My favorite thing about this song is the story about the time when Bastille was performing Pompeii at a concert and someone kept holding up a sign that ready 'How am I gonna be an octopus about this?' during the chorus until the lead singer flubbed the line and sang the octopus version. I am the kind of dork who will randomly substitute the octopus version of the line when I sing along with this....
I always interpreted it as 'Something terrible has happened and everything's gone to shit, but really our life was dreadful anyway: "does it almost feel like nothing's changed at all".'
Congratulations!!! You’ve won the International British Award!!!! Come to the United Nations headquarters to recive your trophy and prize! What’s the prize? A LIFETIME SUPPLY OF TEA!!!!!!
I saw it like “it doesn’t feel real to me”; if I close my eyes it feels like it all never happened. Although I haven’t heard the entire song in a while and am going just off the chorus
I take a much more literal interpretation. The Song is being sung by someone trapped in the city of Pompeii. When the rains of ash began they chose to hide in the city. If they closed their eyes they could even pretend nothing had changed at all. But now the ash rains have ceased and the eruptive column is shrinking... because it's collapsing into a pyroclastic flow that is sweeping over the mountains. The grey clouds are sweeping over the hill and are coming right at the poor fool. But if they close their eyes they can almost pretend that everything is going to be all right. Coupled with the lyrics "eh eheu, eheu" which means "alas alas" the song is the lament of a doomed person in their final moments and coming to terms with their own immanent death.
"Eheu", which is what they were chanting, means something like "oh no" in latin, so it fits really well. Idk. You seemed to think it was something more cheerful.
Hahaha great observation though it sure does make the song a bit creepier thinking that it's the people of Pompeii realize their certain doom has come.
morning bell or a Scottish actor doing an English accent, playing an alien with a French catchphrase, in a city in Itally, that’s actually just a set in Wales.
Back when this was still going, a little bit after it's popularity peaked, but before it stopped getting regular radio play, my two closest friends died in a car crash. A few weeks after that, while I was still grieving, this song came on the radio. That was when I really understood: this is a song about being in denial. That's why it's such a hugely upbeat song with such dark and heavy subject matter.
I'm watching this review hearing the song again and I felt the same realisation - I listened to this a lot as a teen when it just came out and we went on a school trip to the gulf of Naples and Pompeii and I took it literally. Now I'm hearing the song again after going through a bunch traumatic things and losing close family members in my late teens and I understand the lyrics completely different now. I'm so sorry for your loss, wishing you all the best.
I can hear it a bit, even though I know it's just a trick of the ear. For me it's mostly because of the way they're singing the words in such a staccato way. I can tell there's no 'D' sound when I listen carefully but the sudden way the syllable begins makes it sound like there's some slightly harsher consonant sound just before it.
I just love the idea of a Roman watching everything and everyone they've ever known burn down into the pits of Tartarus and thinking _I'm gonna be an optimist about this._
It's not "I'm gonna be an optimist" its "how am I going to be an optimist" So the meaning comes out to be more like "what kind of silver lining could exist in a situation so terrible"
As late as this is, I’m fairly certain that it means more that the person is saying “if you close your eyes you can imagine that it’s not a completely different place and that it’s still the place you’ve lived for your entire life, and that it’s still the place you’ve been before instead of the city of ruins it is now.
Actually the song is about blissful ignorance. It's about see everything going wrong and choosing to ignore it. That's why he asks how to stay optimistic, and the answer is to try and stop seeing truth and just ignore it
I always saw this song as a conversation between to people. After a cataclysmic event occurred there were only 2 known survivors. One of them begins to have an existential crisis in the midst of all the chaos and the other survivor tries to console them by telling them to pretend that nothing change. This, however, proves to be impossible so the 2 resolves to try to rebuild society and to grow as people. Edit: if you think a British band with a French name singing about a place in Italy is confusing, try Rasputin by Boney M. Jamaican people in a German band singing in English about a Russian man. Now that's what I call Mr. Worldwide.
Smith explained the song's meaning to The Sun: "Pompeii is actually an imagined conversation between two charred corpses reflecting on the city." He added: "But that's why I don't like explaining a lot of my songs literally as it sounds bonkers - a song about two corpses yet the crowd are happily dancing along!" there is the what it means
Just to clear things up- the bodies of the people in Pompeii were not completely preserved- the ash formed a layer around the bodies, and when archaeologists dug them out of the ground, they poured plaster into the volcanic ash husk. The 'bodies' we see nowadays are actually just the plaster-casts of the inside of the husks, because the bodies inside the casts had rotted away over the centuries. And on that happy note, I always thought this band was American, because I swear the version they play in nightclubs has them singing in American accents. You learn something new everyday.
Jack Dear I know this is an old post but you mentioned that they sound American, that is actually something that tends to happen. Look it up, it happens more often than you think. I don't remember how it happens, but the American accents is kinda the default tone when singing in English, you have to actually try not to form an American accents when singing.
I believe it’s called a transatlantic accent brought about by the speed and different ways to enunciate words to fit the song leading to a psuedoAmerican accent
@@takemyhand1988 Really? I know a lot of singers, and they all sing with their own accents if they aren't singing a song that was originally sung by an American.
@@takemyhand1988 So, what does a non-accented singing voice sound like? I guess that it changes from country to country, since every culture has at least a few accents (although my home country has it where accents change every ten miles).
Todd, I know this is a bit late, but you were saying that this song isn't indicative of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. I'd just like to tell you that that's wrongedy wrong wrong. They did their research man. Many walls in Pompeii did come tumbling down because what hit Pompeii was what's called a Plinian eruption. After the volcano erupted it released several hundred tons of gaseous rock into the atmosphere that quickly cooled and started raining down in the form of pumice, a light igneous rock. However, this built up on roofs and eventually tore down a lot of the lower income housing, which was made of wood and not stone. The walls of the stone houses and temples didn't come down, but for most people in the cities surrounding Pompeii, their walls most definitely came tumbling down.
I know this comment is several years old but I feel like that insight adds another possible interpretation to the song: when disasters happen poor people end up suffering a worse outcome than rich people, so the well-off people can have that reaction of "actually, if you close your eyes it's not that bad at all" while people in already disadvantaged communities are facing far greater devastation and asking how are they possibly going to be an optimist about this situation. (Of course, with pompeii almost everybody did die no matter their circumstances)
I feel like that song has the same bipolar feeling as "Pompeii" - the lyrics are about depression, confusion and feeling lost, and the song is extremely upbeat. Like Todd, I find it kind of distracting.
Lucy W, for me it works in Good Grief because Dan Smith described the song as being about "being happy in a sad situation" and being "sad in a happy situation"
trc2rockon Agreed. I really liked Pompeii when it first came out but after listening to the rest of Bastille’s work I honestly think that they have a lot of other songs that are better than Pompeii
+Lord Emostab Absolutely, i think it was such a successful song because it gave people the opportunity to reflect the society they live in. Thats what art is for, one of the best pop songs of the decade for me so far...
+Heather Mason The comment section of this video (or videos with songs that actually have meaning) doesn't really reflect the tastes and views of the entire mainstream English-speaking music world, though. If it did, then songs like Shiva by The Antlers would be popular and not EDM dance crap that has no meaning other than "I like/have/want sex/to party/chicks/dudes." The songs get popular because they are catchy or get stuck in your head. Something like the prior mentioned Shiva would never be popular in the mainstream because no matter how much meaning it has or how good the lyrics are, it's not a catchy song, at all. Songs that are catchy _and_ have good lyrics/deeper subtext are the more meaningful songs that get popular - like Pompeii. Most people don't analyse music, they just want something nice to listen to on their phones/iPods/in the car.
Heather Mason Most people dont have the time or enough interest to analyze music, the main reason pretty much every song on the pop charts is popular is because it sounds good, you really think that the song is popular because of people analyzing it, of all things?
If you listen to the rest of Bastille's music, you'll find that almost all of their songs are full of bombastic, sometimes overblown themes of tragedy, usually paired with the classical Icarus/Pompeii style references. Although they usually have moments of poignancy worked in which is why I consider them above novelty status
I think it's more of a case of a alternative act hitting it big on the mainstream pop chart. Kinda like Walk the Moon (and to a lesser extent Saint Motel) this year. Or Foster the People and Awolnation a while back. It can happen but it's not too commonplace. It's more about luck if anything...or if there's that one song that just hits a vibe.
A lot of these “alternative” bands that get a mainstream hit are not really alternative at all. The only difference between them are that “alternative” hits generally have at least slightly better lyricism. I’d say that there are some actual alternative acts that do hit it big, like The Neighborhood, and Twenty Øne Piløts. At least, that’s my opinion.
Dylan Abela true, but their sound is different from most radio pop right now. Also, I️ personally think their lyricism is way better than anything Bastille or the other bands like it have ever done
Lilly Bean Late to the party but I'm right there with you. I'm not that angsty, but the entire song feels like watching your life waste away, powerless to change no matter how bad you want to. Like waiting to die and knowing you can't stop it. Super downer, but I always felt like Pompeii had a really direct message.
I know this is an old video but during one of the phases of the actual eruption, the raining pumice bit, the multistory homes and buildings did collapse under the weight of the ash and rocks. Besides the dozens of Earthquakes they suffered beforehand doing some damage.
My interpretation: it's a song about several peoples lives falling apart seen from the perspective of a single person "I was left to my own devices" 'I was all alone, left with nothing but my own thoughts' "Many days fell away with nothing to show" 'It's been a while since I've ended up this way, but so little has changed, it doesn't really matter' "And the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love" 'This life that we built for ourselves has fallen apart' "Grey clouds over the hills bringing darkness from above" 'It seems like we're trapped in this miserable state no matter where we turn' "But if you close you're eyes, does it almost feel like nothing changed at all" 'The only real sense of freedom from this miserable state is in our dreams when we sleep' "And if you close you're eyes, does it almost feel like you've been here before" 'Even when everything seemed fine, this misery of ours almost seemed inevitable' "How am I gonna be an optimist about this" 'How am I gonna get out of this personal hell of mine' "We were caught up and lost in all of our vices" 'We were to busy having fun instead of stopping this from happening...' "In your pose as the dust settled around us" '...even when we weren't doing anything, we still allowed this to happen when we could've avoided it' "Oh where do we being, the rubble or our sins" 'How do we fix this, by cleaning up our act or by rebuilding what was lost?'
im surprised todd picks up that the walls of pompeii are standing to make fun of the "walls came tumbling down" line but fails to realize thats the explanation for the "does it almost feel like nothing changed at all" line.
This is old, but what the hell. My interpretation was that the song was about somebody who lived a lived a superficially fulfilling life 'the city that we loved', that may have offered them a sense of comfort but had some systematic problems. Then, something disastrous happens and their life changes forever. It's very traumatic. But makes them realise things about their life that they hadn't before. When the person 'closes their eyes', they aren't thinking about how life is better per say, they are thinking about how the world is the same as it always was, they just hadn't been able to realise it. I also relate it to the life experiences of a few characters from fiction.
I dunno, I've always felt like I knew exactly what this song was talking about. And I think the reason for that is that it resonates with me, personally. See, I've lived in the same town my whole life. Went to college about an hour away, came home to work and figure out what I wanted to do with my life. But that took longer than I'd hoped, and... I've spent a long time feeling like I was stuck, just spinning my wheels. In the meantime, I've been through some real shit-- poverty, foreclosure of the only home I'd ever known, loneliness, both my parents are gone now... The town I live in has changed, but not so much that it really feels like a different place. There are so many places where I have memories and nostalgia, and sometimes it does almost feel like nothing's changed at all. There's an attachment to this place that... While it feels good and safe, I feel like it holds me back, too, so the ambivalence and bitter-sweet tone in the chorus really work for me. I think the image of the two corpses talking is still a metaphor. I mean, sure, he talks about it literally, but it still invokes the image of being chained to a place, unchanging. And yeah, I do think the meaning I got is more or less what the song was meant to be about. The image of those bodies, frozen forever in time, I think it's a natural and powerful metaphor. This isn't the only time I've seen Pompeii used this way, either. There's a manga I really like called "NG Life," which... It's pretty silly to start off with, but it gets heavier later on. The main charater remembers his past life in Pompeii, and the people who were important to him then are still with him. Unlike him, though, they don't remember anything. While they're still the same people at their core, there are differences, and their relationships are different. Like, his male best friend is now a cute girl who's in love with him. But he keeps trying to act like everything's the same because he doesn't want to let go of the people he used to know and love.
I haven't been throgh everything you have, but I get the same things out of the song, and it's pretty powerful. It's hard for me to listen without feeling about five or six things ar once, none of them pleasant.
These guys are releasing a second album at some point in 2016 called "Wild World". We'll have to see if Todd is right or wrong about their one-hit-wonder status. I hope it catches on, because I absolutely love this band. Todd's U2 comparison kind of freaked me out, because my mom is a huge U2 fan, and I'm a huge Bastille fan. It's almost like a generational thing. 0_0'
Lovaloo the U2 comparison also made a lot of sense. I mean todd was joking when he said that Bastille should cover some of U2's songs, but I would actually want to see that
Actually the bodies in Pompeii are all completely decomposed. The bodies we see there these days are just plaster casts made by pouring plaster into the spaces where those bodies used to be.
Sahasrahla Old post I know, but that would make an interesting horror game/movie. Someone visits Pompeii and the spirits try to kill him or something by using the plaster copies as vessels or something. I don't know.
Hmmm... after watching this, I think I have my interpretation of this song's lyrics. Basically the idea is that there's some disaster that happened (going by the idea of applicability, even if the lyrics meant it to be one specific disaster, it's broad enough to apply to anything the listener sees fit), and the chorus is a deliberately conflicted statement. On one hand, you can make yourself feel better by focusing on yourself, finding inner peace, closing your eyes - but that still doesn't change what's happening. It's at best escapism and at worst denial. And while some level of it can be healthy to keep you from losing your shit completely, the narrator here knows deep down that just because he can find peace, that doesn't actually fix the larger problem. And then, the part about stasis comes in where you just ignore what's wrong in your life, and pretend it's all good when it's not. ...So basically: shit's bad, and you can make yourself feel better about it, but that doesn't fix the problem and might just trap you in a vicious cycle. ...I dunno about any of you but I've been feeling this exact set of emotions and conflicts a hell of a lot in the last year or so, on several different levels.
I think the fact that it's so ambiguous is WHY I love this song so much. That and it's catchy as hell. Three years on, and I'm STILL amazed at how many different situations this song can fit itself to. I'm sure someone else will happily go into the political metaphor.
The "if you close your eyes" part does make sense. This song resonates with me because I was born and raised in one of those industrial northeast cities that lost all its industry and has become an indescribable hellhole. This song reminds me of the nice city of my childhood, of friends and family and people and places that, when I go back, I can close my eyes and almost see and feel.
Am I still allowed to love this song and Bastille? I honestly love this song, and especially Bad Blood, Icarus, things we lost in the fire etc... IDK I guess it's just my opinion
+Alexander The grape You're not alone m8. Todd introduced me to this song, which introduced me to the album Bad Blood, which pretty much got me into music. I'll always have a soft spot for my first love.
I came across the TVtropes quotes page for "The New Tens" that had the chorus of this song as a metaphor for the decade. It seems a bit more appropriate to apply it to a decade of frustration and political stagnation than to the victims of Pompeii.
I dunno if it was the algorithm. In the original release of this, you could clearly see Todd’s face at the end (when he mentions the alien thing), bad lighting I think, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he blocked this video from public viewing until he could fix it
I've never heard this song but now after hearing this I'm starting to like it. Pompeii sounds really catchy with the "ey oh ey oh ey oh ey oh" chant in it.
I agree. Pompeii here is thought more as a ghost town than the location of a tragic event. As I interpret the song, Pompeii here is like the little town in the middle of nowhere where nothing happens (that's why Pompeii as a ghost town) and you and your friends want to get out of. And once you come back it almost feels like nothing has changed at all. It's not about tragedy, is about "being stuck in a place". That's why thesong has such a light, indie, nostalgic sound and not a sad, angry one that a song about 9/11 might have. The theme goes well with the video and the feel of Twin Peaks, which the band is a fan of. That's my interpretation.
I think this song sounds better when sung by Jasmine Thompson, as a ballad so it sounds sad, and where it sounds like it's about the actual destruction of Pompeii and the chorus sounds like it's someone who knows they're going to die in the fall of Pompeii and they're telling themselves a desperate lie, if that makes sense.
Peter Hollens & Kina Grannis have a pretty neat a capella cover that gives it a more minimalist feel, as well as being an actual duet, matching the "conversation" bit.
Looking back at this song, I interpret it in a much darker way, specifically the chorus. I don’t view it as an overcoming hardship chorus, but a “Total disaster is only a slight step down from where we were, but disaster was necessary for us to realise it” chorus. Nothing’s changed at all. Feel like you’ve been here before, and is struggling to be optimistic about this when he realised what was his good place, normal, happy, was nothing but a step above oblivion. Thus the upbeat instrumentation of the chorus is to provide tonal disconnect, similar to “Pumped Up Kicks” it serves to both highlight the distance between the despair of the lyrics and act as an expression of absurdism, joy at the pains of existence itself, coz it’s all you can do anymore.
We can conclude that Pompeii has a great chorus, meaningful, contextual lyrics and a cracking video. What's not to like? It has no place in the styles of other pieces in the charts, so is querky enough to be, well, brilliant.
This was the first ToddintheShadows video that I've ever watched. Also...There are times when I want to have " What the hell were you thinking, Dan Smith?" written on a T-shirt. But then I think it wouldn't be such a great idea....even though the line, as delivered by Todd, was funny as hell.
The fluke indie hit sweepstakes have grown rather morbid. You have songs about volcanos/dead bodies, radioactivity, school shootings, and ghosts visiting their living lovers.
Little did Todd know just how much he was underestimating the general public's impetus to close their eyes in denial, even in the face of apocalyptic circumstances.
Yea, which is why it's kind of a shame that here in the US, Bastille is still technically a one-hitter. Songs like Send Them Off, Blame, and others are actually really good.
I remember that when my sister and I found this song, we both decided that instead of Pompeii, we would only know it as the eggroll song, because we thought the guys in the background were chanting eggroll.
This was my top 2021 song because if you close your eyes doesn’t this BASICALLY feel like 2020? And “How am I gonna be an optimist about this?” Becomes more of a problem because it is just there all the time. I didn’t even like this song before you gave it the breakdown and now it’s like my jam
I always imagined this as either a song taking place literally during the destruction of Pompeii, watching the clouds roll down in absolute certain death. Or a conversation between survivors of a tragedy. Or, since I heard that it was originally made for a musical, I imagined it as like the opening song of a musical, full quoir number with the ghosts of those who died in the eruption and then when the story starts afterwards it's a story leading up to the eruption.
One theory about why this song exists: at one point, Roman Polanski was set to direct a movie based on the pot-boiler novel Pompeii by the author Robert Harris (just like the two did with his other book The Ghost) and this song was set to fit the theme of the book. It sounds like it would have been the end credits song, if the film ever got made. Instead, some nervous studio hack decided to make it a dumb action movie about an exploding volcano, and who know what music works with Paul W. S. Anderson’s kind of movie? Joseph LoDuca??
I kind of read this song as being about depression, particularly whenever when everything's already terrible, even more somehow finds a way to go completely wrong. What f*cks up your day and your life so completely that you just have to go back to bed? And you know you've felt this way about something before. It could be the tiniest thing but it still feels like a cataclysm because God did you ever not need this right now. It might have happened within a week of the last time it happened. And you sit there and second-guess all the ways you could have avoided this and have no idea how you're going to grin and bear it and tell yourself that tomorrow is another day and it'll get better. Because it never. Gets. Better. And when you have depression such a huge part of it is the certainty that things are never going to change.
It makes perfect sense as a breakup song, and the lines he has trouble with work in that light. Pompeii reference- on the receiving end, it's a cataclysm that comes out of nowhere "if you close your eyes..." first stage of grief is pretending everything is normal "how am I gonna be..." everyone telling you to get over it, but even when you have triumphant moments, you go home and feel like you can't keep going I could go on but it's 2 am and I should sleep
As an (ex) NY'er, when I first heard this song, I thought it might have been about 9/11. After a few times hearing it, i thought it was someone complaining about the demise of religion. The truth, it turns out, was way darker. Thanks for the video.
I am so convinced that the eey ooh chanting part of this song was inspired by something on UK TV in the 90s. I used to think it was a Konica ad, which does have chanting like this but I've found it on youtube and it's not quite there. Although could be in the back of his mind. I'm just sure there is something else.
I get taking boredom as a horrific tragedy if it remains that way forever. Like being trapped under lava. You're in agony but can't express it. You're just stuck.
The name Bastille stems from Bastille Day (the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille prison which started the French Revolution). Dan Smith’s birthday is on Bastille Day
I always thought that "if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing's changed at all" was about how your life can be boring, or on fire, but if you close your eyes, ignoring all outside input of hopelessness and stasis, that your brain will still be bored or on fire. "And the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we loved" is about how you'll fall to depression if your environment is dying, how you will never be able to escape your own thoughts, which can be arguably worse than reading about the destruction of Pompeii. How you will be bored with life, or sad about life no matter how much you close your eyes to it, because you live in a prison of your own mind. The walls will fall no matter where you are, no matter how much you love or try to control things. And "How am I gonna be an optimist about this?" was kinda sarcastic to me, like someone saying "Oh gee, think happy thoughts? Why didn't I think of that? HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO 'THINK HAPPY THOUGHTS' AT A TIME LIKE THIS, KAREN?" In fact, the entire chorus' upbeat tone seemed like he was trying to express some kind of jail cell of the genre, y'know, 'cause the song is about a massive tragedy that claimed thousands of lives but it's on the billboard top 20? Kind of like "Happy Pills" by "Weathers", where the lyrics "I take my pills and I'm happy all the time, happy all the time, happy all the time. I love my girl but she ain't worth the price, she ain't worth the price, she ain't worth the price" are followed by an upbeat sounding "La, la, la la la la, la." Y'know, something you'd expect to find on Disney channel or something, except the "la's" are distorted. And at the end of the song, as the final chorus comes to a close, under the last three "la's", the singer is screaming along to them, like he's in genuine pain but can't convey it, due to his antidepressants and Disney-esque post-chorus. That's what it always made me think of, an extreme nihilism with a sarcastic, happy tune they're trapped in. Finally, I thought that "Oh where do we begin, the rubble or our sins?" Was a question about weather or not the problem with your own mind not being a safe place for you was external or internal? Is it the rubble that is to blame, or the way which you were born or conducted yourself? Can you be happy by removing an external factor, or is the thing that needs to be removed you? I always thought that when he said that he was close to considering suicide or something, and then it cut to the chorus to leave you wondering. Or maybe it signifies that he stayed in the exact same situation, confirming that everything was, in fact, hopeless. Just like it would be hopeless to run from Pompeii, for most of its populace. I thought that it was called Pompeii to just throw in a senseless tragedy to show how worthless life seemed to him, like he was staring down the barrel of mount Vesuvius, accepting his fate. Plus, I'm a sucker for classics references, (I highly recommend "Achilles, Come Down" by "The Gang of Youths" and "The Cult of Dionysus" by "The Orion Experience", both are excellent for what they're trying to be) so I already liked it solely by its name. And it didn't really disappoint, from "Eheu" to the Rubble/Sins line. Also why are you still reading this, you absolute psycho?
The chorus doesn't disagree with itself, Todd you parasocially drive me crazy sometimes. (I'm enjoying binging the old stuff tho, thanks for all the content)
I first learned about Bastille from the song "Laura Palmer" and "Overjoyed" because I'm a huge Twin Peaks fan. But I don't really like this song...or much off the Bad Blood album. I suppose the 2 songs I like were included on the album, but they were singles in 2011.
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I think the song is all about mundane life is after a big tragedy. No big revelations, no big changes...how everything just eventually goes back to it's original tracks... and I guess finding optimism in that very thing (like even though I'm fucked up now,everything will go back to normal eventually)
One of my favorite features of this decade is the music that sounds like some of the stuff on the radio when I was my kid's age. Does that "shut up and dance with me" song by Bastille not sound like Fine Young Cannibals? I see myself waxing nostalgic in the future when it comes onto the radio ten or fifteen years from now while my kid is all grown up in the car or whatever, and I'm telling the story of that period in time, remembering her little smile, and my then my mom orating some period piece while Fine Young Cannibals is on ten or fifteen years ago. It's a mindfuck. I'm like the Quitzatz Haderach in many places at once when I hear this shit. I think it might have started with that "tonight we are young" song, or that "somebody that I used to know" song by Goyt (kinda sounds like The Police or something). Those kinda songs make me feel feelings . . . which is more than I can say for most stuff on the radio these days (he said every other decade until he nostalgia-creamed himself whenever Marcy Playground came on the radio).
Oh crap, I think this is it! This is the video that made me sub! My quest has finally led me here! Hey Todd. Yes I am on a quest to watch every single one of your videos. Watching a few every day and commenting on the last one I watched.
I think what this is about is the very young adult kind of mindset, I had that directly after grammar school (germany) where you were in a routine but felt like going forward all your life and now you feel stuck a bit while trying to make decisions, meanwhile everyone pushes you to just make them like they were easy, promising a sort of tragedy (Pompeii) if you don't. And the chorus tries to calm and at the same time laments that, what had been promised to be lifechanging didn't really feel all that major. The part where he asks "How am I going to be an optimist about this?" either shows he wants to get himself unstuck and frets the decision, but might also show he iss cared and doesn't know how to cope as up until now it had been easy to be an optimist. And maybe the line right before means he tries to for the first time find his own way of "being an optimist about this" given it says he feels he's been here before, in a position where he has too many options and doesn't know how to move forward. Maybe the title also means that the disaster is still a bit away and he has already screwed himself over somehow, given the first two actual lines sort of admit guilt in a way. Might just be me though.
My favorite thing about this song is the story about the time when Bastille was performing Pompeii at a concert and someone kept holding up a sign that ready 'How am I gonna be an octopus about this?' during the chorus until the lead singer flubbed the line and sang the octopus version. I am the kind of dork who will randomly substitute the octopus version of the line when I sing along with this....
McKenna M haha I wanna hear that
McKenna M is there a video of this
Sharlenn La I'm not sure but I think this is what he's talking about th-cam.com/video/h3tDKCQ4Nbw/w-d-xo.html
That man is my god
I may be a few years late, but heres the video of it th-cam.com/video/BNDLUPqiOWY/w-d-xo.html
I always interpreted it as 'Something terrible has happened and everything's gone to shit, but really our life was dreadful anyway: "does it almost feel like nothing's changed at all".'
VERY British
Congratulations!!! You’ve won the International British Award!!!! Come to the United Nations headquarters to recive your trophy and prize! What’s the prize? A LIFETIME SUPPLY OF TEA!!!!!!
I came here to say this; thank you.
I saw it like “it doesn’t feel real to me”; if I close my eyes it feels like it all never happened. Although I haven’t heard the entire song in a while and am going just off the chorus
I take a much more literal interpretation. The Song is being sung by someone trapped in the city of Pompeii. When the rains of ash began they chose to hide in the city. If they closed their eyes they could even pretend nothing had changed at all. But now the ash rains have ceased and the eruptive column is shrinking... because it's collapsing into a pyroclastic flow that is sweeping over the mountains. The grey clouds are sweeping over the hill and are coming right at the poor fool. But if they close their eyes they can almost pretend that everything is going to be all right. Coupled with the lyrics "eh eheu, eheu" which means "alas alas" the song is the lament of a doomed person in their final moments and coming to terms with their own immanent death.
as an english person, an english band with a french name singing about a place in italy makes waaay too much sense.
Explain yourself, Sophie. This Indian does not understand.
If there’s one thing us English love, it’s taking stuff from Europe and then pretending we did it best
@@s.g.7572 like
case in point; the dali thundering concept
Try watching an English band with a French name sing about a place in Italy through an American perspective lmao
"Eheu", which is what they were chanting, means something like "oh no" in latin, so it fits really well. Idk. You seemed to think it was something more cheerful.
When the band covertly puts Oh shit in their song
Americans don't take Latin we're too busy making sure we can only speak one language.
Hahaha great observation though it sure does make the song a bit creepier thinking that it's the people of Pompeii realize their certain doom has come.
+alluneedislessthan3 Well, I'm American and I'm currently taking a Latin class.
+Spencer Cowan yeah my sister is also taking Latin haha but it's usually only offered in fancy schools.
A British band with a French name singing about Italy is nothing comparing to a German band dressed up as Mongols singing about Moscow.
dsching,
dsching,
dschinghis khan
I know this comment is old but is it a reference to Moscow by Rammstein ?
Moskau from Dschinghis Khan is where it is from
+Maseki Chan It's a reference to the German Mongolian-themed band "Dschinghis Khan" and their song "Moskau".
morning bell or a Scottish actor doing an English accent, playing an alien with a French catchphrase, in a city in Itally, that’s actually just a set in Wales.
Back when this was still going, a little bit after it's popularity peaked, but before it stopped getting regular radio play, my two closest friends died in a car crash. A few weeks after that, while I was still grieving, this song came on the radio.
That was when I really understood: this is a song about being in denial. That's why it's such a hugely upbeat song with such dark and heavy subject matter.
I'm sorry for your loss, may they rest in peace
May they rest in peace
I did not expect getting teared up scrolling this comment section but it happened... hope you're doing fine
@@skye.xv88 You eventually process it. It takes a while, you do learn to live with it.
I'm watching this review hearing the song again and I felt the same realisation - I listened to this a lot as a teen when it just came out and we went on a school trip to the gulf of Naples and Pompeii and I took it literally. Now I'm hearing the song again after going through a bunch traumatic things and losing close family members in my late teens and I understand the lyrics completely different now. I'm so sorry for your loss, wishing you all the best.
I'm pretty damn late, but "Eheu" means "Oh no" in Latin.
but pronounced differently
Yeahhhh they clearly pronounce it more like "DAY-HOO" which I don't think means anything
"AY-HOO" is basically how it is pronounced. I don't know where you got the "D" from, I can't really hear it
I can hear it a bit, even though I know it's just a trick of the ear. For me it's mostly because of the way they're singing the words in such a staccato way. I can tell there's no 'D' sound when I listen carefully but the sudden way the syllable begins makes it sound like there's some slightly harsher consonant sound just before it.
It's Heu, and from the little latin I know it sound about right.
I just love the idea of a Roman watching everything and everyone they've ever known burn down into the pits of Tartarus and thinking _I'm gonna be an optimist about this._
It's not "I'm gonna be an optimist" its "how am I going to be an optimist"
So the meaning comes out to be more like "what kind of silver lining could exist in a situation so terrible"
Yeah but who sees everyone around them die including themselves and major concern is how to be optimistic
"You've been here before" may be a reference to the earthquake in 62 AD. Some of the ruined buildings may still have been from then.
+Kate Does ... I did not know about this. I guess you learn something new everyday!
Yeah I've been there we even saw house that had crumbled and had been repaired
@@w1ckedn0nsense34 cool!
As late as this is, I’m fairly certain that it means more that the person is saying “if you close your eyes you can imagine that it’s not a completely different place and that it’s still the place you’ve lived for your entire life, and that it’s still the place you’ve been before instead of the city of ruins it is now.
Actually the song is about blissful ignorance. It's about see everything going wrong and choosing to ignore it. That's why he asks how to stay optimistic, and the answer is to try and stop seeing truth and just ignore it
Tobi Dorenbos Uhm ur wrong the song creator literally said its about Pompeii
@@DeadPizza She is talking about its symbolic meaning.
Dead Pizza people can interpret songs how ever they want
I love your interpretation and that's how I'm gonna take it now
@@DeadPizza he lied.
I always saw this song as a conversation between to people. After a cataclysmic event occurred there were only 2 known survivors. One of them begins to have an existential crisis in the midst of all the chaos and the other survivor tries to console them by telling them to pretend that nothing change. This, however, proves to be impossible so the 2 resolves to try to rebuild society and to grow as people.
Edit: if you think a British band with a French name singing about a place in Italy is confusing, try Rasputin by Boney M. Jamaican people in a German band singing in English about a Russian man. Now that's what I call Mr. Worldwide.
YESS
So Pulp Fiction by way of Volcanic Eruption
Smith explained the song's meaning to The Sun: "Pompeii is actually an imagined conversation between two charred corpses reflecting on the city."
He added: "But that's why I don't like explaining a lot of my songs literally as it sounds bonkers - a song about two corpses yet the crowd are happily dancing along!"
there is the what it means
Todd gets there at the end!
That's... Darkly humorous actually
Haha, no. That was just some bullshit he made up.
With all due respect, once an artist puts their stuff out there to millions upon millions, they don’t get to say what it means anymore
@@countof3everybodyOD death of the author
Just to clear things up- the bodies of the people in Pompeii were not completely preserved- the ash formed a layer around the bodies, and when archaeologists dug them out of the ground, they poured plaster into the volcanic ash husk. The 'bodies' we see nowadays are actually just the plaster-casts of the inside of the husks, because the bodies inside the casts had rotted away over the centuries.
And on that happy note, I always thought this band was American, because I swear the version they play in nightclubs has them singing in American accents. You learn something new everyday.
Jack Dear I know this is an old post but you mentioned that they sound American, that is actually something that tends to happen. Look it up, it happens more often than you think. I don't remember how it happens, but the American accents is kinda the default tone when singing in English, you have to actually try not to form an American accents when singing.
I believe it’s called a transatlantic accent brought about by the speed and different ways to enunciate words to fit the song leading to a psuedoAmerican accent
@@takemyhand1988 I always thought it was because British artists in the mid twentieth century wanted to sound like American Rock N Roll artists.
@@takemyhand1988 Really? I know a lot of singers, and they all sing with their own accents if they aren't singing a song that was originally sung by an American.
@@takemyhand1988 So, what does a non-accented singing voice sound like? I guess that it changes from country to country, since every culture has at least a few accents (although my home country has it where accents change every ten miles).
Todd, I know this is a bit late, but you were saying that this song isn't indicative of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. I'd just like to tell you that that's wrongedy wrong wrong. They did their research man. Many walls in Pompeii did come tumbling down because what hit Pompeii was what's called a Plinian eruption. After the volcano erupted it released several hundred tons of gaseous rock into the atmosphere that quickly cooled and started raining down in the form of pumice, a light igneous rock. However, this built up on roofs and eventually tore down a lot of the lower income housing, which was made of wood and not stone. The walls of the stone houses and temples didn't come down, but for most people in the cities surrounding Pompeii, their walls most definitely came tumbling down.
Ed...ward
I'm sorry I had to
Almost certainly unintentional but the fact that this would make the corpses talking be some of the poorer citizens is interesting to me
I know this comment is several years old but I feel like that insight adds another possible interpretation to the song: when disasters happen poor people end up suffering a worse outcome than rich people, so the well-off people can have that reaction of "actually, if you close your eyes it's not that bad at all" while people in already disadvantaged communities are facing far greater devastation and asking how are they possibly going to be an optimist about this situation. (Of course, with pompeii almost everybody did die no matter their circumstances)
Well, Now they're playing "Good Grief" on the radio these days, so Bastille's no longer a one hit wonderland.
cartmann94 Thank god.
cartmann94 they had rhythm of the night
I feel like that song has the same bipolar feeling as "Pompeii" - the lyrics are about depression, confusion and feeling lost, and the song is extremely upbeat. Like Todd, I find it kind of distracting.
cartmann94 and Bad Blood
Lucy W, for me it works in Good Grief because Dan Smith described the song as being about "being happy in a sad situation" and being "sad in a happy situation"
The OHW titlecard dropping during the beginning of the review was priceless.
Which is kind of a shame that that's kinda what Bastille's become over here in the US. Because, actually, their other stuff is pretty darn good too.
trc2rockon Agreed. I really liked Pompeii when it first came out but after listening to the rest of Bastille’s work I honestly think that they have a lot of other songs that are better than Pompeii
You may have spoken a bit too soon. They now have another top 10 hit. Granted, it's a collab, but still.
trc2rockon over here in The U.S there song Happier reach number 2 so your wrong
I'm pretty sure it's comparing modern society to the fall of Pompeii.
+Lord Emostab Absolutely, i think it was such a successful song because it gave people the opportunity to reflect the society they live in. Thats what art is for, one of the best pop songs of the decade for me so far...
+DieFliegeinderSuppe
I think it was successful because it was catchy. From what I know, people don't really look into the deeper meanings of music.
+Mr. Stretch well that's clearly not true, because the comments sections is full of people trying to debate what the song's about.
+Heather Mason
The comment section of this video (or videos with songs that actually have meaning) doesn't really reflect the tastes and views of the entire mainstream English-speaking music world, though. If it did, then songs like Shiva by The Antlers would be popular and not EDM dance crap that has no meaning other than "I like/have/want sex/to party/chicks/dudes." The songs get popular because they are catchy or get stuck in your head. Something like the prior mentioned Shiva would never be popular in the mainstream because no matter how much meaning it has or how good the lyrics are, it's not a catchy song, at all. Songs that are catchy _and_ have good lyrics/deeper subtext are the more meaningful songs that get popular - like Pompeii.
Most people don't analyse music, they just want something nice to listen to on their phones/iPods/in the car.
Heather Mason
Most people dont have the time or enough interest to analyze music, the main reason pretty much every song on the pop charts is popular is because it sounds good, you really think that the song is popular because of people analyzing it, of all things?
I could never remember if it was Pompeii by Bastille or Bastille by Pompeii.
If you listen to the rest of Bastille's music, you'll find that almost all of their songs are full of bombastic, sometimes overblown themes of tragedy, usually paired with the classical Icarus/Pompeii style references. Although they usually have moments of poignancy worked in which is why I consider them above novelty status
I think it's more of a case of a alternative act hitting it big on the mainstream pop chart. Kinda like Walk the Moon (and to a lesser extent Saint Motel) this year. Or Foster the People and Awolnation a while back. It can happen but it's not too commonplace. It's more about luck if anything...or if there's that one song that just hits a vibe.
+Tigercat919 But... My Type wasn't a hit. At least not in America.
+Pikabrew Guy even thought it's fucking awesome
A lot of these “alternative” bands that get a mainstream hit are not really alternative at all. The only difference between them are that “alternative” hits generally have at least slightly better lyricism. I’d say that there are some actual alternative acts that do hit it big, like The Neighborhood, and Twenty Øne Piløts. At least, that’s my opinion.
But 21 pilots is legit just Edge: The Band
Dylan Abela true, but their sound is different from most radio pop right now. Also, I️ personally think their lyricism is way better than anything Bastille or the other bands like it have ever done
Every time I watch this review I can't help but disagrees completely. To me the chorus has always been an almost childlike cry of hopelessness.
Lilly Bean Late to the party but I'm right there with you. I'm not that angsty, but the entire song feels like watching your life waste away, powerless to change no matter how bad you want to. Like waiting to die and knowing you can't stop it. Super downer, but I always felt like Pompeii had a really direct message.
I know this is an old video but during one of the phases of the actual eruption, the raining pumice bit, the multistory homes and buildings did collapse under the weight of the ash and rocks.
Besides the dozens of Earthquakes they suffered beforehand doing some damage.
Man, I love pompeii, both the song and the city.
My interpretation: it's a song about several peoples lives falling apart seen from the perspective of a single person
"I was left to my own devices"
'I was all alone, left with nothing but my own thoughts'
"Many days fell away with nothing to show"
'It's been a while since I've ended up this way, but so little has changed, it doesn't really matter'
"And the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love"
'This life that we built for ourselves has fallen apart'
"Grey clouds over the hills bringing darkness from above"
'It seems like we're trapped in this miserable state no matter where we turn'
"But if you close you're eyes, does it almost feel like nothing changed at all"
'The only real sense of freedom from this miserable state is in our dreams when we sleep'
"And if you close you're eyes, does it almost feel like you've been here before"
'Even when everything seemed fine, this misery of ours almost seemed inevitable'
"How am I gonna be an optimist about this"
'How am I gonna get out of this personal hell of mine'
"We were caught up and lost in all of our vices"
'We were to busy having fun instead of stopping this from happening...'
"In your pose as the dust settled around us"
'...even when we weren't doing anything, we still allowed this to happen when we could've avoided it'
"Oh where do we being, the rubble or our sins"
'How do we fix this, by cleaning up our act or by rebuilding what was lost?'
Dante the Dragonoid that's a really great interpretation. Shows there's a lot to this song that you and others can get so many varied things out of it
This is the best interpretation I've seen.
im surprised todd picks up that the walls of pompeii are standing to make fun of the "walls came tumbling down" line but fails to realize thats the explanation for the "does it almost feel like nothing changed at all" line.
This is old, but what the hell. My interpretation was that the song was about somebody who lived a lived a superficially fulfilling life 'the city that we loved', that may have offered them a sense of comfort but had some systematic problems. Then, something disastrous happens and their life changes forever. It's very traumatic. But makes them realise things about their life that they hadn't before. When the person 'closes their eyes', they aren't thinking about how life is better per say, they are thinking about how the world is the same as it always was, they just hadn't been able to realise it.
I also relate it to the life experiences of a few characters from fiction.
I dunno, I've always felt like I knew exactly what this song was talking about. And I think the reason for that is that it resonates with me, personally. See, I've lived in the same town my whole life. Went to college about an hour away, came home to work and figure out what I wanted to do with my life. But that took longer than I'd hoped, and... I've spent a long time feeling like I was stuck, just spinning my wheels. In the meantime, I've been through some real shit-- poverty, foreclosure of the only home I'd ever known, loneliness, both my parents are gone now... The town I live in has changed, but not so much that it really feels like a different place. There are so many places where I have memories and nostalgia, and sometimes it does almost feel like nothing's changed at all. There's an attachment to this place that... While it feels good and safe, I feel like it holds me back, too, so the ambivalence and bitter-sweet tone in the chorus really work for me. I think the image of the two corpses talking is still a metaphor. I mean, sure, he talks about it literally, but it still invokes the image of being chained to a place, unchanging. And yeah, I do think the meaning I got is more or less what the song was meant to be about. The image of those bodies, frozen forever in time, I think it's a natural and powerful metaphor.
This isn't the only time I've seen Pompeii used this way, either. There's a manga I really like called "NG Life," which... It's pretty silly to start off with, but it gets heavier later on. The main charater remembers his past life in Pompeii, and the people who were important to him then are still with him. Unlike him, though, they don't remember anything. While they're still the same people at their core, there are differences, and their relationships are different. Like, his male best friend is now a cute girl who's in love with him. But he keeps trying to act like everything's the same because he doesn't want to let go of the people he used to know and love.
I haven't been throgh everything you have, but I get the same things out of the song, and it's pretty powerful. It's hard for me to listen without feeling about five or six things ar once, none of them pleasant.
These guys are releasing a second album at some point in 2016 called "Wild World". We'll have to see if Todd is right or wrong about their one-hit-wonder status. I hope it catches on, because I absolutely love this band.
Todd's U2 comparison kind of freaked me out, because my mom is a huge U2 fan, and I'm a huge Bastille fan. It's almost like a generational thing. 0_0'
Lovaloo I hope they are not a one hit wonder here... I mean they are a great band.
Yeah they're pretty good
Lovaloo the U2 comparison also made a lot of sense. I mean todd was joking when he said that Bastille should cover some of U2's songs, but I would actually want to see that
I personally feel like Wild World is a better album than Bad Blood and I’m kind of sad that it never caught on (at least in America)
snowcherryleopard I think it's an album Todd could enjoy, since he appears to be a bigger fan of upbeat music (like Wild World)
This song would be so amazing if done by the muppets.
Michael Freeman haha yeah really but I'm sure someone hopefully made a video with that
Bastille is like a slightly better Imagine Dragons or X Ambassadors
So, still utter trash.
Bastille is at least 2x better than Imagine Dragons
Sven Jolly Bastille is amazing
loganbaileysfunwithtrains most of imagine dragons, yes. I disagree when it comes to Night Visions though
They will make fine sound tracks to commercials.
Actually the bodies in Pompeii are all completely decomposed. The bodies we see there these days are just plaster casts made by pouring plaster into the spaces where those bodies used to be.
Sahasrahla Old post I know, but that would make an interesting horror game/movie. Someone visits Pompeii and the spirits try to kill him or something by using the plaster copies as vessels or something. I don't know.
Reminds me of the Ash Zombies from Elder Scrolls (specifically Morrowind, and Skyrim's "Dragonborn" expansion).
Hmmm... after watching this, I think I have my interpretation of this song's lyrics. Basically the idea is that there's some disaster that happened (going by the idea of applicability, even if the lyrics meant it to be one specific disaster, it's broad enough to apply to anything the listener sees fit), and the chorus is a deliberately conflicted statement. On one hand, you can make yourself feel better by focusing on yourself, finding inner peace, closing your eyes - but that still doesn't change what's happening. It's at best escapism and at worst denial. And while some level of it can be healthy to keep you from losing your shit completely, the narrator here knows deep down that just because he can find peace, that doesn't actually fix the larger problem. And then, the part about stasis comes in where you just ignore what's wrong in your life, and pretend it's all good when it's not. ...So basically: shit's bad, and you can make yourself feel better about it, but that doesn't fix the problem and might just trap you in a vicious cycle.
...I dunno about any of you but I've been feeling this exact set of emotions and conflicts a hell of a lot in the last year or so, on several different levels.
I had no idea how badly I needed this song done by the Muppets.
5:15 i can't believe todd even predicted the "guy from bastille performs earnestly on stage with a cartoon character" part of happier
Dude, I've never laughed harder over a song review. Cheers.
Something about this song is really hitting me hard after the last two years of the pandemic (with no clear end in sight)
It's over already. Get on with your life.
@@8bitorgy are you living under a rock
I think the fact that it's so ambiguous is WHY I love this song so much. That and it's catchy as hell.
Three years on, and I'm STILL amazed at how many different situations this song can fit itself to. I'm sure someone else will happily go into the political metaphor.
The "if you close your eyes" part does make sense. This song resonates with me because I was born and raised in one of those industrial northeast cities that lost all its industry and has become an indescribable hellhole. This song reminds me of the nice city of my childhood, of friends and family and people and places that, when I go back, I can close my eyes and almost see and feel.
Am I still allowed to love this song and Bastille? I honestly love this song, and especially Bad Blood, Icarus, things we lost in the fire etc... IDK I guess it's just my opinion
+Alexander The grape You're not alone m8. Todd introduced me to this song, which introduced me to the album Bad Blood, which pretty much got me into music.
I'll always have a soft spot for my first love.
I came across the TVtropes quotes page for "The New Tens" that had the chorus of this song as a metaphor for the decade.
It seems a bit more appropriate to apply it to a decade of frustration and political stagnation than to the victims of Pompeii.
AY-AYOH-AYOH-AY-AYOH-AYOH
OOGA-CHAKKA-OOGA-OOGA-OOGA-CHAKKA
I CANT STOP THIS FEELING
Oh my God. Another old one unlocked. This made my night. Thanks algorithm or whatever, I love you.
I dunno if it was the algorithm. In the original release of this, you could clearly see Todd’s face at the end (when he mentions the alien thing), bad lighting I think, so it wouldn’t surprise me if he blocked this video from public viewing until he could fix it
I've never heard this song but now after hearing this I'm starting to like it. Pompeii sounds really catchy with the "ey oh ey oh ey oh ey oh" chant in it.
It's latin
This song isn't about Pompeii. It's about the fear of being stuck in the same place. Much like the people of Pompeii but not as literal
I agree. Pompeii here is thought more as a ghost town than the location of a tragic event. As I interpret the song, Pompeii here is like the little town in the middle of nowhere where nothing happens (that's why Pompeii as a ghost town) and you and your friends want to get out of. And once you come back it almost feels like nothing has changed at all. It's not about tragedy, is about "being stuck in a place". That's why thesong has such a light, indie, nostalgic sound and not a sad, angry one that a song about 9/11 might have. The theme goes well with the video and the feel of Twin Peaks, which the band is a fan of. That's my interpretation.
I think this song sounds better when sung by Jasmine Thompson, as a ballad so it sounds sad, and where it sounds like it's about the actual destruction of Pompeii and the chorus sounds like it's someone who knows they're going to die in the fall of Pompeii and they're telling themselves a desperate lie, if that makes sense.
For me this song sounded best when performed by Dave Arch's orchestra during a strictly come dancing group number...
I love Jasmine but honestly I prefer the original
Peter Hollens & Kina Grannis have a pretty neat a capella cover that gives it a more minimalist feel, as well as being an actual duet, matching the "conversation" bit.
This might just be me, but Todd's impression of Bono is ON POINT!!!
with very few exceptions compared to their most recent material, "Pompeii" aged pretty well. I still listen to it occasionally
Once heard someone say that the "ay oh ay oh" part sounded like the teletubbies, which would be on the same track as the muppets comparison
Looking back at this song, I interpret it in a much darker way, specifically the chorus. I don’t view it as an overcoming hardship chorus, but a “Total disaster is only a slight step down from where we were, but disaster was necessary for us to realise it” chorus. Nothing’s changed at all. Feel like you’ve been here before, and is struggling to be optimistic about this when he realised what was his good place, normal, happy, was nothing but a step above oblivion. Thus the upbeat instrumentation of the chorus is to provide tonal disconnect, similar to “Pumped Up Kicks” it serves to both highlight the distance between the despair of the lyrics and act as an expression of absurdism, joy at the pains of existence itself, coz it’s all you can do anymore.
We can conclude that Pompeii has a great chorus, meaningful, contextual lyrics and a cracking video. What's not to like? It has no place in the styles of other pieces in the charts, so is querky enough to be, well, brilliant.
7 years later, and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (Oh Wait, Here It Is)" is still one of my favorite Todd jokes.
I always assumed this was about coming back to his home town and seeing how drastically it changed from when he was a kid.
"But if you clues your eye."
This was the first ToddintheShadows video that I've ever watched.
Also...There are times when I want to have " What the hell were you thinking, Dan Smith?" written on a T-shirt. But then I think it wouldn't be such a great idea....even though the line, as delivered by Todd, was funny as hell.
Oh my god. Now I want that written on a T-shirt too.
The fluke indie hit sweepstakes have grown rather morbid. You have songs about volcanos/dead bodies, radioactivity, school shootings, and ghosts visiting their living lovers.
Little did Todd know just how much he was underestimating the general public's impetus to close their eyes in denial, even in the face of apocalyptic circumstances.
Glad this song got a meme comeback, it deserved it. Way too good to be forgotten.
This song makes so much more sense in 2021.
I'd love to see what Todd thought of Send Them Off! but I don't think it got popular over there?
Yea, which is why it's kind of a shame that here in the US, Bastille is still technically a one-hitter. Songs like Send Them Off, Blame, and others are actually really good.
The chanting is out of place but it's actually sampling now we are free from the gladiator soundtrack.
and a-yo (though spelt differently) is latin for "oh no"
5 YEARS LATER! IT HAPPENED! TODDSTRADOMUS STRIKES AGAIN!
Some walls did come tumbling down in Pompeii. Along with roofs. From the weight of the ash. Oh Todd, you keep being so literal.
I remember that when my sister and I found this song, we both decided that instead of Pompeii, we would only know it as the eggroll song, because we thought the guys in the background were chanting eggroll.
This was my top 2021 song because if you close your eyes doesn’t this BASICALLY feel like 2020? And “How am I gonna be an optimist about this?” Becomes more of a problem because it is just there all the time. I didn’t even like this song before you gave it the breakdown and now it’s like my jam
But if you close your eyes indeed, Todd.
I always imagined this as either a song taking place literally during the destruction of Pompeii, watching the clouds roll down in absolute certain death.
Or a conversation between survivors of a tragedy.
Or, since I heard that it was originally made for a musical, I imagined it as like the opening song of a musical, full quoir number with the ghosts of those who died in the eruption and then when the story starts afterwards it's a story leading up to the eruption.
Honestly I think this song hits so so much harder now 2 years after the pandemic started
I like the song for its nostalgia. It was one of my favorite songs in 5th grade because I was strangely obsessed with Mt. Vesuvius
One theory about why this song exists: at one point, Roman Polanski was set to direct a movie based on the pot-boiler novel Pompeii by the author Robert Harris (just like the two did with his other book The Ghost) and this song was set to fit the theme of the book. It sounds like it would have been the end credits song, if the film ever got made. Instead, some nervous studio hack decided to make it a dumb action movie about an exploding volcano, and who know what music works with Paul W. S. Anderson’s kind of movie? Joseph LoDuca??
I kind of read this song as being about depression, particularly whenever when everything's already terrible, even more somehow finds a way to go completely wrong. What f*cks up your day and your life so completely that you just have to go back to bed? And you know you've felt this way about something before. It could be the tiniest thing but it still feels like a cataclysm because God did you ever not need this right now. It might have happened within a week of the last time it happened. And you sit there and second-guess all the ways you could have avoided this and have no idea how you're going to grin and bear it and tell yourself that tomorrow is another day and it'll get better. Because it never. Gets. Better. And when you have depression such a huge part of it is the certainty that things are never going to change.
Every since I went into quarantine from COVID, this song has become an allegory for the life I wish I could lead, but can't.
fuck i love bastille .-.
Samurott503 (ImmortalBeingz Zolris) I agree
Wow Mate i dont know how this is the only one that got popular.
Same
It makes perfect sense as a breakup song, and the lines he has trouble with work in that light.
Pompeii reference- on the receiving end, it's a cataclysm that comes out of nowhere
"if you close your eyes..." first stage of grief is pretending everything is normal
"how am I gonna be..." everyone telling you to get over it, but even when you have triumphant moments, you go home and feel like you can't keep going
I could go on but it's 2 am and I should sleep
Little did he know this song would become a meme like 5 years later
Ah yes, Twin Peaks, a classic literary reference.
I'm not joking, I'm a college English teacher.
As an (ex) NY'er, when I first heard this song, I thought it might have been about 9/11. After a few times hearing it, i thought it was someone complaining about the demise of religion. The truth, it turns out, was way darker. Thanks for the video.
Y'know, this song hits differently now.
So, so true.
Todd struggles to realise the song is about denial for 14 minutes, the video
I do know that near the end of the original version there is some accidental lighting that reveals his face. I don't know if someone has a copy of it.
Is that appear in this video??
This was legit the first pop song I fell in love with as an adult.
Todd has an immaculate ability to be wrong every single time
I am so convinced that the eey ooh chanting part of this song was inspired by something on UK TV in the 90s.
I used to think it was a Konica ad, which does have chanting like this but I've found it on youtube and it's not quite there. Although could be in the back of his mind. I'm just sure there is something else.
I get taking boredom as a horrific tragedy if it remains that way forever. Like being trapped under lava. You're in agony but can't express it. You're just stuck.
This is one of the funniest and nicest reviews you've ever done. Great work.
The name Bastille stems from Bastille Day (the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille prison which started the French Revolution). Dan Smith’s birthday is on Bastille Day
The chorus isn’t supposed to be hopeful, it’s supposed to be a representation of denial.
I always thought that "if you close your eyes, does it almost feel like nothing's changed at all" was about how your life can be boring, or on fire, but if you close your eyes, ignoring all outside input of hopelessness and stasis, that your brain will still be bored or on fire. "And the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we loved" is about how you'll fall to depression if your environment is dying, how you will never be able to escape your own thoughts, which can be arguably worse than reading about the destruction of Pompeii. How you will be bored with life, or sad about life no matter how much you close your eyes to it, because you live in a prison of your own mind. The walls will fall no matter where you are, no matter how much you love or try to control things. And "How am I gonna be an optimist about this?" was kinda sarcastic to me, like someone saying "Oh gee, think happy thoughts? Why didn't I think of that? HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO 'THINK HAPPY THOUGHTS' AT A TIME LIKE THIS, KAREN?"
In fact, the entire chorus' upbeat tone seemed like he was trying to express some kind of jail cell of the genre, y'know, 'cause the song is about a massive tragedy that claimed thousands of lives but it's on the billboard top 20? Kind of like "Happy Pills" by "Weathers", where the lyrics "I take my pills and I'm happy all the time, happy all the time, happy all the time. I love my girl but she ain't worth the price, she ain't worth the price, she ain't worth the price" are followed by an upbeat sounding "La, la, la la la la, la." Y'know, something you'd expect to find on Disney channel or something, except the "la's" are distorted. And at the end of the song, as the final chorus comes to a close, under the last three "la's", the singer is screaming along to them, like he's in genuine pain but can't convey it, due to his antidepressants and Disney-esque post-chorus. That's what it always made me think of, an extreme nihilism with a sarcastic, happy tune they're trapped in. Finally, I thought that "Oh where do we begin, the rubble or our sins?" Was a question about weather or not the problem with your own mind not being a safe place for you was external or internal? Is it the rubble that is to blame, or the way which you were born or conducted yourself? Can you be happy by removing an external factor, or is the thing that needs to be removed you? I always thought that when he said that he was close to considering suicide or something, and then it cut to the chorus to leave you wondering. Or maybe it signifies that he stayed in the exact same situation, confirming that everything was, in fact, hopeless. Just like it would be hopeless to run from Pompeii, for most of its populace. I thought that it was called Pompeii to just throw in a senseless tragedy to show how worthless life seemed to him, like he was staring down the barrel of mount Vesuvius, accepting his fate.
Plus, I'm a sucker for classics references, (I highly recommend "Achilles, Come Down" by "The Gang of Youths" and "The Cult of Dionysus" by "The Orion Experience", both are excellent for what they're trying to be) so I already liked it solely by its name. And it didn't really disappoint, from "Eheu" to the Rubble/Sins line. Also why are you still reading this, you absolute psycho?
In my interpretation, I thought that the song was about the corruption and deception of man, and how he was effected. I guess, it made sense to me.
I think this song is about how fate can sometimes fuck you over but in the end it will be okay and you can sometimes overcome bad luck and misfortune.
The chorus doesn't disagree with itself, Todd you parasocially drive me crazy sometimes.
(I'm enjoying binging the old stuff tho, thanks for all the content)
I first learned about Bastille from the song "Laura Palmer" and "Overjoyed" because I'm a huge Twin Peaks fan. But I don't really like this song...or much off the Bad Blood album. I suppose the 2 songs I like were included on the album, but they were singles in 2011.
I think the song is all about mundane life is after a big tragedy. No big revelations, no big changes...how everything just eventually goes back to it's original tracks... and I guess finding optimism in that very thing (like even though I'm fucked up now,everything will go back to normal eventually)
One of my favorite features of this decade is the music that sounds like some of the stuff on the radio when I was my kid's age. Does that "shut up and dance with me" song by Bastille not sound like Fine Young Cannibals? I see myself waxing nostalgic in the future when it comes onto the radio ten or fifteen years from now while my kid is all grown up in the car or whatever, and I'm telling the story of that period in time, remembering her little smile, and my then my mom orating some period piece while Fine Young Cannibals is on ten or fifteen years ago. It's a mindfuck. I'm like the Quitzatz Haderach in many places at once when I hear this shit. I think it might have started with that "tonight we are young" song, or that "somebody that I used to know" song by Goyt (kinda sounds like The Police or something). Those kinda songs make me feel feelings . . . which is more than I can say for most stuff on the radio these days (he said every other decade until he nostalgia-creamed himself whenever Marcy Playground came on the radio).
Todd was right!!! I can't listen to this song anymore without picturing the Muppet Show!!!!!
ah yes, the song is dominated by the letters A and O
Oh crap, I think this is it! This is the video that made me sub! My quest has finally led me here!
Hey Todd. Yes I am on a quest to watch every single one of your videos. Watching a few every day and commenting on the last one I watched.
I applaud you on your quest
As someone who can say quite confidently that I’ve all (core) Todd vids more than once you will be in for a treat =)
It's about someone's confusion over a disaster.
I think what this is about is the very young adult kind of mindset, I had that directly after grammar school (germany) where you were in a routine but felt like going forward all your life and now you feel stuck a bit while trying to make decisions, meanwhile everyone pushes you to just make them like they were easy, promising a sort of tragedy (Pompeii) if you don't. And the chorus tries to calm and at the same time laments that, what had been promised to be lifechanging didn't really feel all that major.
The part where he asks "How am I going to be an optimist about this?" either shows he wants to get himself unstuck and frets the decision, but might also show he iss cared and doesn't know how to cope as up until now it had been easy to be an optimist. And maybe the line right before means he tries to for the first time find his own way of "being an optimist about this" given it says he feels he's been here before, in a position where he has too many options and doesn't know how to move forward.
Maybe the title also means that the disaster is still a bit away and he has already screwed himself over somehow, given the first two actual lines sort of admit guilt in a way.
Might just be me though.
dude this song is so nostalgic to me. even if it's not great I just can't help but love it
I think it’s about the conflicting emotions around tragedy. Specifically like if you die, your happy because it’s over but you know, you still died.