Death Cab For Cutie - The Ghosts Of Beverly Drive Meaning

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Album cover for The Ghosts Of Beverly Drive album cover

Song Released: 2015

The Ghosts Of Beverly Drive Lyrics

If only you had known me
Before the accident
For with that grand collision
Came a grave consequence

Receptors overloaded
They burst and disconnect
'Til there is little feeling
Please work with what is left.

Oh, I need not be...

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Jul 18th 2021 !⃝
Third song on Kintsugi, diving deep into Ben Gibbard's attempt to make sense of his divorce from Hollywood ingenue** Zooey Deschanel.

**Yes, foreshadowing to "Ingenue," a later entry on this album.

Perhaps a flashback from before "No Room in Frame," when Ben has put pedal to the metal to leave LA... in this song he is driving through his old haunts, reliving past traumas.

If only... Another wistful woulda/shoulda/coulda contemplation about what might have been. If only you had known me before the accident

First a car accident referenced in many DC4C songs. Literal or metaphorical, this accident colors every aspect of Ben's relationships thereafter.

He relives his first tryst with the coy starlet, simultaneously flattering Ben and telling him he's not the first. it's all been done before.
But that won't stop him from diving in, to be reduced to rubble.

By the chorus he realizes this nostalgia is a pointless exercise. Why return to the scenes of the crimes? He was blindsided by an unexpected turn in their relationship, can't get straight answers from anyone in the gossip fueled town, where agendas beyond his naive love drive the narrative. He desperately hopes to find something he knows he won't -- an explanation as to "WHY??"

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