This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
Restless soul, enjoy your youth
Like Muhammad hits the truth
Can't escape from the common rule
If you hate something, don't you do it too (too)
Small, my table, sits just two
Got so crowded, I can't make room
Oh, where did they come from?
Stormed my room
And you dare say it belongs to you, to you
This is not for you
This is not for you
This is not for you
Oh, not for you, not you
Scream, my friends don't call me
Friends, they don't scream
My friends don't call, my friends don't-
All that's sacred comes from youth
Dedications, naive and true
With no power, nothing to do
I still remember, why don't you, don't you?
This is not for you
This is not for you
This is not for you
Oh, never was for you, fuck you
This is not for you
Oh, this is not for you, yeah, you
This is not for you
Oh, not for you
Oh, you
Like Muhammad hits the truth
Can't escape from the common rule
If you hate something, don't you do it too (too)
Small, my table, sits just two
Got so crowded, I can't make room
Oh, where did they come from?
Stormed my room
And you dare say it belongs to you, to you
This is not for you
This is not for you
This is not for you
Oh, not for you, not you
Scream, my friends don't call me
Friends, they don't scream
My friends don't call, my friends don't-
All that's sacred comes from youth
Dedications, naive and true
With no power, nothing to do
I still remember, why don't you, don't you?
This is not for you
This is not for you
This is not for you
Oh, never was for you, fuck you
This is not for you
Oh, this is not for you, yeah, you
This is not for you
Oh, not for you
Oh, you
Lyrics submitted by Ark, edited by Mellow_Harsher
Not For You Lyrics as written by Eddie Vedder David Abbruzzese
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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This is one of my favorite songs. https://fnfgo.io
Mountain Song
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Vocalist Eddie Vedder about "Not for You":\n\nI believe...that there is something sacred about youth, and the song is about how youth is being sold and exploited. I think I felt like I had become part of that too. Maybe that\'s why sometimes I have a hard time with the TV end of music and much of the media and the magazines. When I pick up a magazine, I just count how many pages of ads before the first article starts. You go one, two...up to fifteen to twenty or more. And then in the back you have phone sex ads. So I\'ve pretty much had it. I don\'t want to be the traveling medicine show where we go out and do the song and dance and someone else drops the back of the wagon and starts selling crap. I don\'t want our music to sell anything—or anyone else use it. There are a lot of middlemen, somewhere between the band and the audience. I know you need some people to help facilitate things for the live show, and I\'m not saying that I don\'t appreciate these people but...In the last ten or fifteen years, there have been a lot of changes in music, and somehow the percentages being charged [by the concert industry] got out of hand. We also don\'t want to be part of all the marketing tools or whatever, but believe me, we have been. [That happened] on the first album and that\'s probably why we are where we are now, but it was hell and I feel awful about it and I\'m not going to do it anymore.\n\nIn another interview, Vedder stated:\n\nThese attitudes out there...that it\'s the industry\'s music... And it\'s not. It\'s mine. And it\'s yours. Whoever\'s listening to it. It\'s mine and it\'s yours. And everybody in between, they\'re the distributors. I think that something like a music channel can be very powerful. Sometimes they think they\'re the ones who decide what\'s heard. I think that\'s a dangerous situation. And, I think, what\'s more dangerous is that they think it belongs to them. That\'s probably what "Not for You" is about.