Meanings
The song was influenced by the theories of Arthur Janov, author of The Primal Scream. The lyric "the dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had" suggests that dreams of intense experiences such as death will be the best at releasing tension.
Lyrically the song is pretty loose. It throws together a lot of different images to paint a picture without saying anything specific about the world. —Roland Orzabal It's very much a voyeur's song. It's looking out at a mad world from the eyes of a teenager. —Curt SmithRead more about this topic: Mad World
Famous quotes containing the word meanings:
“Our mother gives us our earliest lessons in love—and its partner, hate. Our father—our “second other”Melaborates on them. Offering us an alternative to the mother-baby relationship . . . presenting a masculine model which can supplement and contrast with the feminine. And providing us with further and perhaps quite different meanings of lovable and loving and being loved.”
—Judith Viorst (20th century)
“You can’t write about people out of textbooks, and you can’t use jargon. You have to speak clearly and simply and purely in a language that a six-year-old child can understand; and yet have the meanings and the overtones of language, and the implications, that appeal to the highest intelligence.”
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980)
“An amoeba is a formless thing which takes many shapes. It moves by thrusting out an arm, and flowing into the arm. It multiplies by pulling itself in two, without permanently diminishing the original. So with words. A meaning may develop on the periphery of the body of meanings associated with a word, and shortly this tentacle-meaning has grown to such proportions that it dwarfs all other meanings.”
—Charlton Laird (b. 1901)