Lyrics for One Hundred Years as interpreted by oofus

One Hundred Years Lyrics
It doesn't matter if we all die
Ambition in the back of a black car
In a high building there is so much to do
Going home time
A story on the radio...

Something small falls out of your mouth
And we laugh
A prayer for something better
A prayer
For something better
Please love me
Meet my mother...
But the fear takes hold
Creeping up the stairs in the dark
Waiting for the death blow

Stroking your hair as the patriots are shot
Fighting for freedom on the television
Sharing the world with slaughtered pigs
Have we got everything?
She struggles to get away...

The pain
And the creeping feeling
A little black haired girl
Waiting for Saturday
The death of her father pushing her
Pushing her white face into the mirror
Aching inside me
And turn me round
Just like the old days
Just like the old days

Caressing an old man
And painting a lifeless face
Just a piece of new meat in a clean room
The soldiers close in under a yellow moon
All shadows and deliverance
Under a black flag
A hundred years of blood
Crimson
The ribbon tightens round my throat
I open my mouth
And my head bursts open
A sound like a tiger thrashing in the water
Thrashing in the water
Over and over
We die one after the other
Over and over
We die one after the other after the other...

It feels like a hundred years
One hundred years...

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  • 32 Comments
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MDMaster
06-21-2002

Rated 0 
Oh yeah, it doesn't matter if we all die.
That's a goddamn slogan for depressed goth rock of the 80's, absolutely unforgettable.

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DeathRockBoy
07-02-2002

Rated 0 
This is essential Cure right here! Beautiful song about the futility of life, love, and death.

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fleaaaaaa
07-13-2002

Rated 0 
what a way to open an album, i dont think its the best cure song, best cure in my opinion is 1987-2000 stuff, tho i havent yet heard wild mood swings

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StutteringMime
10-04-2004

Rated 0 
i love this song and the album pornography even though it is relatively redundant. it reminds me of when i saw the cure in concert this summer. awesome. gotta love robert smith.

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fireincairo
10-31-2004

Rated 0 
this has to be their best song, besides "fascination street". it's full darkness, it's just wonderful.

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kid_kilowatt
11-08-2004

Rated 0 
this song is on the best album ever. pornography

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sorrywrongnumbah
12-16-2004

Rated 0 
The way the guitars and lyrics revolve and twist dismally around each other in this song...it pulls me into that hopeless hellbound spiral that Robert Smith was caught up in as a younger man. For the duration of this song, I feel like I'll never be free.
"One Hundred Years" is the most brilliant and deliciously agonized, unabashed display of self-loathing I've ever heard...I love how it opens Pornography with it's utter hopelessness, but as the album progresses, there develops just a tiny glimmer of hope entwined in all of the blackness. There's nothing like it.

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theexplodinggirl
01-07-2005

Rated 0 
The opening lyrics are an opener to the whole Pornography concept: "It doesn't matter if we all die." Now that's some pretty deep lyrics to start an album off with!

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jancsibohoc
03-03-2005

Rated 0 
i just recently learned that the opening line isnt doesnt it matter?...
it really pissed me off
you know how it is when you think you know a lyric and than it turns out to be...
you know, and you think yours would be better.
well i dont know.

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lokithecat
04-01-2005

Rated 0 
I read an interview where Robert did in fact quote the opening lyric as "it doesn't matter if we all die". This song, and album, express an existential hopelessness of existence.

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in_the_secret_show
12-06-2005

Rated 0 
beautiful, dark, deep song.

robert smith is a brilliant, brilliant man.

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hothothot!
04-06-2006

Rated 0 
Best opening line from any album. As has been said before it really does set the mood for the Pornography album.

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eve.119
04-14-2006

Rated 0 
i just got the album pornography, love this song, the music, the opening line.......brilliant.

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hi_im_liam
09-06-2006

Rated 0 
The song is a dpressive note and i'd love to be able to analze it deeper but at the end of the day its a song to get the listeners captivated ad thinking 'whats going on here' and therefore you listen to the whole album and get addicted to the cure much like I have = D

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All Cats are Grey
09-20-2006

Rated 0 
This is a very confusing song. I get two things from it. Hopelessness and Self-loathing. I've been reading the book "Never Enough: The Story of The C ure" because I am so fascinated with the way Robert and the crew was back in 1981-82. Its just fascinating how the mood of him could just get worse. I want to get into the mind of Robert and find the inspiration of why he wrote what he wrote..I'm barely at the area where the release of Three imaginary Boys comes...I'm really anticipating the meaning of One Hundred Years. No matter how many times I listen to it, I can never really get a clear translation of what exactly it is that made him crack.

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Johnnyswitchblade
10-08-2006

Rated 0 
This song has the coolest beat and pretty much sums up my life. Sad, isnt it?

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SafeAsHouses
12-23-2006

Rated 0 
I never really thought about the meaning of "In a high building there is so much to do" until I saw the back projection of the Trilogy DVD.

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superdopestar
01-11-2007

Rated 0 
Don't get me wrong, the Cure is my favorite band ever, but if you may have noticed 'Pornography' has more imaginative and unclear lyrics. Well, Robert Smith has said he does not remember most of the making of 'Pornography' and that they were on acid nearly every day of that time period. Now look at other Cure albums and compare. This is definetly their 'psychedelic' album haha

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chardsofglass
05-19-2007

Rated 0 
Has anyone else noticed that almost all of the demo versions in the deluxe edition are of a much better quality? I love the demo versions deep, growling bass XD. Still, both versions are great, but the guitar in the official one overpowers everything else. I think this song is basically just about life and death though. It seems like someone's life passing before them. Think about it, people rarely live past 100, so that may explain it. IDK though. Just felt like my interpretation would make this comment worthwhile lol.

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Rut
05-21-2007

Rated 0 
100 years is pure self loathing and worthlessness, and contains probably the key line - the line that underpinned this period of writing: "it doesn't matter if we all die"... *everything* is empty. this song is despair.
R. Smith, from cure news Number 9, 1990

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sweetx3
06-26-2007

Rated 0 
Sounds like a horror movie.

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ziggy77
11-02-2007

Rated 0 
Ok here is my interpretation of the song, probably wayyyyyy off the mark here.

The start makes me think of a business guy who is stuck in a mundane high society job. He is with a girl and they are both so sad and depressed. You can just picture them sitting round a table and the line "Something small falls out of your mouth and we laugh" just looking for anything to try and find amusing.

They have no close relationship as she cannot get close to anybody, the next verse i can picture them in bed watching the news on tv and seeing all war and depressing shit and all he wants is for her to turn to him and let him protect her and be a part of him.

She is depreseed about the death of her father when she was little that she had never gotten over. Whether it was something sudden or not she saw him die and it has screwed her mind and saddend her.

For some reason I always picture the last verse as his father in a nursing home who fought in the war but basically time forgot. He has no recognition who anyone is "Caressing an old man
And painting a lifeless face
Just a piece of new meat in a clean room
The soldiers close in under a yellow moon
All shadows and deliverance
Under a black flag
A hundred years of blood
Crimson" absolute powerfull words. So she is going through the loss of her father and he is too.

in the end they both commit suicide by hanging which ends the pain and suffering they are both trying to hide....

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Gay Christmas Tree
01-25-2008

Rated 0 
I'm pretty sure it's about the futility of existence and with more than a few references to violence and suicide.

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MissNeurotic
02-18-2008

Rated 0 
I applaud to Gay Christmas Tree. That's all that needs to be said.
This song makes me wanna spin around like a maniac.

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zombiesrafterme
07-24-2008

Rated 0 
i'm positive i'm wrong but my best guess is this song is about vampires. first thing i thought of when i heard the opening guitar

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