The first album
in general the majority of the first album's lyrics deal with sex and youthful lust, but we also find feelings, emotions and stories that are sometimes dealt with in a very subtle manner. Brian says, "We wanted our first album to look like a collection of short stories. We wanted to take our listeners on a trip, on an emotional roller coaster, with little surprises here and there, instead of only giving them sounds. The album is composed of 10 short stories, about the same theme but with 10 different points of view."
This song seems to be about telling an ex-lover to
"come home" and it expresses the pain the person is feeling without their lover.
Brian speaks about the despair that comes after each separation, about finality,
pain and healing.
I think it tells
how the band, probably as teenagers, were constantly surrounded by people
telling them to follow the rules, but they would rather "stick to my needle, and
my
favourite
waste of time" even thought they are "both spineless and sublime."
It is
a song about rebellion and teenage angst.
The
teenager's rage is present in this song.
Anti-conformism and contradiction, moments of intensity and youthful tragedy.
Angst and
translucent nihilism, with teenager's talkativeness about the lack of identity,
the transience of time and the futility of some things.
Its about "a robot fuck." Repetitive and cold. It’s not actually a robot, but it’s about worthless, meaningless shags, and how they are very impersonal.
It is
about blindly falling in love and only realising that it was a mistake
afterwards.
The
energetic and striking song can be interpreted as always according to different
points of view. Ambiguity is present in Brian's texts to the point of leading to
thermic
appreciations.
36°
is probably the best temperature to make love, if its degrees Celsius, but it is
also a low temperature if it is Fahrenheit degrees.
Brian plays with
the 2 meanings even if he sides more for the second one and describes
frightening moments about rotten passionate feelings.
Its
pure sex, straightforwardly, which with these lyrics leads to asphyxiation and
claustrophobia.
It is about insecurity, when a masseuse that offers the full service comes between lovers, needing to get high every morning to face the day ahead and thinking that your tool is too small. This person has to remember that he is not a stereotypical 'loser' and that he is his own person and he has to hold on to who he is.
The poetical and talkative sexes are back. A message of advice "be yourself, don't change, don't become shallow." A song which is right and mundane but pretty well embellished with direct touches. Advice that is ambiguous once again and an irreverent account of himself: "I'm a fool whose tool is small; it's so minuscule it's no tool at all."
Graphic ode to what we are led to believe is Brian's own bisexual promiscuity and his humility.
Nancy boy contains provocation and cheap charm, degradation and reflections of a character who survives in the hostile atmosphere that surrounds him, and once again the desire to remain oneself. Promiscuity and latent, frivolous hedonism in some of the verses as an in insinuation of what the ordinary life is, the frantic socially unconventional life, a duality which is present in the whole band's repertoire.
A Slinky power ballad. I think it’s about his insecurity as a singer. People will love him while his music is adored, but when it comes down to it, they prefer the song, and as the song becomes old and out of style, so does he.
A sincere and sensitive song, a talk about failure, disillusionment and unhappy love. Melancholy and sadness wrapped in contradiction.
I would also add that I feel it's about insecurities in life in general. Love being one of the greatest insecurities. Whether he can truly make a person happy or whether what he gives to his lover can be given by any other person. The act is what they enjoy, not the person. This makes him, or anyone interpreting the song, easily replaceable and easily forgotten. He knows he can give a person something that makes them happy, whether it's a beautiful song or making love, but feels that he is easily replaceable.
The way I see this song is that is about the coming together of two (or a group of) emotionally damaged people who have accepted that love sucks and they have nothing left to loose. Their sadness brings them together.
There's a lot of mystery in this song and it appears quite cryptic. There's something in there about a really attractive person, but something's gone wrong and it hasn't worked out. This lady of the flowers stole someone's heart and ran away with it perhaps.
"When I sing Lady of the flowers people think I'm talking about a women when actually it's about a transvestite." Brian Molko
Swallow is a litany of nonsense, of possible sensations, of desperate moods in final phase. In the short lyrics there is a lot of stammering, a tense situation of mental and physical blockage. "Swallow was written the last time Stefan and I were on acid," admitted Brian. "It could have meant many things but the first impression that it gives is the feeling to be lost in drugs, or maybe someone lost because of all the sexual relations he never had, at least it wasn't composed in a lucid state of mind."
The Second Album
Without You I'm Nothing is a romantic record, intimate, reflective and deep. From its beautiful cover to each of its verses, the album contain some moments of love, treason, calm and hopelessness.
"Well, "Pure Morning"...we kind of feel it was a little bit of a gift really. We'd finished our album and we'd given it to the record company and the pressure was off. We were just relaxing and doing a B-side session, and we were working in a way that we hadn't worked before. We went into the studio with just a guitar loop in the morning and built a track on top of that as the day went on, so you don't really know where you're going and it's a more spontaneous thing. By the end of the day we had "Pure Morning," and once we took a step back, it became painstakingly obvious that it was far too good for a B-side and ended up being the first single off the album. It's different, it's a new departure for us and it's probably quite indicative for where we're going in the future." Brian Molko
"'Pure Morning' is a celebration anyway so that's cool. It's a celebration of friendship between two women. About that strange sensation you get when you've been up all night and your body feels like shit in the morning. In comes your friend, she makes you a joint and you fall asleep quietly. It's the song when you can't feel your flesh anymore."
"It looks like a story about a boy and a girl who are just friends, but after a long night they cannot resist to having sex with each other. They start smoking a joint (a friend with weed is better), then he starts to get horny (a friend with breasts and all the rest), she feels like having sex too so she undresses but they have unsafe sex. Afterwards she still menstruates (a friend who bleeds is better, she confessed she passed the test) so there isn't any reason to break up (we will never sever). Although other forum visitors think it means a real friend is someone who wants to suffer for your friendship (a friend who bleeds is better); that the "my friend confessed she passed the test" is about an AIDS test or pregnancy test."
For the video the band wanted something narrative based, not just a band playing their instruments. It is actually based on a Grace Kelly film from the '50s, where a guy tries to throw himself off a building, called "Fourteen Hours."
Brick Shithouse is a ghost story. It is about when a person's girlfriend has a secret lover, and this secret lover kills him. The song is about the ghost of this person watching them.
"A disembodied soul floats overhead, observing the living. It's a ghost story, about somebody watching their lover make love to the person who killed them" Brian Molko
"'You Don't Care About Us' is probably the most autobiographical song on that record. It's about an ex of mine and she used to say that to me the whole time." Brian Molko
It's the 'poppy' song of the album. With its joyful beginning, it reminds, in a certain manner, the more optimist joy division in their orientation to new order. Another rhythm for frustrated generations, disappointed and unidentified young people who are looking for a fast and sincere exit.
"It’s about an ex-lover having a furious rant at me for not caring and being wrapped up in my own head. Unfortunately, that's how I used to conduct my relationships: I was always imagining the end just as it was beginning." Brian Molko
About the video, "It takes place in this kind of
futuristic society where sort of anybody who kind of strays from the norm
lifestyle gets drugged and then taken to this place where you become shark food
for the pleasure of little children" Brian Molko
"Its sick" Steve Hewitt
It could mean a lot of things, but I think part of it
at least has something to do with how Brian finds life branded as this sleazy
"sex crazed dwarf." He played into the hands of the media and now every one
takes him for this person that the media have created, and he doesn't have a
second chance to prove himself as a respectable, decent person (that he is.) He
is bound, but his bonds are "shackle free."
It might have something to do with what was said in Ray Gun
magazine: "Molko refers to Placebo's three-year-old career as a
"treadmill," a sensory-overload conveyor belt that never stops. You're not
allowed to jump off, he sighs, not allowed the luxury of pausing for
what-the-hell-am-I-doing reflection."
Well, this ones quite apparent but what is the 'you'? Is it a lover, a friend... a drug?
Musically and lyrically, Without You I'm nothing is one of the star songs of the album. It's melodramatic and tragic nature which brings it closer to the Roman liturgy and to the theater. The idea of human relationships and friendship is present in the whole CD but in this track it's even more obvious. The romantic connotations and the crudity of some passages are expressed with some real poetic resources. A ballade full of blood and wrapping where the sentimental nudity and the most intense emotions are exposed.
"It's an example of one of the tracks of the album which are not real love songs. It's a kind of verse with a religious aspect. It's my own story. During one Christmas night, I was out without giving any importance to the ambiance, because for Christians there award will be in Heaven and not on this earth, so if it is used as a fucking bin it's not important at all. When I started writing songs, I had to evict of myself of the Jesus ghost. I had to compose a lot about my rage against God; I had to extract all this from my inside before really starting with the band." Brian Molko
It would be about Brian’s fanatically religious mom (it was originally named Allergic to Thoughts of Mom). The after life to keep your eyes on, bitter pill you take today; suffering because you think you will be rewarded for it in heaven. But I think it's more about the stupid meanings of most people in today's society, every mink walks two by two; every handicapped (mentally or not) person shouldn't be among the "normal" people. The "we're gambling to be born again" part could be about his mom and also handicapped people must change if they want to be accepted, but most of the time they have a lack of money to let themselves be changed, and in fact they don't need to change.
Another song of rejection, of nonchalance, of affective prostitution.
I think that this song may in fact be about prostitution but when I first heard it I thought that it was about rape. I think that the lines "I could not make you stay/ it's way to broke to fix, no glue or bag of tricks" means that the person being raped couldn't make her/ his lover stay to save them from being raped and now it's all broken. Also, I think that the rapist was the victim's friend because of the line "Your smile would make me sneeze". So it's like every time I see you put me in disgust or what have you. The lines "Lay me down, the lie will unfurl, lay me down to crawl" I think mean that the victim didn't tell his/ her lover that the friend raped them so it's like they're saying that open your eyes and stop questioning me and leave me alone (lay me down to crawl) and you'll see for yourself who did it. So I think that the friend and the victim might have had some previous feuds and that the victim is kind of helpless and the friend is just a sadist who's in love with the victim.
I think this song is about the boredom that comes after you have been with a lover for a while. When you're not really sure what more there is to do to make your life together interesting again.
Brian said about this song “I’m not sure about this song's theme. I believe it deals with a lot of people. And maybe it's about no one."
Sucker love is
heaven sent (sucker means an easy target so she/he considers easy girls or boys
an easy target)
you pucker up, our passion’s spent (you (referring to
the easy girl or boy) gather us together and I don’t have to make any effort to
have you whenever I want, and that makes our passion die).
My heart’s a tart, your body’s rent (What is a tart?? Something with no
consistence, acidic or bitter. My heart is as bitter and acidic as a tart and
your body is something I can pay for... referring to that girl or boy likes a
slut for being such an easy target).
My body’s broken, yours spent (My body is destroyed, damaged; he/she refers to
his/her body like an object that can’t work anymore. It says that the body of
his lover is spent... maybe because of the use it has... there’s nothing
interesting in that body, it has nothing to give... his job is finished).
Sucker love is known to swing (Easy love is well known cause it’s not serious,
and it swings cause it’s not secure, you can go backwards and forwards... you
can be happy in one moment and you can be sad in other).
There’s never been so much at stake (I have never risked so many things on a
bet...because that’s what this relation means for me... only a bet).
Like the naked lead the blind,
I know I'm selfish, I'm unkind (If we get naked, I won’t resist and I’ll follow
my instinct without caring of what may happen... that is really as sincere as
when she/he says I am selfish and unkind.... he doesn’t care how he treats
his/her easy lover)
Sucker love I always find,
Someone to bruise and leave behind (Easy love he/she always finds... someone to
damage, heartbreak, and leave behind... I use people I do whatever I want with
them and then I leave them easily).
"'My Sweet Prince', which is two parallel love stories happening at the same time and I am the prince. One day somebody wrote a message on the wall of my room: 'My gentle prince, you are the only'. The relationship ended disastrously because the person in question is almost dead." Brian Molko
Well there are the lines on My Sweet Prince, 'Me and the dragon can chase all the pain away,' 'Never thought all this could backfire/Close up the hole in my vein.' That's quite obvious isn't it? It's heroin." Brian Molko.
I see it as being about trying to do everything before you die... trying to fit in and get all you want done before death comes.
A heartbreaking track which deals with phobia, angst and inhibition with some allusions to God.
"It's an investigation into male heterosexual promiscuity. Do male flirts do it because they really love women or actually because they're scared with women and themselves. I'd say that they are scared of girls." Brian Molko.
"Burger Queen tells the tale of a gay heroin addict from the dismal country (Luxembourg). Possibly the worst thing to be in the world." Brian Molko.
Brian spent many years of his childhood in Luxembourg, where he felt unhappy. Burger Queen is the story of a man in Luxembourg who makes much money but is unhappy due to his lack of fun and sex, and he wastes his life drinking in a bar to forget his misery. Brian's dad was a banker and wanted Brian to follow him into the banking world but he never wanted to.
"Well, it's a strange one. It didn't really fit into the context of the album, which is why we hid it, but it's from the same session. It's kind of the most violent thing that we've done; it's very kind of sexually violent as well. And what actually ended up on the vocals for that track are actually death threats which I received on my own personal answer phone. So, we got sort of angry about it and we decided to use them, you know, to make something positive about it and to piss these people off even more. So it was something that we wrote at a sound check in East Germany in Leipzig a month after Steve had been in the band. It was just something that started off as a bit of a Sonic Youth kind of tribute, but it went on and sort of got it's own life really. It's one of the most violent things we've done, and it's pretty heavy going." Brian Molko.
It is designed to "confuse people"; its electronic funk apparently inspired by Paul Oakenfold mix CDs. The song is about getting an ex-lover to come back to him, even if it is only for a while. The video represents the possible different outcomes of a situation.
About "falling in love, coming off drugs or discovering a macrobiotic diet."
"It's a simple song that compares the rush of falling in love at first sight with the feeling of coming up on drugs, basically. So it uses the metaphor of drugs to describe the falling head-over-heels in love with somebody. But like with drugs, what goes up always has to come down and that's the the moral of the story."
Crunching insurrectionary hip hop inspired by the May Day riots. Brian was inspired by a newspaper picture of a green Mohican that someone had painted on the statue of Winston Churchill.
"It’s a song that can work on two levels. You can see it as someone asking someone to let them in, be part of their lives or you can see it as this old saying I was taught in Sunday school which is 'when Jesus knocks at your door, it's your choice to let him in'. So it could be a simple song about love or religion."
A swirling intense confession about the divorce of Brian's parents. "I was never loyal except to my own pleasure zone / I'm forever black-eyed, a product of a broken home."
Most forum visitors think the song is about bisexuality, people think bisexuals cannot be loyal to one person, that they are oversexed and only care about their own satisfaction. I think some parts of the song also refer to mental illnesses, border lining schizo, borderline bipolar. The last thing is a sort of teenage depression, but it could also mean a borderline bisexual ("forever biting on your nuts"). Another interpretation is that since a schizo is somebody with many personalities, it could mean a person with a personality that is attracted to women and one that is attracted to men.
"It's a kind of self-disgust. Three and a half minutes
of pure self-disgust, American style. The person in the song is at such a low
point in his life emotionally that he's started to hit out at everything that is
a part of him. He's attacking his parents, his culture, his culture's history,
self-help, psychiatry. It was written when I wasn't in a particularly good mood;
I wanted to say hi to my mum. I'm the anti-Eminem! Hahahahahaha! That's really
genuine, you know. Hi, Mom. It's so American. And, you know, I still love my
mother. And it just fitted. When it came out, I thought it would be really nice
to make her quite happy. Because I'm sure most of the subject matter of our
songs doesn't make her very happy. So, at one point, maybe for one verse at
least, she might think, 'Oh, that's nice. My son still loves me.' " –Brian Molko
The 'anti-Eminem' thing has to do with how Eminem is always slagging off his
mother and Brian didn't like that. Brian says mothers are good.
Who is Uncle Tom? The result of a lot of
research by "A Friend In Need":
I have been doing some research into the identity of "Uncle Tom" and have come
up with this. Apparently Uncle Tom is a character in a book called "Uncle Tom's
Cabin" which was written in 1852 by a woman called Harriet Beecher Stowe.
The book is about racism and Christianity in 1850's America and it follows the
lives of several black slaves and the white man who got rich by selling these
slaves. It was written to be controversial and motivate America to abolish black
slavery.
Stowe uses Christian ideas of heaven and souls to persuade her readers that the
black slaves were as much people as their "owners". She uses the religious
character of Uncle Tom (an extremely racist slave "owner" who claimed to be
Christian) to show how many black slaves were more religious than their masters
(a fact that must have been very controversial at the time the book was
written).
Stowe also uses conversations between characters to explore Christian attitudes
towards slavery - how parts of the bible can be misused to support slavery when
the whole of the bible could not possibly be seen to support the trade.
The song refers to Ebonics, which roughly means African-American English, or
street slang. For example "MuthaFucka" is an Ebonics term. I assume that Brian
must have read this book at some point and felt strongly about the ideas and
topics raised. I think the song is about black Americans and how they are
treated today as compared to how they were treated in 1852. But I think the
question "Who is Uncle Tom" and the reply "you are" is saying that there are
still lots of racist people in this world, some of which use Christianity as a
scapegoat for their actions - even 150 odd years after this book was written.
A Strident uplifting call "to run away from all your boredom."
Slave to the Wage is about dropping everything that you were doing, and following your dreams. It's basically about not working for the man.
I think it is a message for everyone, but especially for the people in Luxembourg (where Brian grew up). Drop the boring life and make the decision (and accept the risk of failing) to start all over again with a more exciting life. Maggie's farm is about the Bob Dylan song where people had to work all day at a farm.
"That's a song about grabbing your mate by the scruff of the neck and telling him that he's walking down a rocky road to ruin. It's basically, "You're my mate and I love you, but if you don't watch out you're going to fuck up pretty bad." It's autobiographical in the sense that there have been certain points in my life where the band or other friends have had to do that to me. This was very beneficial. I love that song because musically it's like a really sweet lullaby and lyrically it's quite a filthy number. It puts a smile on your face."
"Levi's our sound man. There was this one time in Milan when I got a bit too drunk at dinner and left the restaurant which was right opposite the venue and there were some fans waiting outside, and I climbed on top of this Fiat Uno, and started screaming 'Nancy Boy', doing a performance for the fans. And Levi dragged me off the Fiat Uno, as the owner was approaching and waving the keys. I thought I was going to cross this road in between the two parked tour buses and took off, and Levi just grabbed me as a car zoomed by. So it's quite possible that he did save my life. If I was a Samurai, I would have to follow him around for the rest of my life and take care of him until I saved his life. But my little payback for that is to put his name in a song."
A song from the point of view of a black man lynched in
the 50's America. Its about "racism and prejudice breeding prejudice."
This man has been hung from a tree, but it the song seems to tell that he
survives, he manages to keep the oxygen from being cut off and the
haemoglobin carries it to the body. Haemoglobin being the key to this
man's healthy heartbeat.
"It's our version of [legendary chanteuse] Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit", but where Billie's walking around observing fruit [dead slaves] hanging from the trees, we've actually placed you inside the man's head. It starts off with him hanging from a tree - he's in a state of resignation. In the second verse, he gets cut down and that resignation turns into confusion. And by the third verse, that confusion has turned into anger and a lust for revenge. It's a simple moral thing, prejudice breeds prejudice and violence breeds violence. We started this band in our early 20s and now we're getting towards our 30s and you look at the world around you a bit more. And it touches you, what people are prepared to do to each other for religion, for land. Violence still exists. There's a war every day, people getting murdered every day. If you watch the news, you get affected by that." – Brian Molko
A sparse, spaced-out song.
It’s about a dying relationship.
Epic, haunting ballad about voyeurism. Apparently Brian has always been a bit of a voyeur.
A very strange secret track when compared to the other secret tracks. This one has lyrics, and is quite a haunting song.
"A song about Armageddon" I think that it could be a song about a girl that starts every relationship believing it's going to end horribly; (there's a place within her mind/the rain's already falling; She's preparing for the flood/the deluge and the sliding mud). And it does end because she doesn't think it's possible for it to go well, and when this happens it's like the end of the world (wasted face that swallows time/with Armageddon calling). So she's always crying and broken, this probably seems pretty insane to the person that she's always calling to vent to. (She's insane, this friend of mine/ and she's always bawling/Hear her calling). Thus, she's calling you to make her happy, to fix her problems, and it never works.