Background
In an interview for NME, Fran revealed that, "The title reputedly comes from the advice of one of my close friends. He advised me not to leave college to concentrate on the band. The lyrics focus on a character who has abandoned all his connections and is now like driftwood - "breaking into pieces... hollow and of no use, waterfalls will find you, bind you, grind you". Driftwood is a song for the person in your life who has so much potential and, yet, doesn't use it, because they're afraid of falling on their backside, you know, they're afraid of making a fool of themselves. But, yet, if they put their minds to it and just threw their plate out the window, they would actually do a lot with it and make themselves happy and other people happy. The chorus came about while i was watching an episode of Cheers. The episode involved an employee overhearing their boss stating that he was going to get rid of the "driftwood" in the company. I then went to do the washing up, and the first line in the chorus just came to me. Also, our original idea was to include the lyrics "caterpillars turn to butterflies", but it was too long to fit with the tune, so we shaved off syllables, changing it to "pillars turn to butter."
Read more about this topic: Driftwood (song)
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