What do you think Shadow on the Sun means?

Audioslave: Shadow on the Sun Meaning

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Album cover for Shadow on the Sun album cover

Shadow on the Sun Lyrics

Once upon a time
I was of the mind to lay your burden down
And leave you where you stood
You believed I could
You’d seen it done before
I could read your thoughts
And tell you what you saw
And never say a word
But now that is gone
Over...

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  1. anonymous
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     Oct 7th 2008 !⃝

    I think that to get the full meaning you need to look out of Coronell's eyes. let's take a look here, at this time he had just stopped drinking not to long ago. So first possibility the shadow on the sun could be his bad deeds leaving a shadow on his past good life. and basically when all he did was sit, drink, and write music, you could possibly say that him talking about people going insane is from his past emotional problems. now another way to look at it is that chris is looking at it as an overall and spiritual view. The shadow could be the bad things of this world such as drugs alcohol and murder. He could possibly, as one guy suggests, be talking for god as if he is God looking at the earth and seeing the "shadow on the sun" as the unfaithful in the church and the divisions like catholic methodists baptists.

    or,(I left this on separate because it is most likely not true) he could have just thrown a lot of words on each other with no meaning.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
  2. anonymous
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     Jan 16th 2008 !⃝

    What I got out of this song is something from the republic. The sun symbolizing the good in the world and the bringer of reality is shadowed by some unvirtuous human, maybe himself. So he can tell you how people go insane and all that stuff because he is the shadow on the sun. know as for the shapes and the flames and candles its just explaining how things are when you view them from his perspective, maybe an nonreligious one, and maybe the way life is. There is a difference between your flesh and your mind. Its not drugs though.

  3. anonymous
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     Jan 5th 2008 !⃝

    Maybe I'm naive, But to me It seemed as though He could be Speaking as someone scorned and cannot let His Ex-lover find happiness.

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  4. anonymous
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     Oct 16th 2007 !⃝

    You guys are all close. I love music more than almost anything in the world. It took me 3 days to figure this song out. The song is indeed about drugs. Probably heroin. But here's the catch...Chris Cornell isn't singing in first person. The drug is talking at the beginning and through the second verse and chorus. Then Chris talks in first person beginning with "Shapes of every size..." Very tricky. Good stuff. One of my new favorite songs.

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  5. anonymous
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     Jul 26th 2007 !⃝

    Someone wrote people interpret things using their personal experience and it s right, something can be seen by hundreds of people and no one would give the same interpretation. Maybe it's because I've seen my boyfriend dying of cancer in a hospital but every word of this song seems to me a picture of what I felt there. It's so hard to see the one you love dying, the one you know so well as if you could reed his thoughts and many times you'd run away. When he died I felt so empty, as if I had a hole inside me. I was looking for the cause of it all, but I've never found it.

    If you read the lyric into this point of view everything fits..

    And than the title..well there can be no shadow on sun ,nothing which is incandescent can be obscured by a shadow: the metaphor is that the pain you feel (something dark, a shadow) can be so deep and so strong to obscure even the sun.

  6. anonymous
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     Apr 2nd 2007 !⃝

    goddamnit! It's not about drugs! it's about the bad things that happen in the world, like that one dude said.

  7. anonymous
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     Apr 1st 2007 !⃝

    I believe this is a reference of some old text written by Plato. Whether this is a coincidence you be the judge. Read up on the "Allegory of the cave" at wikipedia.com by Plato. The part of the song where Cornell sings "Shapes of every size, Move behind my eyes, doors inside my head, bolted from within." are strong with the philosophical view of the story.

  8. anonymous
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     Jul 18th 2006 !⃝

    Why does everyone jump to drugs in all of his songs? Just because he says, "every drop of flame lights a candle in memory of the one who lived inside my skin" doesn't mean drugs lived inside his skin. He could just as easily be talking about a person (presumably a girl) who he got close to (so close she practically lived beneath his skin, which is cornell's way of describing that she couldn't have gotten any closer to him and was practically part of him), and when he tried to get away he couldn't.

    Then again it could be talking about addiction to drugs and not being able to get away, but people shouldn't just assume. I mean all of the interpretations of audioslave lyrics on this site assume at some point he's writing about drugs. Apparently audioslave just sings about drugs, song after song?

  9. anonymous
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     Apr 1st 2006 !⃝

    This song is how he wanted to make someone feel bad, and drug addiction. The song is about aloneness also, that's why he said "I can tell you how people go insane, and how you could do the same". The part where he says "shapes of every size, move behind my eyes, does inside my head, bolted from within, every drop of flame lights a candle in, memory of the one, who lived inside my skin", cleary he's singing about drugs there.

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  10. slipknot_fiend666
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     Aug 28th 2005 !⃝

    It took me some time to figure this song out. It's a deep song, and I knew exactly how Cornell felt with the lyrics, I just couldn't put it all together.

    I believe the song is about meth, "I can tell you why people go insane" "I can tell you how you can do the same" is talking about doing the drug even once, because after you've done it, the world seems like a fake place, and you do feel like you can see through everything, like the end will never come..I do.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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