Said your name in an empty room
Something I would never do, I’m alone again
When I’m by myself I can be myself And my life is coming but I don’t know when
You were burning, now you’re black and gray Something I would never say, I’m alone again When I’m by myself I can be myself And my life is coming but I don’t know when
Toute ma vie, est avec toi, moi j’attends, toi tu pars
(All my life is with you, I wait, you leave yourself)
To be honest, this is the song on The Suburbs I usually have few qualms about skipping in a listening session. A big reason behind that is that I think Regine’s voice gets kind of lost in the mix, and there isn’t really enough of a tune to keep me listening.
Lyrically, I have no idea what the ‘empty room’ is referring to. Some have suggested that the lines about “black and gray” is the singer burning a picture of a lost love; others say the burning person was a victim of one of the many acts of destruction throughout the album. I can kind of see how either one could be the case, but I need more than two lines to know for sure: Empty Room contains about half as many words as Rococo, but where that song was dense with coherent ideas supported by each verse, there just isn’t much to chew on in this song.
All I can really infer from the scant verses is something about the pressures of public versus private life, how we’re different people at work than we are at home—why can’t we be free to be ourselves all of the time?—and something about a directionless life (not knowing when one’s life will arrive).
One thing I am sure of about this song is that I’m glad it’s the shortest one on the album, so…how ’bout a cute picture of everybody’s favorite Quebecois?
This is one of those songs (one of several on The Suburbs) that begs the question “how many ideas can you pack into a pop song and still have it remain a great piece of music”? In this case, a helluva lot; considering the fact that its chorus is a single repeated word and that the verses contain less than 115 words, this is an especially dense song.
Let’s go downtown and watch the modern kids
Let’s go downtown and talk to the modern kids
They will eat right out of your hand
Using great big words that they don’t understand
As we’ll see later in Sprawl II, we have to go downtown to observe this breed of millennial youth, because after growing up in the suburbs, these kids have been forced to move into the city to find their own kind. They’re probably educated (from a liberal arts institution, I’d guess), and they try to sound educated with their vocabulary of big GRE words. That third line, combined with the cooing sound of the chorus, makes me wonder if Butler isn’t equating these modern kids with pigeons…
They say, ‘Rococo, rococo, rococo, rococo…’
They build it up just to burn it back down The wind is blowing all the ashes around
Oh my dear God, what is that horrible song they’re singing?
This verse brings back more of that conflagration-language from Neon Bible, as well as probable connections to Month of May that we’ll examine in more depth in that song’s entry.
They seem wild but they are so tame They’re moving towards you with their colors all the same They want to own you but they don’t know the game they’re playing…
Some have charged that Rococo as a whole (and the song’s final verse in particular) seems to hammer pretty hard on what many would identify as modern ‘hipster’ or ‘indie’ culture, and I’ll admit it’s easy to see why. Funeral– and Neon Bible-era Arcade Fire was almost universally embraced by the exact folks the band sang about (millennial kids raised in the suburbs), but when the band won their Grammy for The Suburbs, suddenly they had become ‘mainstream’—and since hipster culture is chiefly concerned with consuming media from origins of obscurity up to the point it becomes ‘cool’—and the kids who had made the band popular in the first place started jumping ship on charges of ‘selling out’.
I don’t think that the band is being too hard on these ‘ironic’ White kids in this song, but I am grateful that somebody with ‘indie cred’ has finally held up a mirror to these kids so that they might see that they’re just another cog in the Machine. In this album’s conceptual framework, ‘wild’ is equated with the uncivilized and the anti-suburban; why then, if these kids seem so wild, are they really tame?
Indie media-outlet Pitchfork astutely describes the kids in Rococo as “a certain type of pseudo-rebellious, cynical youth” (emphasis mine). What keeps these plaid-clad masses from being truly rebellious is that these kids’ rebellion itself is a product of the corporate cool-hunt commoditized and sold right back to them. As long as they seek to define themselves by the products they buy, they are enabling the System to continue.
As another uncommonly-discerning, deserves-to-be-quoted-in-full SongMeanings user observed,
“It saddens me this song is being reduced to some “nana-nana-boo-boo” towards the hipster culture. This is a beautiful band, not only because their songs are big, but so seem to be their ideas and their hearts. This is a band that seems to love humanity too much to waste their time with some petty, hipster, turf-war anthem.
This song is not condemning youth, but feeling empathy and sympathy for them, no matter what music they listen to. They are being promoted an empty lifestyle of materialism and worshiping of the self. This promotion is a “dangerous game” being played [by] those selling it, because they are selling the soul of western-culture.
People are separated into tribes, based on hip-hop, country, pop, emo, etc.[“now the music divides us into tribes” (Suburban War)], but they are all being sold an empty road map for a vain and disconnected society where the most important person is the self. …
This is being sold by “wild” people, like Lady Gaga, but she is not Lady Gaga, but actually a rather “tame” woman from the Bronx. Lady Gaga is a McDonald’s version of the club kid scene, “downtown”, in places like New York City. I use Gaga as one example, but think of how many popular songs in any genre today are just commercials for the person singing them and an empty, materialistic lifestyle that goes along with it. They are commercials for the self and [have] nothing to do with how the self relates to others.
Also, the songs are usually meaningless at their core. Just some babble that is like an rated-R nursery rhyme. Yet no one is stopping to ask what it all means, when the answer would be: Nothing.
So, Arcade Fire chooses a seemingly gibberish phrase to use for their chorus in this song, yet if you look into its meaning, it actually describes most of popular music. Most popular music is just a disgusting effigy to the artist singing. So, modern popular music could be defined as “rococo art”.
They are saying they are trying to give you something, trying to send a message, and therefore, make a connection with anyone willing to listen. (wastedhours, Song Meanings)
In the end, the album’s “first truly menacing song” (and the album’s first act) closes with screeching, apocalyptic feedback over a lone harpsichord picking out the chords, likely to connect this song to its namesake art-period.
So I wait in line, I’m a modern man And the people behind me, they can’t understand
Makes me feel like…like something don’t feel right
Like a record that’s skipping, I’m a modern man
And the clock keeps ticking, I’m a modern man
Makes me feel like, makes me feel like
In my dream I was almost there Then you pulled me aside and said, “You’re going nowhere” They say we are the chosen few but we’re wasted And that’s why we’re still waiting on a number from the modern man…
When I was seventeen, I was selected to be in my state’s ‘Governor’s Scholar’ program (we liked to joke that GSP stood for ‘government-sponsored procreation’, and that the program existed to help smart kids hook up to improve the gene pool and prevent brain-drain, or something). Throughout the program, we were continually told that we were the ‘best and brightest’ of our generation. Maybe they were right; maybe in another life we really could be the best and brightest, if it weren’t for the fact that the adulthood we were being groomed for was the one designed to turn us into the timeclock zombies Butler describes in this song.
Maybe when you’re older you will understand
Why you don’t feel right, why you can’t sleep at night now?
In line for a number but you don’t understand, like a modern man
Here we see again the theme of growing older being linked to this kind of numb, insomniac existence; the converse of this notion is that childhood must be the time when we’re truly alive, vibrant and full of energy and unaware of the passage of time, which is pretty much true.
Oh, I had a dream I was dreaming
And I feel I’m losing the feeling
Makes me feel like something don’t feel right
I erase the number of the modern man
Want to break the mirror of the modern man
Makes me feel like, makes me feel like
In my dream I was almost there
Then you pulled me aside and said, “You’re going nowhere”
I know we are the chosen few but we’re wasted
And that’s why we’re still waiting in line for a number but you don’t understand – like a modern man
And if you feel so right, how come you can’t sleep at night?
In line for a number but you don’t understand – like a modern man
I’m a modern man
If you ever need a clear visual of the modern man, take a look outside your nearest temple of Apple the day before the release of their next major gizmo. There you’ll see a generation of young people content to stand in line, to try and assuage the barely-suppressed gut feeling that “something don’t feel right” by buying ever more shiny gadgetry.
Since Arcade Fire is a serious “album band” and this is a serious concept album, Ready to Start begins—or, erm, starts—with a fade-in from the previous track, the first of five such segues on The Suburbs that tie the songs together. Now we hear the driving rhythm that matches my musical expectations—based on a vague, cultural-osmosis kind of awareness—of Arcade Fire. Next time you listen to this track, take note of the effect—I can only describe it as an “amping up” sound—buried in the mix that starts around 00:16, followed by a kind of feedback that drops out immediately before Win’s vocals come in at 00:30 (the effect is much more prominent in the Damian Taylor remix of the song). Combined with the progressive layering of the instruments, this almost-subliminal sound contributes volumes to the anticipatory nature of the rest of the song. If the businessmen drink my blood
Like the kids in art school said they would
Then I guess I’ll just begin again
You say, “Can we still be friends?”
The lyrics open with a reference to blood-sucking businessmen—perhaps symbolizing a fear of “selling out”—whom our singer was warned about by those art student Kids. As Win has explained, “…the feeling of Ready to Start came from going to art school and meeting a lot of people who had really defined political ideas and rules about art. But I just wanted to make something in the world and worry about the rest of it later and not get too caught up in rules.” (Oh god, I sound like an art school kid!)
The ‘fear of selling out’ theme will return in earnest a few tracks later on City With No Children.
All the kids have always known that the emperor wears no clothes
But they bow down to him anyway—
It’s better than being alone
In this stanza we get deep into the conceptual meat of The Suburbs. Even though ‘us kids know’ these truths in our guts—that the king “is just a windbag in fancy clothes” (The Story of B, 263), or that the emperor is naked (the unpleasant reality that the adults don’t want to see)—we are compelled to suppress our instincts (for freedom, human connection, &c.) so that we can lead a ‘normal’ life; the Kids grow up continuing to bow down to the king, and so he maintains control over them, while the very few that don’t bow down are alienated.
I’m reminded at this point of Chapter 2.2 of Ishmael:
“Once you learn to discern the voice of Mother Culture humming in the background…you’ll never stop being conscious of it. Wherever you go for the rest of your life, you’ll be tempted to say to the people around you, ‘How can you listen to this stuff and not recognize it for what it is?’ And if you do this, people will look at you oddly and wonder what the devil you’re talking about. In other words, if you [learn to recognize the world for what it is/stop bowing down to the emperor/take the red pill &c.], you’re going to find yourself alienated from the people around you—friends, family, past associates, and so on” (37).
I think there’s a similar conceptual tie to ideas reflected in The Lottery in this verse: specifically, the notion that ideas of cultural change always originate with young people. Like the naked emperor, it’s a scary notion because it’s true. If you want to shift a culture in a new direction, you don’t direct your appeal at the current generation of parents, you direct it at their children.
Now you’re knocking at my door
Saying “Please come out with us tonight”
But I would rather be alone than pretend I feel alright
The singer’s friends want him to come out on the town with them, but he would prefer not to. And why does he not? Linking this to the previous verse is that key word alone. By going out with his friends (i.e., not being alone), he will be bowing down to the naked emperor and pretending everything in the world is hunky-dory, even if—as an intelligent, introspective man with an open mind—he knows it’s not. Or, as a uncharacteristically-perceptive user on the website SongMeanings observed,
“This is the most clear statement Butler makes in the song. He is explicitly saying that he does not wish to comply with this societal pressure to exist on such a plane of superficiality. He doesn’t wish to mask his pain and inadequacy behind a drunken night with friends or a numbing outing. He has no intention of softening life’s blow, like so much of society is designed to accomplish. Butler wants to actually feel what this world deals each and every one of us, not to hide in an illusory refuge of friendship.”
If I was scared, I would and if I was bored, you know I would/
If I was scared, I would and if I was pure, you know I would
And if I was yours, but I’m not, now I’m ready to start
I would rather be wrong than live in the shadows of your song My mind is open wide and now I’m ready to start,
You’re not sure, you open the door and step out into the dark, now I’m ready
As for the refrain, I have little to say. Our singer, while neither scared, bored, or pure, is also apparently not loved by somebody (he’s not the “yours” of a special someone). Isn’t it funny how completely incomprehensible writing about ephemeral concepts like affection can be….
Also, note the identically-phrased “I would rather be ___ than _____” lines. Does he mean to connect being alone and being wrong, versus feeling alright and living “in the shadows of your song”? As we see later in Suburban War, our singer has been living ‘in the shadows of your song’, which means…what? The singer has been right? Has been wrong? About what?
And at last, as we leave the comfort of our familiar doorway for the darkness of the Wild, we can begin our journey through The Suburbs.
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In the suburbs I learned to drive
And you told me we’d never survive
Grab your mother’s keys we’re leaving
Three words in and we’re already knee-deep in the ’burbs; the singer relates how he gained that all-important skill for postwar civilized life—driving—in the cul-de-sacs and tract housing that is The Suburbs.
One must wonder on what grounds it was believed they wouldn’t survive in the ’burbs?, because our Mother Culture’s conventional wisdom is that the ’burbs are a great place to live. Regardless, if they’re not going to survive (maybe because the system the suburbs are built upon is inherently unsustainable and unsurvivable?), they’re getting out.
We haven’t seen the last of this sublime little triplet of a verse, and it will show up again—with some subtly powerful changes—around the halfway point of the album. Start checking off those keyword themes, kids: twenty words in and we’ve already touched on a place (the suburbs), driving, and Escape.
You always seemed so sure that one day we’d be fighting in a suburban war,
Your part of town against mine.
I saw you standing on the opposite shore
But by the time the first bombs fell, we were already bored.
The second verse introduces what is probably this album’s biggest connection to Neon Bible, ominous war imagery. As the album’s first scene, Scenes From the Suburbs covers this concisely in the first thirty seconds as our heartsick narrator explains, “There was always some sort of conflict going on…towns would attack each other if a golf course was built too close to a border, or if a shopping center gave off too much light pollution…”. As to why they “were already bored”, your guess is as good as mine. I’ll say it was something to do with millennial emotional numbness and desensitivity as a result of overexposure to hyperviolent mass media.
The kids want to be so hard
But in my dreams we’re still screaming
And running through the yard
When all of the walls that they built in the ’70’s finally fall,
And all of the houses they built in the ’70’s finally fall—
Meant nothing at all?
It meant nothing…
Ah-ha, our first mention of The Kids! They want to be tough, because our Mother Culture tells them that’s how they should be, to bury their feelings deep down? However, despite their attempts “to be so hard”, they’re still screaming in dreams. What kind of screaming is it—fearful (the bombs are falling, remember?) or existentially frustrated (the suburbs are a stultifying environment for restless youth)?
And what of the walls and houses from the Seventies? Are they falling due to the bombs, or due to abandoned decay, or are they only metaphor for things that keep us from connecting with each other?
Sometimes I can’t believe it I’m moving past the feeling And into the night
We move on to the falsetto refrain, possibly restating a sentiment of emotional deadness. But now our singer is moving into the night. The harsh orange glare from the sodium-vapour streetlights doesn’t penetrate into that shadowy area, so why go there? Perhaps that is the reason for the attraction?: as we will see, “in the Night there is something Wild”, out of reach of the civilizing grasp of the Suburbs.
So can you understand
Why I want a daughter while I’m still young?
I want to hold her hand, and show her some beauty, Before all this damage is done.
But it it’s too much to ask, then send me a son.
In this verse we hear another motif from Neon Bible, the request for a child. Note, however, that the reason for the request has evolved from its previous, exploitative iteration— “Oh God, would you send me a child?/Because I want to put it up on the TV screen/So the world can see what your true word means/Lord, won’t you send me a sign?/Because I just got to know if I’m wasting my time” (Antichrist Television Blues)—to the entirely healthier appeal of the above verse. Believing that “damage” (read: destruction) is looming (in the form of the World War mentioned in Windowsill and City With No Children, or in the violent collapse of the suburban/civilized system?), he wants to show his daughter at least something nice before it all goes up in flames.
Under the overpass, in the parking lot, we’re still waiting
It’s already passed So move your feet from hot pavement and into the grass
Cause it’s already passed!
Our final verse gives us vignettes in the first line—visualized in SFTS— of the Kids killing time in the Sprawl. It’s hard to tell (Butler’s lyrics jump around from past to present tense and back again), but I suppose the first two lines could be the singer looking back narrating the scene of his youth—“Look at us, wasting hours, waiting for our lives to begin”—with that third line directed at his past self, essentially saying, “Get out!”
Here one wonders what is “already passed” that makes the singer implore us to step off the asphalt and onto the cool green? Is it that the time of the suburbs itself is passed, and it’s time to imagine a different way to organize ourselves and form communities, one that is more organic and better-suited to humans? Or that we should first simply seek out the organic and discover the new way on our own? Either way, these closing lines seem to direct us to get out of the concrete jungle and into the Wild.
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