Subdivisons lyrics...

[Timbale]

I have been thinking about the lyrics to Subdivisions lately. I feel like whenever this song as discussed, for example in the documentary, the focus is always on it being an anthem of disillusioned youth... and of how the suburbs feel like a trap when you're a young dreamer or misfit.

 

But I've been thinking a lot about the final stanza… And how it's not often part of the conversation about the song:

 

Some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight

Somewhere out of a memory
Of lighted streets on quiet nights…

 

There is an irony there – these people who spend their youth dreaming of getting out of the suburbs, of the exciting life in the city, end up dreaming of a return because the city does not fulfil their dreams either.

 

Do you think this is a cynical end to the song? Do you think Peart is saying that these people are failures because in the end they want to go back where they started?  It is often said that this song reflects not just the band's fanbase, but also the members themselves… But in a certain way that's not really true – because those three guys did not end up returning to a quiet suburban life as depicted in the song.  

 

How do you thing Peart felt about the "characters" at the end of the song?

[Nova Carmina]

There does seem to be a progression there from the disaffected teenagers to the disappointed adults, but I'd read the lyrics as still referring to those in the suburbs as in the "rat race." Those are the people spending hours in their cars commuting to and from jobs somewhere else (especially the early '80s suburbs), and so those people aren't dreaming about "getting back" to the subdivisions, but may be remembering their own youth with more fondness. This retroactive appreciation of things people might have hated as teenagers is probably just part of maturation; it doesn't seem too cynical, just normal. How many teens were contemptuous of something that they appreciate as 40-year-olds? I know Neil wasn't forty yet, but that's the genius of empathy and creative imagination. 

 

Personally, I was glad to get out of my small hometown, but when the time came, I was perfectly happy to raise my own children in a similar environment; upon reflection, it had a lot to recommend it, and I had grown beyond thinking the grass was always greener somewhere else.

[Timbale]

45 minutes ago, Nova Carmina said:

There does seem to be a progression there from the disaffected teenagers to the disappointed adults, but I'd read the lyrics as still referring to those in the suburbs as in the "rat race." Those are the people spending hours in their cars commuting to and from jobs somewhere else (especially the early '80s suburbs), and so those people aren't dreaming about "getting back" to the subdivisions, but may be remembering their own youth with more fondness. This retroactive appreciation of things people might have hated as teenagers is probably just part of maturation; it doesn't seem too cynical, just normal. How many teens were contemptuous of something that they appreciate as 40-year-olds? I know Neil wasn't forty yet, but that's the genius of empathy and creative imagination. 

 

Personally, I was glad to get out of my small hometown, but when the time came, I was perfectly happy to raise my own children in a similar environment; upon reflection, it had a lot to recommend it, and I had grown beyond thinking the grass was always greener somewhere else.

 

That is an interesting take...and I think a very realistic one with regards to people still being in the "rat race" living in bedroom communities - BUT, I'm not sure that's what Peart means.  Or, at least, it's not what I get from the lines -

 

And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight

Somewhere out of a memory
Of lighted streets on quiet nights…

 

To me, that says the "they" of the song are dreaming of a place to get out of the rat race...and that place is the neighbourhood of their childhoods - the lighted streets on quiet nights of the suburbs.  I think the lyric implies that those people are in the city and wanting to get out. That may be a semantic difference, but I feel like Peart might, just might, be making a judgement of those who can't "hack it".

[TheHonestMan]

I never interpreted the ending lyrics to be a judgment of those returning to the suburbs. It seems to be, in my opinion, simply a commentary on the ever-changing and often conflicting desires between our youth and adulthood.

 

That oppressively boring environment of conformity that we sought to escape in our teens now suddenly offers us the stability and comfort we seek later in life. And with each passing generation, that cycle repeats.

[BigMontanaSKY]

Contrarian people and misfits get to experience all the alienation and none of the warmth of youth.

 

& I'll just be brutally honest, MOST people turn out the way you expect them to.....among the people I grew up with, very few of them broke out of the molds set for them.

 

So for some, the song "Subdivisons" re-inforces their ideas on life. Others might be saddened by the ideas.

[JARG]

1 hour ago, TheHonestMan said:

I never interpreted the ending lyrics to be a judgment of those returning to the suburbs. It seems to be, in my opinion, simply a commentary on the ever-changing and often conflicting desires between our youth and adulthood.

This, plus just a bit of nostalgia for "simpler times", is pretty much my take as well. Kids grow up in the suburbs thinking "anywhere but here" is where they want to be, so they climb on that bus and go and paint big cities from a lonely attic room. After a while, they begin to feel the tug of "home" creeping up in memories of lighted streets on quiet nights.

[pjbear05]

3 hours ago, BigMontanaSKY said:

Contrarian people and misfits get to experience all the alienation and none of the warmth of youth.

 

& I'll just be brutally honest, MOST people turn out the way you expect them to.....among the people I grew up with, very few of them broke out of the molds set for them.

 

So for some, the song "Subdivisons" re-inforces their ideas on life. Others might be saddened by the ideas.

It reinforces what my ideas on lifr were early in high school in the mid-60's.  Intelligent, a loaner, a non-follower of trends, not a jock, and a zero with girls.  The term "painfully geeky" would definitely have applied.

Simultaneously reinforcing and saddening, indeed.

[1-0-0-1-0-0-1]

4 hours ago, TheHonestMan said:

I never interpreted the ending lyrics to be a judgment of those returning to the suburbs. It seems to be, in my opinion, simply a commentary on the ever-changing and often conflicting desires between our youth and adulthood.

 

That oppressively boring environment of conformity that we sought to escape in our teens now suddenly offers us the stability and comfort we seek later in life. And with each passing generation, that cycle repeats.

 

2 hours ago, JARG said:

This, plus just a bit of nostalgia for "simpler times", is pretty much my take as well. Kids grow up in the suburbs thinking "anywhere but here" is where they want to be, so they climb on that bus and go and paint big cities from a lonely attic room. After a while, they begin to feel the tug of "home" creeping up in memories of lighted streets on quiet nights.

 

Stop this man before he sub-references again.

 

[Mosher]

I think the song is connecting the pressure to conform to an external ideal in youth to the pressure to conform to an external ideal as an adult.

 

It addresses how teenagers are well known to be trying desperately to fit in to an external definition of what is 'right', and asserts that adults are no different. Adults might indeed dream of that boring home as a preferred place because they now realize that they were chasing some semblance of 'cool' straight through adulthood (commuting two hours to sit all day in a windowless cubicle going for a promotion that will move you to an windowless office and finally to a windowed office and then retirement-running all the while, for example)

 

It questions if that is any different than teenage peer pressure. It suggests living more freely for less money and less status may ultimately lead to happier life.

 

 

Edited October 3, 2023 by Mosher

[goose]

The quiet resignation of late adulthood.  Leave me alone...and get off my lawn.