hi so this will be a very long post because i have autism in honor of this song (this post is literally just my interpretation of the song golden by fall out boy :sob:)
i have interpreted this song before, but the only thing that really stayed the same was my view of the lyric: 'and i knew that the lights of the city were too heavy for me.' in the perspective of the writer, the "lights of the city" are the weight of fame. i especially believe this because infinity on high in its entirety is written about fall out boy's self awareness about/coping with their fame. so 'carrying' the lights of the city/carrying karats is like carrying the weight of being famous and what it did to fall out boy. back to the intro of the song, 'how cruel is the golden rule? when the lives we lived are only golden-plated?' the golden-plated lyric is like realising that the 'golden rule' is just a hollow moral (the golden rule in question is 'treat others how you want to be treated') and that people only utilise it in a manipulative way to get what they want. so it's like 'how cruel is it that the lives we lived were only manipulative?' then we have 'and i saw god cry in the reflection of my enemies,' if you are looking at your enemy, the reflection in your enemy’s eyes is you. so it's really just god crying about his mistake of a human. going back to the other lyrics, it could be about how god is upset about the way the writer has become with fame. like he became selfish/arrogant and a bad person with fame. and the lyric is looking back on it in remorse. 'and all the lovers with no time for me,' essentially means to me that since he became selfish after being consumed by fame. then all of that ties into the 'and all of the mothers raise their babies to stay away from me (and pray they don't grow up to be me,' which is the 'mothers' in question raising their babies to not be like him, ie. self-consumed and arrogant. then we have 'tongues on the sockets of electric dreams, when the sewage of youth drowned the spark of my teens," which is like being obsessed with the idea of fame/being a star until you have it in your hands and you realise it doesn't chalk up to everything you thought it'd be. and you realise that you wasted your youth with that ideology and your spark is no longer aflame.
i have interpreted this song before, but the only thing that really stayed the same was my view of the lyric: 'and i knew that the lights of the city were too heavy for me.' in the perspective of the writer, the "lights of the city" are the weight of fame. i especially believe this because infinity on high in its entirety is written about fall out boy's self awareness about/coping with their fame. so 'carrying' the lights of the city/carrying karats is like carrying the weight of being famous and what it did to fall out boy. back to the intro of the song, 'how cruel is the golden rule? when the lives we lived are only golden-plated?' the golden-plated lyric is like realising that the 'golden rule' is just a hollow moral (the golden rule in question is 'treat others how you want to be treated') and that people only utilise it in a manipulative way to get what they want. so it's like 'how cruel is it that the lives we lived were only manipulative?' then we have 'and i saw god cry in the reflection of my enemies,' if you are looking at your enemy, the reflection in your enemy’s eyes is you. so it's really just god crying about his mistake of a human. going back to the other lyrics, it could be about how god is upset about the way the writer has become with fame. like he became selfish/arrogant and a bad person with fame. and the lyric is looking back on it in remorse. 'and all the lovers with no time for me,' essentially means to me that since he became selfish after being consumed by fame. then all of that ties into the 'and all of the mothers raise their babies to stay away from me (and pray they don't grow up to be me,' which is the 'mothers' in question raising their babies to not be like him, ie. self-consumed and arrogant. then we have 'tongues on the sockets of electric dreams, when the sewage of youth drowned the spark of my teens," which is like being obsessed with the idea of fame/being a star until you have it in your hands and you realise it doesn't chalk up to everything you thought it'd be. and you realise that you wasted your youth with that ideology and your spark is no longer aflame.
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