writes the songs, and it seems to me that this song is perfect for Dave Gahan... Remember how his habit nearly did him in? He was dead for 2 minutes. Certain lines in this song probably refer to withdrawl too.

    Feel the fever coming You're shaking and twitching You can scratch all over But that won't stop you itching

    Nexus7on July 22, 2005   Link
  • 0
    General Comment

    Yeah, it seems like the narrator is sort of being snide towards someone- maybe someone who he's looking at from outside a situation, and telling the person they have to change what they're doing because they're ruining their life in a number of ways.

    Dagnyon May 14, 2004   Link
  • 0
    General Comment

    I agree with you completely, Dagny. This song is one of my favorites of theirs.

    Astrumon November 27, 2004   Link
  • 0
    General Comment

    this is gonna be a classic, not their best but a GREAT song...

    nsjdogon January 17, 2005   Link
  • 0
    General Comment

    this song is totally about someone else's drug use and how it's affecting him "Hey you pale and sickly child You're death and living reconciled Been walking home a crooked mile" and how the person probably contracted HIV "Paying debt to karma You party for a living What you take won't kill you But careful what you're giving"

    banaon March 02, 2005   Link
  • 0
    General Comment

    I don't think so... "What you take won't kill you / But carefull what you're giving" He's not worried about this person's drug use.. it's his or her sexual... I dunno, openness? that he's concerned about.

    themopo976on March 28, 2005   Link
  • 0
    General Comment

    themopo976: maybe it's a combination of the two, the drugs may lead to sexual promiscuity which could lead to the contraction of an STD, which could in turn be given to the next partner. but i do firmly believe that this song is about drug abuse, most likely heroin because of the insinuations made by the lyrics

    banaon July 23, 2005   Link
  • 0
    General Comment

    i love the uhmmm its like sexy and bitching

    dulcitablueon January 18, 2006   Link

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