One Hundred Years

Firstly, you have to bare in mind that so many of the songs on Pornography were so psychedelically drug-fuelled, lacking in context, often attempting to merely sound dark and depressing for the sake of it - and often meaningless in reality. R. Smith said himself that he wanted to album to sound "virtually unbearable".

My interpretation of the song is, taking the name literally - One Hundred Years - It's essentially about a century of bloodshed, bloodlust, anger, greed and darkness. All the downfalls of human nature and their consequences. The different stanzas could be seen as referring to a different period from the last century - 'Ambition in the back of black car' (which might be metaphorical), 'In a high building [office block] there is so much to do' - suicidal or terrorist connotations. 'Going home time, A story on the radio' - Returning from the meaningless job you hate, a short-lived break from harsh reality, and listening to the radio to hear the same awful news stories about war or suffering in the world - the insignificance of a working man's life in the modern day.

In the following stanzas - references to soldiers and war, take your pick from the many political conflicts and wars which have occurred over the last century (Baring in mind it was the past hundred years from when the song was written).

The lyrics could be seen as revealing short stories in their own right, but I don't think there's any deep, meaningful, revealing context to be gleamed from the lyrics. The whole song is just a despairing look everything wrong in the world. The human race makes advances on the surface, but nothing really changes with time; human greed and selfishness and suffering are ever-present. All the same problems that plague humanity continue to exist over an entire century, just as they have for the already centuries past. One Hundred Years of darkness, suffering, inquality and despair. The opening line is essentially a summary of the whole song 'It doesn't matter if we all die' - and the world probably wouldn't suffer one bit from it.