When I listened to this song for the first song I definitely got hypermasculine vibes. It felt like an old rock genre – mixed with new rock. It wasn’t my favorite, but the BRIDGE. oh man the bridge. The bridge is MGK to the max. The more I listened the this song the more I got hooked on it – all of it. And now it’s one of my most listened to songs.
Lyrical Breakdown
How many of you really know you’re alive?
They pulled me over doing 135
This intro line feels like this investigation to devious dares to prove aliveness and awareness. I’ve been challenging death and my mortality just to feel alive or something – otherwise I’m not sure I’m alive at all. It’s a line that feels peppy and pretty ‘rock and roll’ but it is pretty deep rooted in depression and sadness.
Show me the money and I’ll show you the lies
Everyone’s equal ’til it’s time to divide, let’s go
These lines to me take on something more, politically and socially. Follow the money and you’ll follow lies, greed, manipulation. ‘We’re all the same!!’ Until we’re not. Until there are sides to choose. Until people start showing their true colors. Narratives are being placed and all of a sudden it’s not that everyone lives mattered, but just some because of who they wanted to represent. This is just an example of the hypocrisy in our current system, but currently that’s what is running through my mind when I listen to this song.
The problems that MGK is listing is being personified as a ‘she’ but I dont think he is actually speaking about a girl. He may be saying that he needs to fall in line because of a girl – and he desires to be loved, but his problem is that he can’t get himself to define his problem and do the one thing he needs to feel this love regularly. But due to the following tracks on this album, we know he is fighting his sobriety every day to get back to his love and is doing all he can, so we know that she isn’t the reason for his decline, but listening to others- wanting to fit in – and his relapse is. I.e. his previous definition of cool – that he is scrapping.
You want this? You got that
You want this? You got that, uh
I’ve thought about this interpretation a few different ways. The way that I can relate this to the other lines the best is you want this, but you have that. You want something else, but what you have is good enough. We all want something – but we don’t see what is in front of us.
OR
When people see our lives in the spectacle, they think it’s all fine and dandy, until they know the truth.
So it could be read as more of a taunt. You want what I have?? YOU WANT THIS?? You have that!! freedom. You want this?? The spectacle? The Gossip? The paranoia? The cage? You have freedom. You got that. Embrace that.
Don’t wait, watch ’em walk right past you
Run fast, run fast while you have the chance
Don’t speak, let ’em look right at you
Run back, run back while you have the chance
In my second thought of you want this, you got that, could mean, the chorus makes more sense. While they don’t know who you are [the public, the media], watch them walk right past you, walk, run [flash foward to vampire diaries, ‘but baby i would die to run’] run fast while you have the chance – while no one cares about who you are – live your life, do what you want. Embrace not being in a cage.
You want this? You got that, yeah, yeah
You want this? You got that, yeah, yeah
I wasn’t raised by a millionaire
I can’t be saved by a digital prayer
thoughts and prayers
I can’t be tamed by a man in a chair
his poor therapist lol
They say that I’m going to hell
I say, “We’re already there, ” oh, no
ok but seriously all these lines are phenomenal. He wasn’t born rich, he isn’t used to the life in the limelight until recently. This wasn’t what he expected his life to be. These fake prayers and thoughts from the internet aren’t helpful or don’t mean anything but preformative work, his therapist can only do so much and in albums from the past he mentions not showing up to therapist sessions
I might go to sleep and then never wake up. I spend a lot of money on these therapy sessions. Even though I’m not showing up.
-papercuts
And his life sometimes already feels like he’s trapped in hell. real.
Take a picture if you want it to last
this line just feels so much like mgk – and it really goes into the song Sweet Coroline. This confrontation of assholes? Who treat him this way. You have the option to ask or do really cool things with him, but decide to stop and stare or ask absurd things instead.
Maybe one day you’ll be happy at last
Misery is company.
I got the answer, so I don’t need to ask
I know that this was not an accident
I wanted to crash, let’s go
Again, in multiple interviews he stated he wanted to break everything down to rebuild again. We addressed this in Outlaw Overture, along with many songs in this album, and in several albums/songs in the past, he mentions how he tends to write better when he’s completely broken. This tends to be all artists. We just feel on a deeper level when we are drowning – we feel those emotional ties better and our brain fires up in different ways. He wanted to crash so he could create something more. I don’t think he enjoys that his process is like this, but after years of watching himself do it, he doesn’t need to ask himself why any more.
Don’t wait, watch ’em walk right past you
Run fast, run fast while you have the chance
Don’t speak, let ’em look right at you
Run back, run back while you have the chance
You want this? You got that, yeah, yeah
You want this? You got that, yeah, yeah
this fucking bridge is so good.
Smoking cigarettes down to the bone, uh-huh
Calling people friends I don’t even know, uh-uh
Rolling dollar bills, do it off the phone, uh-huh
(Yeah) uh-huh (ayy), uh-uh
Watch the world pass when I’m on the road, uh-uh
Where do I belong? I don’t even know, uh-huh
Fake my happiness with diamonds and pearls, uh-uh
(Yeah) uh-huh (ayy), uh-uh
The bridge represents the real life that is happening – the other verses are what the exterior is seeing and his warning about the life he’s living. He’s smoking cigarettes anxiously because it’s the only vice he has right now, and he’s having fake conversations with people who aren’t even his friends because he feels like he doesn’t have any real connections. Rolling dollar bills can mean MANY things – illegal drugs, pulling in cash, etc., but nothing good in this context.
So you want this?? you got that.
Don’t wait, watch ’em walk right past you
Run fast, run fast while you have the chance
Don’t speak, let ’em look right at you
Run back, run back while you have the chance
You want this? You got that, yeah, yeah
(Don’t come back for me this time)
You want this? You got that, yeah, yeah
Visual Representation
Cinestill 800d ASA – medium format film –
Don’t Wait, Run Fast
I had a different idea for this photo that didn’t end up being photographed- but as I was photographing a wedding I thought of this idea of movement all around me- the idea that anyone can stop and stare at me while I photograph myself. Being stared at – being the spectacle – yet in my life I document everyone else.
Specifically being a destination wedding photographer or in industries that you make friends for a day – these lines hit me
Calling people friends I don’t even know, uh-uh
Watch the world pass when I’m on the road, uh-uh
Where do I belong? I don’t even know, uh-huh
Fake my happiness with diamonds and pearls, uh-uh
In the height of my business, and still now, I often feel that people get ahold of me because they need something from me – not because they actually like me. For the longest time I documented everyone else and their moments without capturing my own – or really having a life at all. I watched everyone else enjoy their moments and got lost looking for my own.
dont wait, run fast. dont wait for the moments to happen – make them.