Filter: Take a Picture Meaning
Song Released: 1999
Take a Picture Lyrics
Awake on my airplane
My skin is bare
My skin is theirs
Awake on my airplane
Awake on my airplane
My skin is bare
My skin is theirs
I feel like a newborn
And I feel like a newborn
Awake on my airplane
Awake on my...
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This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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no.. this is the real.. true story..
he was drunk on an airplane and got naked and had an episode.. people took pictures of him and told him to pay them and they wont show anyone and he paid them but he didn't have much money after , and made the song and got all his money back, and the dad thing is because his dads dissapointment towards him, and he just doesn't care. -
Well, I could always be wrong... but I hear a song about a hypothetical discussion about papparazzi - a social testament to the moral problems of being a public figure.
First - I hear "Away go my airplane" not "awake on my airplane"... I don't know if the words were published on their album or what - but the accepted version is not what I hear him singing. In the video, the plane crashes - and he is left to fin (pardon the pun) for himself in the sea. The airplane WAS his privacy, before it was lost to publicity (the sea).
I feel like a newborn - kicking and screaming... being in the public eye, with photographers et. al. Is like a newborn, unable to control his surroundings, regardless of the kicking and screaming trying to tell people they wish to be left alone sometimes...
Could you want to take my picture, because I won't remember? - a question to a photographer wondering "is this what you have convinced yourself is justification for your intrusion into my life?" (how bizarre)
Could everyone agree that they should not be left alone? - a question that says "is this what you would like to believe is the case, mr. photographer?"
I don't believe in no sanctity, or your privacy - what must be the position of the common papparazzi - they just don't care (and they also don't believe in hypocracy - they don't believe they would be in the wrong to demand privacy even though they don't grant it to others.)
Hey dad, what do you think about your song now - I don't know if this is really what he's saying, but it tells me the core song was drafted by his father, or his father lived a life of loss of privacy, and this song, and his son's work regards the difficulty with this song.
This is what the song, and the video both say to me. The plane (his privacy) is lost (wrecks into the sea). The people survive, albeit now swimming in the sea of publicity, no longer their own private life - it invades everything, including their home, and their friends and relatives - it's possible to occasionally float above (looking away from it all, feeling more real) but eventually it swallows you back up.
Remember, they ALL go into the drink, including the woman who must jump into it to be with her man. -
To me I thought of a baby in the womb. The airplane being carried around in the Mom. My skin is theirs would be skin of both the father and mother. Take a picture I won't remember refering to who would remember anything at that age.
Lastly Dad how do you like me now, being that the Dad might be the first to see his son. This is probably not what the song is about, but it is a beautiful interpretation. -
Except for the incest thing, I think you are all right in one sense.
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This song was actually used in a stage enactment of a boy growing up being incested by his father. The lyrics make perfect sense when looked at from that angle. It can be really clever, too, because it encodes the message out to those who would understand it in this sense. I hope this artist didn't go through those experiences, but it all seems to line up in my head like that.
"awake on my airplane" to an incest survivor would mean memories coming out of a fog. When someone is actually being abused like that, he or she will in a sense leave his/her body and go somewhere else.
"my skin is bare, my skin is theirs"... Well, that's obvious. He has come out of the fog and is remembering how he was violated, likely by multiple people, his dad included.
"I feel like a newborn"... Vulnerability, "kicking and screaming" going crazy. All these memories, the violation, the powerlessness... Yet newborn can also connote that he's actively healing and coming out of the incest experience, rising above it and healing. "I feel so real"... To feel the pain he went through, to feel the joy of healing
"could you take my picture, 'cuz I won't remember" is an insult to his father, saying 'enjoy it while it lasts. Savor it, because I won't, and I'll be gone out of your life when I get out of here. And incest survivors often really do forget. They block the memories out, sometimes until they die.
"I don't believe in sanctity,..Privacy,..A hypocrisy." this is a statement against pedophiles who are seen as good people in the public eye, perhaps even church goers. And hey! Perhaps even pastors. It's all a hypocrisy. They deserve to be exposed, seen for what they are. They don't get to hide.
"hey dad what do you think of your son now" he's saying he remembers, and he's big and strong now. He's no longer vulnerable. Be afraid, dad. Be very afraid...
An incest survivor -
Up until I read the second verse I was sure that it was about a dream, notice how he says "could you take my picture?, cause I won't remember" and when he says "I feel so real", hinting that he's not real, but he feels like it.
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I heard that this song is about how Richard Patrick (the lead singer) has been known to sleep walk naked. It just so happened that he fell asleep on a plane one time and stripped down and walked around naked.
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I have been told this song is about how the lead singer was beening a asshole on the plane as someone asked for an autograph.
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