It's Seal defending LSD and the acid-house scene he grew up with.
"A man decides after 70 years, that's what he goes there for, to unlock the door"-
Reference to Aldous Huxley, who died aged 69 in his 70th year. Huxley wrote "The Doors of Perception" (which the band "The Doors" were named after), a book which popularized LSD usage. When he was dying, he requested to be given a ridiculously large amount of LSD- showing a key purpose of his life was LSD- why he took it was to "unlock the door" to his creative potential. Many people criticized his encouragement of the drug in the early 60s.
"Fractal on a breaking wall.."-
A fractal is a pattern. When you trip, your brain reacts strongly to visual stimuli. Your memories can come alive like in a dream. Seal seeing his friend again (presumably his friend's dead, that's why it's a "miracle" might be a reponse to staring at some graffiti on a wall while tripping. The wall could even be the graffiti covered Berlin Wall which was being broken up at the time this was written and was on TV.
"Crazy yellow people running through my head..."
Talks about Vietnam, the fact that the country had been whole just a few years before and that countrymen who were at each other's throats had "been friends at school". At the same time as the Vietnam war was going on which the US was involved in, at home in the US and UK people, including the Beatles, were experimenting with LSD in a big way. This was the age of the first summer of love with the hippys' and their slogans "make love not war" and "give peace a chance". Seal is wondering whether, if the people in Vietnam had experienced the same mind-altering experience that Seal and his friends had when they first took ecstacy (I guess it's ecstacy becuase LSD usually isn't in pill form) during the second "summer of love" in the 80s when ecstacy was in heavy club use, they would be so eager to kill each other.
"In a sky full of people, only some want to fly, isn't that crazy..?"
People say to people doing LSD, "Isn't that crazy?" Seal turns the question round and says the above, isn't it crazy not to take LSD and fly? and again "We're never going to survive, unless, we get a little crazy", he views drugs as a release from the pressures of this world.
"Only a child knows"
Recalls the Christian idea of childish wisdom. Drugs can reduce you to a happy childish state, which some might term "wise", a sense of cosmic oneness.
Please note, I do not endorse drug use, I only believe Seal was talking about the potentially beneficial effects of LSD and Ecstacy.
@gatti Seal wrote "Crazy" in 1990 inspired by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. In 2015, Seal said of the song's conception in 1990: "I felt the cycle had reached its apex. I felt the world changing and I felt profound things happening."
@gatti Seal wrote "Crazy" in 1990 inspired by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. In 2015, Seal said of the song's conception in 1990: "I felt the cycle had reached its apex. I felt the world changing and I felt profound things happening."
@gatti Very interesting interpretation with the Aldous Huxley thing, BUT it's wrong. From the mouth (or keyboard, rather) of Seal himself, who posted explanations of the lyrics on the website Genius:
@gatti Very interesting interpretation with the Aldous Huxley thing, BUT it's wrong. From the mouth (or keyboard, rather) of Seal himself, who posted explanations of the lyrics on the website Genius:
"A man decides after seventy years
That what he goes there for is to unlock the door"
"A man decides after seventy years
That what he goes there for is to unlock the door"
Seal: This is a reference to Gorbachev going to meet the Pope, in 1989—the first time in 70 years that somebody from the Soviet bloc had any kind of dialogue with the Catholic Pope.
Seal: This is a reference to Gorbachev going to meet the Pope, in 1989—the first time in 70 years that somebody from the Soviet bloc had any kind of dialogue with the Catholic Pope.
"Crazy yellow people walking through my head
One of them's got a gun, to shoot the other one
And yet together they were friends at school"
Seal: Tiananmen Square—it was the students against the soldiers and it was soldiers against students.
It's Seal defending LSD and the acid-house scene he grew up with.
"A man decides after 70 years, that's what he goes there for, to unlock the door"-
Reference to Aldous Huxley, who died aged 69 in his 70th year. Huxley wrote "The Doors of Perception" (which the band "The Doors" were named after), a book which popularized LSD usage. When he was dying, he requested to be given a ridiculously large amount of LSD- showing a key purpose of his life was LSD- why he took it was to "unlock the door" to his creative potential. Many people criticized his encouragement of the drug in the early 60s.
"Fractal on a breaking wall.."-
A fractal is a pattern. When you trip, your brain reacts strongly to visual stimuli. Your memories can come alive like in a dream. Seal seeing his friend again (presumably his friend's dead, that's why it's a "miracle" might be a reponse to staring at some graffiti on a wall while tripping. The wall could even be the graffiti covered Berlin Wall which was being broken up at the time this was written and was on TV.
"Crazy yellow people running through my head..."
Talks about Vietnam, the fact that the country had been whole just a few years before and that countrymen who were at each other's throats had "been friends at school". At the same time as the Vietnam war was going on which the US was involved in, at home in the US and UK people, including the Beatles, were experimenting with LSD in a big way. This was the age of the first summer of love with the hippys' and their slogans "make love not war" and "give peace a chance". Seal is wondering whether, if the people in Vietnam had experienced the same mind-altering experience that Seal and his friends had when they first took ecstacy (I guess it's ecstacy becuase LSD usually isn't in pill form) during the second "summer of love" in the 80s when ecstacy was in heavy club use, they would be so eager to kill each other.
"In a sky full of people, only some want to fly, isn't that crazy..?"
People say to people doing LSD, "Isn't that crazy?" Seal turns the question round and says the above, isn't it crazy not to take LSD and fly? and again "We're never going to survive, unless, we get a little crazy", he views drugs as a release from the pressures of this world.
"Only a child knows" Recalls the Christian idea of childish wisdom. Drugs can reduce you to a happy childish state, which some might term "wise", a sense of cosmic oneness.
Please note, I do not endorse drug use, I only believe Seal was talking about the potentially beneficial effects of LSD and Ecstacy.
thank you. i couldn't agree with you more.
thank you. i couldn't agree with you more.
Well said!
Well said!
@gatti you are brilliant
@gatti you are brilliant
@gatti makes sense
@gatti makes sense
@gatti Seal wrote "Crazy" in 1990 inspired by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. In 2015, Seal said of the song's conception in 1990: "I felt the cycle had reached its apex. I felt the world changing and I felt profound things happening."
@gatti Seal wrote "Crazy" in 1990 inspired by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. In 2015, Seal said of the song's conception in 1990: "I felt the cycle had reached its apex. I felt the world changing and I felt profound things happening."
@gatti Absolutely beautiful. I’ve listened to this song so many times, including while on LSD, and never paid attention to the lyrics until recently.
@gatti Absolutely beautiful. I’ve listened to this song so many times, including while on LSD, and never paid attention to the lyrics until recently.
@gatti Very interesting interpretation with the Aldous Huxley thing, BUT it's wrong. From the mouth (or keyboard, rather) of Seal himself, who posted explanations of the lyrics on the website Genius:
@gatti Very interesting interpretation with the Aldous Huxley thing, BUT it's wrong. From the mouth (or keyboard, rather) of Seal himself, who posted explanations of the lyrics on the website Genius:
"A man decides after seventy years That what he goes there for is to unlock the door"
"A man decides after seventy years That what he goes there for is to unlock the door"
Seal: This is a reference to Gorbachev going to meet the Pope, in 1989—the first time in 70 years that somebody from the Soviet bloc had any kind of dialogue with the Catholic Pope.
Seal: This is a reference to Gorbachev going to meet the Pope, in 1989—the first time in 70 years that somebody from the Soviet bloc had any kind of dialogue with the Catholic Pope.
"Crazy yellow people walking through my head One of them's got a gun, to shoot the other one And yet together they were friends at school"
Seal: Tiananmen Square—it was the students against the soldiers and it was soldiers against students.