#I love you in the same way there’s a chapel in a hospital | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

deancoded-deangirl · 2 years ago

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here’s why hum hallelujah is fall out boy’s best song, no contest or competition.

under the cut because it’s long.

hum hallelujah comes from infinity on high, which is one of fall out boy’s best albums-- commercially speaking, it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, compared to FUTCT’s peaking at number nine, and FAD at number eight. IOH charted top five worldwide, even making the list for that year’s top 50 albums.

Fall out boy is well known for two things: patrick stump’s incomprehensible vocals, and pete wentz’s iconic and nuanced lyrics. it’s no secret that TTTYG and FUTCT (et al) were filled with both of those things, but I don’t think that anything hit quite as hard as infinity on high, and more to the point, Hum Hallelujah.

see, hum hallelujah does something that all of their songs do: it takes metaphors, analogies, common phrases, and twists them. it makes them into something new with so many layers that the english major in me spins. there’s no right or wrong answer about interpreting the lyrics, because so many layers are built into it, a truly multifaceted song. But it adds something else. Hum Hallelujah adds religion into it, as a core part of the song.

during this dissection, i’m going to be treating the “I” in the song as a narrator, and “you” as the listener/audience, although you can substitute the “you” to mean a separate third person, and that the audience is merely privy to the story.

we start hum hallelujah off with:

“It's all a game of this or that, now versus then Better off against worse for wear“

listeners have probably heard someone being asked or told that it is a choice between this or that. that’s the common phrase we all know. fob adds now versus then, and follows it up with “better off against worse for wear”. so now the choice is not this or that-- it’s “do you want to be better off or worse for wear?” and those are the two options that the narrator sees happening. Their common theme? The narrator and listener are separated. When someone leaves, you are either better off or worse for wear, but it’s not until they’re gone that you’ll know.

“And you're someone who knows someone Who knows someone I once knew I just want to be a part of this“

we’ve all heard that before. “i knew someone who knew someone” etc. fob adds to it. the stretch between the narrator and whoever it is is a gossamer thin thread, but they want to be part of it so badly, they are desperate. another common phrase flipped and made new.

“The road outside my house Is paved with good intentions“

The common adage “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” is here. The listener is well aware of what the implication is. The narrator’s house is hell, without even needing to be told. This is the first instance-- but by no means the last-- of Hum Hallelujah’s religious inspiration.

“Hired a construction crew 'Cause it's hell on the engine“

and they complete the above phrase, but with a choose your own adventure of what it could mean. Is the narrator trying to fix up hell? Is the narrator hiring a construction crew because he’s trying to get out of hell and his car can’t make it? Is it simply another play on the phrase?

The first, but by no means the last.

“And you are the dreamer and we are the dream I could write it better than you ever felt it“

they take a step back from the religion. now we go back to futct’s fundamental lyrics, about being lonely and disconnected from love. You would think that the dreamer would know the feeling better than the dream. After all, how can a dream know the feelings of the dreamer? And yet there is this smug phrasing that implies that the narrator is just that good.

and though this is the first mention of lyrics that will tie into hum hallelujah’s ultimate theme of desperate love, not a single line outside of that scope feels out of place in the song.

“So hum hallelujah Just off the key of reason“

when someone hums, obviously they’re going to be in a key, if not the key of the song, and the narrator says just off the key of reason. Does he want the listener to be reasonable? Or is the narrator saying that the reader is not reasonable? You could say he’s telling the listener to hum it, and therefore saying that the listener shouldn’t be reasonable, but the point is there’s so many dimensions to these lyrics. There’s so many different dimensions, and no necessarily wrong way, but the rest of the song leads the listener into one specific viewpoint.

“I thought I loved you, it was just how you looked in the light“

a common trope in love stories is that how someone looked in a particular lighting made someone else think of them differently. it also could refer to new information, something shines a new light on them. it could be a trick of the light. the narrator thought he loved the person, but it was fleeting, it was fair-weathered, it was temporary.

“A teenage vow in a parking lot 'Til tonight do us part“

These lyrics strengthen the argument that the last two lines were about temporary love. A teenage vow-- teenage love is always shifting, always evolving. A parking lot is no place to vow permanence. And then they will part after tonight. it’s a play on wedding vows, making a mockery of the permanence of those.

“I sing the blues and you swallow them too“

now, i’ve read dissections that say this refers to Pete’s drug use, and that fits in so I won’t talk about it here, but also because I’m speaking to the song as a whole. So far, this narrator has referred to themselves as fickle, temporary, and now blue. And the listener swallows the blues. The listener is eating up the sad emotions that the narrator provides. The use of the word “too” adds another level to this line. An implication is that it is an active choice of the listener to swallow them. The narrator is adding that as a statement of fact, not suggesting that the listener swallow his blues, but saying that the listener already does.

“My words are my faith, to hell with our good name“

here we go back to the religious symbolism. similar to the first pre-chorus, the narrator is talking about hell. He sings the blues, he gave a teenage vow, but his words are his faith. It seems almost as though the narrator doesn’t believe anything good could come out of his words. They’re his faith, and -> to hell with their good name, because of that. A tie-in to the “the road outside my house is paved with good intentions”. The narrator lives in hell. To hell with their good name.

“Remix of your guts, your insides x-rayed“

the narrator is dissecting the listener now, and nothing is hidden. everything is exposed. A remix is more commonly used in music terminology, and so the narrator seems to be saying that the song he is singing is what is exposing the listener.

“And one day we'll get nostalgic for disaster We're a bull, your ears are just a china shop“

A bull in a china shop-- another well known phrase. Naming that they are the bull and your ears are a china shop (which is where my belief that “you” refers to the listener/audience instead of a separate third person comes from), right after saying they’ll get nostalgic for disaster. One day they’ll get nostalgic for the current disaster. Because the narrator is singing the blues-- and therefore the person swallowing them is listening-- the implication is that the current disaster is the relationship between the narrator and listener. the implication is also that, to the narrator, the relationship is parasitic: the narrator provides nothing but destruction.

Not only that, but you can only get nostalgic for things you have left behind. The narrator is telling the listener that he will leave.

“I love you in the same way There's chapel in a hospital“

In what way is there a chapel in a hospital? The narrator brings us back to the religious theme, and gives us two lines rife with nuance. The narrator loves the listener in the same way there’s a chapel in a hospital, and so you have to think: who is the chapel in a hospital for? why do people go? when do people go?

I’ll give you a hint. A chapel in a hospital is for desperate people. Someone they love is in the hospital and they are appealing to a higher power. Now, you could tell me that someone who is religious would go to a chapel right off the bat anyway, but given the nature of this song-- how it is taking religious symbolism and turning it on its head to indicate that the narrator isn’t good-- I believe that the narrator is referring to the people who go to chapels because they’re desperate. The people who are appealing to someone they might not even believe in because it’s their last hope.

And then we go back to the desperate love feeling from the chorus. Loving someone in the same way there’s a chapel in a hospital is not permanent, and it’s not a good foundation. It’s built out of the wrong emotions. Further to the point, once the loved one is better, a person who doesn’t believe isn’t going to go to that chapel again. It’s temporary.

“One foot in your bedroom And one foot out the door“

Ties right back into the temporary. Having one foot out the door is indicative of someone about to run. Someone who loves the way someone prays in a chapel in a hospital. Someone who will get nostalgic for disaster.

“Sometimes we take chances, sometimes we take pills I could write it better than you ever felt it“

The first line of this harkens back to the “I sing the blues and you swallow them too” line. Both are zeugmas. And the way this is phrased indicates that the narrator believes it is one or the other.

It’s all a game of this or that.

When someone takes pills, it is to feel (or not feel) something. The narrator saying “I could write it better than you ever felt it” shortly after singing about how sometimes they take pills throws a bit of... almost as if the actual feelings don’t matter, because the narrator can fake it better. There’s almost a sense of smug superiority in this song, about how the disconnect of actual permanent love doesn’t mean the narrator can’t understand. If anything, he understands better than the listener.

After this, the rest of the song is a repeat of lines I’ve discussed before, but there is a bridge where the narrator is singing the lines to “hallelujah”. Singing, not humming.

The narrator is telling the listener to hum hallelujah-- off the key of reason-- but the narrator himself is singing hallelujah, and on key. Throughout the song there has been this disconnect between the listener and the narrator. With the listener being held on a pedestal, while the narrator degrades himself, but now the narrator is the one perfectly hitting his cues.

anyway, i am by no means saying that hum hallelujah is the only one of their songs covered with this much nuance, nor am i trashing their other songs, but something about hum hallelujah hits entirely different from their other songs on infinity on high-- and in general-- making it an entirely different experience, and making it worthy of the best song title.

#i love hum hallelujah so much #tbf i might be biased because i listened to it when i was in my crisis of faith in hs #so hearing 'i love you in the same way there's a chapel in a hospital' actually fundamentally changed me #like that line sends me frothing at the mouth #anyway here's my promised hum hallelujah dissection!#fall out boy #fob #hum hallelujah #infinity on high #ioh #this is also dedicated to that fob song showdown

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