This song is apparently a couple of years old, but the XM station at work just started playing it every day, and its a pretty cool tune, so I go and check out the lyrics, which seem to have a pretty big gaffe. If per the lyrics this guy (or gal) is already gone, why would the refrain be “if someone said three years from now/you’d be long gone/I’d stand up and punch them out”- shouldn’t that be three years ago?
Three years from now has a better rhythm I assume, but am I wrong on the logic?
Sort of like in Just Like a Pill- how is a guy (or gal) just like a pill, other than not making them well? Is the person very tiny and capsule shaped?
She’s talking about how offended she’d be if someone told her that her boyfriend would leave, but then she ends the sentence with “Who knew?”, which I take it to mean she never saw it coming.
I would understand if someone used that form in conversation. The “had” is implied, it seems.
If [back then–implied] someone [had–implied] said three years from now, you’d be gone…
ymmv.
ETA: It would be more understandable in a conversation about the past, which the song essentially is. I would probably say something that sounds like this in such a conversation: “If someone’d said that, I’d’ve been mad.” The sounds would slur together a bit. Maybe that’s actually what she’s saying: “someone’d” instead of “someone had?”
(Of course, she could of course just be yelling things that she thinks sound good.)
I have always felt that the meaning of the song is that she is dealing with an immediate consequence. That is, the person she is singing about has just died. So she is thinking that, prior to this sudden occurrence, “if someone said ‘three years from now, you’d be long gone’ I’d stand up and punch them out, cause they’re all wrong!” She is caught between the way she thought things were going to be, and the way they suddenly are.
“I know better, 'cause you said ‘forever and ever.’ Who knew?”
I was sure this thread was going to be about the line “I’d stand up and punch them out”. Gah, what a terrible, terrible lyric. It’d be pretty lame if a guy sang it, but coming from a girl, even a butch one like pink, it’s just so juvenile as to border on the surreal. Oh really? You’d punch them out? Are we talking about a hypothetical conversation that took place when you were five?
I dunno. I think that, if it’s a death reaction, it’s not so juvenile. I remember when one of my best friends died due to one of the stupidest accidents I’d ever heard of, and I think if someone had said the wrong thing, even with me being very non-violent, I might’ve taken a swing at them.
Of course, I could also be reading too much into song lyrics. Who knew?
