As I continue to write these posts delving into the lyrical meanings of some of my favorite songs, it occurs to me time and time again that the interpretations of the songs that I give here are, of course, only my opinion. While I often write as if what I'm saying is fact, it's really just whatever meaning of the song is true to me, based on what I can glean from the lyrics and what I know about the songwriters/band. That's the great thing about music: what I get out of it might not be the same thing that you get out of it might not be the same thing that my mother gets out of it, but that doesn't make any of our interpretations any less valid. So with that in mind, let's have a listen to this week's selection:
When the Day Met the Night
When the moon fell in love with the sun
all was golden in the sky
All was golden when the day met the night
When the sun found the moon
she was drinking tea in her garden
under the green umbrella trees
in the middle of summer
When the moon found the sun
he looked like he was barely hanging on
but her eyes saved his life
in the middle of summer
In the middle of summer
all was golden in the sky
All was golden when the day met the night
Summer
All was golden in the sky
All was golden when the day met the night
Summer, summer, summer
All was golden when the day met the night
So he said, "Would it be all right
If we just sat and talked for a little while?
If in exchange for your time
I gave you this smile?"
So she said, "That's okay.
As long as you can make a promise
not to break my little heart
or leave me all alone in the summer."
Well, he was just hanging around
then he fell in love
And he didn't know how
but he couldn't get out
Just hanging around
then he fell in love
In the middle of summer
All was golden in the sky
All was golden when the day met the night
Summer
All was golden in the sky
All was golden when the day met the night
When the moon fell in love with the sun
all was golden in the sky
All was golden when the day met the night
-----------------
This song probably has the most simplistic lyrics of any of the songs we've looked at so far. It's evident that most people just kind of take them at face value, too. As the first post on the songmeanings page for "When the Day Met the Night" states (spelling corrected for maximum sanity): "I think the moon and sun are supposed to be synonyms for a guy and a girl. Then the rest of the song would be kinda self-explanatory." It's perfectly reasonable to look at the song this way: the moon stands for a lonely and/or depressed man who "looked like he was barely hanging on" before he met a woman, the sun, who "saved his life". As is often the case, he didn't mean to fall for her--"he was just hanging around/then he fell in love/And he didn't know how/but he couldn't get out"-- but obviously it turned out well for him, as "all was golden" afterward.
If you couldn't tell by this point, though, I tend to think that the lyrics are a really important part of music. Why such fondness for something so simple? Strangely, it's the last few seconds of "When the Day Met the Night" that add a layer of depth and make the song worthwhile. As the music begins to fade out, very faintly in the background, you can hear the sound of a group of children playing together, and a little girl gives a playful scream.
No kidding, I was almost brought to tears the first time that I heard this. At first, I couldn't figure out why I was having that particular reaction, especially to something that seems so inconsequential. But then it hit me. It's not like I hang around a lot of kids, or people with kids. Even if I do interact with some who are the children of my parents' friends or whatever, it's not like there's a big group of them all playing together. And I'm definitely not the shady pedophile hanging out at the local park (you can breathe a sigh of relief).
Seriously, though-- It had been over a decade since I had heard kids playing like that! Since I was a kid myself. It really brought me back to that time and gave the song some depth.
This is why I brought up the topic of different individuals' interpretations of the same song. It's very likely that for someone else listening to this song, what seems like an out-of-place, high-pitched shriek at the end would annoy him or her, or at the very least not be anything in which to take a particular interest.
But I really do think that most professional musicians (or at least the good ones) try not to sully their work with random bits of sound for no reason. If they're interested at all in creating nuanced, complex work, there has to be a method to the madness and a reason for everything they put into their music, or else it will come off as haphazard. So there has to be an explanation-- why would Panic! At the Disco mix these sounds into an otherwise normal song? To me, it has to be in order to elicit the emotion that I felt while listening to it: a deep nostalgia for childhood.
Viewed in this context, the lyrics as a whole start to come into focus. They're almost like something out of a child's storybook-- purposefully simplistic, with lots of broad, colorful imagery, as well as characters who have their hearts on their sleeve.
When the man meets the woman, she's "drinking tea in her garden/under the green umbrella trees". This instantly brings to mind images of outdoor tea parties, which are, of course, the stereotypical specialty of little girls. So it's not really a man meeting a woman at all, but more of a boy meeting a girl. Again, this is totally my interpretation, but it seems to hold under the weight of the song: it's about being a child and having feelings for a girl for the first time.
The characters' words are simple yet sincere, very straightforward-- "Would it be all right if we just sat and talked for a little while, if...I gave you this smile?" The response: "As long as you can make a promise not to break my little heart". It's naive, but it's charming in its own way. And finally, furthering my theory are the abundant references to the summer, that time of freedom and vacation that exists basically only for kids and people working in television. Score.
I guess the bottom line here is two-fold: one, the lyrics of a song alone don't always convey its full meaning. It's not always totally necessary to go as in-depth into the words as some of these posts have been (although it often is-- which is the point, of course). Two, I like to latch onto small bits of nothing and expand them into insane theories. This does not only apply to music.
Ahem.
Join me next week when I celebrate my ten-week anniversary writing these things. And then, the week after, a little something different.
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