My Chemical Romance Lyrics That Just “Hit Different”
My favorite part of almost any song is the lyrics. To me, the lyrics are the most important part of a song: they’re the entire reason I listen. In fact, the reason I find it so difficult to get into new music is because I hate to listen to songs when I don’t know the lyrics. How could I properly feel the emotions of the song if I don’t know what the singer will say? I just can’t. My love of lyrics is what keeps me coming back, time and time again, to my old favorites from my eighth grade emo phase.
Of all of the bands I loved as a fourteen year old, confused and angry, closeted lesbian with weird relationship to religion, My Chemical Romance (MCR) is the one that I am simultaneously most embarrassed by and also most likely to continue to enjoy today. In fact, I have been listening to them a mortifying amount recently, and in honor of that, I have decided to create a list of each of my absolute favorite lyrics from each song. So, without further ado, buckle in, because we’ve got a lot of lyrics to cover.
I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love
As is only proper, I will begin my lyric list with MCR’s first studio album. This portion will likely be the shortest of this list, as I -and I hate to admit this, lest I lose any of my emo street cred- have not actually listened to every song on the album. My eighth grade emo self listened to music primarily on a free version of Pandora Radio, buying songs I liked from iTunes whenever I was lucky enough to receive a gift card or find some pocket change lying around. This didn’t really matter though, because in the dark days of 2014, MCR’s first studio album was not available on iTunes. This is my only excuse for not knowing all of the songs.
Our Lady of Sorrows
Wow. What a song to start on. The best parts of this song are the first few lines, the tail end of the last line before the chorus, and the chorus:
“We could be perfect one last night/And die like star-crossed lovers when we fight”
“Please understand it has to be this way/Stand up fucking tall/Don’t let them see your back/And take my fucking hand/And never be afraid again”
With these lyrics, as with many others, it is obvious that my fourteen year old self was going through it. I will not explain how. Please respect her privacy at this time.
Skylines and Turnstiles
“Hello Angel, tell me where are you/Tell me where we go from here”
I will say little about this except that my adolescent self had some interesting issues with the concepts of Christianity. You can expect to see almost every MCR lyric that references angels in this list.
Early Sunsets Over Monroeville
Okay. This is probably my favorite song off of this album. I apologize for the amount of lyrics I am about to list.
“But does anyone notice?/But does anyone care?”
“Your eyes vacant and stained/And in saying you loved me/Made things harder at best/And these words changing nothing/As your body remains/And there’s no room in this hell/There’s no room in the next/And our memories defeat us”
The scene presented by this song is an absolute nightmare. The idea that vampires have attacked you and your lover, forcing you to kill them before they become a monster who will destroy you? Terrifying. Still, there’s a strange escapism to be found in this song. I’m sure there’s a deeper meaning to that somewhere in my psyche, but to analyze it well without feeling as though I am revealing too many personal emotions and details is not entirely possible, so I won’t. This is, after all, just a list I am making for my own entertainment and the entertainment of others, no need to unpack my fourteen year old brain.
Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge
I could say a lot about how this album holds a special place in my heart, but if you’re reading this, you’re probably familiar with MCR, and you probably feel the same way, so I’ll save all of our time.
Helena
Truly a beautiful song. Obviously, the chorus slaps, however, I am not going to put it here because I’d rather highlight some of the other lines.
“Came a time/When every star fall brought you to tears again/We are the very hurt you sold”
“Can you hear me?/Are you near me?/Can we pretend/To leave and then/We’ll meet again/When both our cars collide”
Give ’Em Hell, Kid
This song was another of my absolute favorites. The inflated confidence? The reference to New Orleans? The yearning? What more could a girl want?
“Well, don’t I look pretty walking down the street./In the best damn dress I own?”
The chorus is also excellent in this song, but here are some particular lines from it that stick out to me:
“You’re so far away/So c’mon show me how./’Cause I mean this more than words can ever say”
I do believe it is important for me to provide some relevant context to the love my fourteen year old self had for these lyrics, so I will say this: it is entirely possible that she was in love with her best friend who lived multiple states away.
To The End
I cannot really explain why I loved the following lyrics except for the drama of it all! I’m sure that most teenagers think they’re from the most boring town in the world, and I was no exception.
“He’s not around./He’s always looking at men”
“She’s got a life of her own and it shows by the Benz/She drives at 90 by the Barbies and Kens.”
Oh. There’s also the scathing rejection of this doomed to fail heterosexual marriage that really fascinated my young mind as well.
You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison
My favorite lyrics from this song raise a lot of interesting ideas about feelings of guilt I may have been experiencing as an adolescent. We will not be unpacking them.
“Your life will never be the same./On your mother’s eyes, say a prayer, say a prayer!”
“I’ll kiss your lips again.”
“But nobody cares if you’re losing yourself/Am I losing myself?”
“I’m Not Okay (I Promise)
An eternal classic. I’m very tempted to just put all of the lyrics here. But I won’t. The opening lines are incredible, but I won’t list them all, only my favorite little snippet:
“For all the dirty looks, the photographs your boyfriend took”
And then of course the second verse:
“What will it take to show you that it’s not the life it seems?/I’ve told you time and time again you sing the words but don’t know what it means/To be a joke and look”
Remember being in middle school and feeling like you were the worst person to ever live and if anyone knew who you really were they would despise you? Eighth grade me was not o-fucking-kay!
The Ghost of You
This song is SO sad. I did not listen to it very much because it felt like a different kind of sadness to the one I related most to. But, I can still definitively say that the chorus is the best part, particularly:
“All the things that you never ever told me/All the smiles that are never gonna haunt me/Never coming home, never coming home”
The Jetset Life is Gonna Kill You
I’m sure it seems like I say this about every song, but wow! What a song! The opening lines are the best:
“Gaze into her killing jar/I’d sometimes stare for hours./She even poked the holes so I can breathe./She bought the last line./I’m just the worst kind.”
And then, of course, this line:
“And for the last night I lie./Could I lie with you?’
At this point, I’m sure anyone reading gets the overarching themes of my adolescent brain: “I want to be loved but I am also bad and guilty and do not deserve it” (“Maybe because the kind of love I want is bad?” I would explore this concept further but I just do not think I am capable of accurately discussing internalized homophobia and all of its nuances in an article about MCR lyrics. But I do want to make clear that I am not ignorant of its influences in the lines that spoke to my adolescent self.)
Interlude
I almost never listened to this song. I did however love the lyrics of it (and I still do) and I will be putting all of them below:
“Saints protect her now/Come angels of the lord,/Come angels of the unknown.”
Once again, many complicated feelings about religion and Christianity are at work here.
Thank You For The Venom
Another favorite of mine. This song and “The Jetset Life is Gonna Kill You” both really hit me where it hurt. There are more lines in this one that resonated with me though. First, the opening:
“Sister, I’m not much a poet but a criminal”
And then:
“You’ll never make me leave/I wear this on my sleeve/Give me a reason to believe”
And all of the chorus is really quite excellent, but once again, I will just highlight particular lines:
“You’re running after something/That you’ll never kill/If this is what you want/Then fire at will”
I have no further comments at this time.
Hang ’Em High
Based on everything else I’ve said so far, I’m pretty confident that I don’t need to tell you that I absolutely love this song. Let’s just get into the lyrics:
“Would I lie to you?/Well, I’ve got something to say”
And of course:
“Would I die for you?/Well here’s your answer in spades”
This next line circled in my mind constantly when I was fourteen. Maybe it’s something about the way Gerard Way sings it, but it’s permanently lodged into my psyche:
“The angels just cut out her tongue”
This is another song where the religious confusion I felt plays a big role in the lines that I loved.
It’s Not A Fashion Statement, It’s A Deathwish
I am so sorry for how dirty I am about to do this song. I don’t think I ever listened to it. I apologize. I looked up the lyrics to try to remember, and while I know they would’ve checked all of the boxes for my eighth grade self, I cannot list any of them here in an honest and genuine way. I am very fortunate to now think quite differently than I did when I was fourteen, so I cannot confidently guess at which lines would’ve spoken to her the most. Sorry.
Cemetery Drive
This song is very sad but very good. Here are the lyrics that I loved the most, starting, of course, with the chorus:
“I miss you, I miss you so far/And the collision of your kiss that made it so hard”
And then:
“So I won’t stop dying, won’t stop lying/If you want I’ll keep on crying/Did you get what you deserve?/Is this what you always want me for?”
My love for this song feels like a self sabotage of my own happiness, which while quite unhealthy, was not uncommon for my adolescent self.
I Never Told You What I Do For a Living
This song has a lot of very good single lines, such as:
“The kind of dirty where the water never cleans off the clothes”
And:
“Touched by angels, though I fall out of grace”
And then of course these lines:
“And we’ll love again, we’ll laugh again/We’ll cry again and we’ll dance again/And its better off this way/So much better off this way”
A very solid end to this album. I think it also does a good job of tying together all of the overarching themes of my favorite lyrics from this album, and is overall a good place to conclude this list. In the future, I hope to make another list covering MCR’s other two studio albums, The Black Parade and Danger Days: The True Lives of The Fabulous Killjoys, but to keep this from becoming obscenely long, I will leave things here for now.
