Florence + the Machine: Dog Days Are Over Meaning

Song Released: 2008

Covered By: Glee Cast

Dog Days Are Over Lyrics

Happiness / hit her / like a train on a tra-ck
Coming towards her / stuck still / no turning ba-ck
She hid around corners / and she hid under beds /
She killed it with kisses and from it she fl-ed /
With e-very bubble she sank with a drink...

1. anonymous

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   Apr 19th 2014 !⃝

   A primeira vez que ouvi essa música estava em férias viajando em uma cidade da Argentina chamada Rosário. Onde um amigo muuito especial do meu melhor amigo apresentou essa música em janeiro de 2011.
   Ao traduzir- lá percebi logo que os dias de cão se acabaram é nada mais que o encontro do verdadeiro amor. Me caso este ano mais precisamente exatamente 4 anos depois do meu primeiro beijo no meu hoje namorado e a partir do dia 11 /10/2014 meu marido...
   Quando eu voltei de viagem mostrei a música para ele, e ficou mais claro ainda que se os dias de cão terminaram ,precisaríamos correr pois os cavalos estavam vindo...achar e comprar uma casa, casar e fazer uma festa como sempre sonhei ,exige de mais pra quem ta começando do nada
   ...e ainda mais ter que se despedir,correr para o pai ,mãe, irmãos pois para onde você irá não poderá leva-los se não você não sobrevivera...
   É como no clipe,a celebração de um ritual de passagem pois a felicidade me atingiu como um trem... (detalhe, toda minha festa de casamento está sendo baseada no clipe da música que será minha valsa de casamento) Tô deixando todos Loucos)

   This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
2. anonymous

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   Mar 31st 2014 !⃝

   The meaning of the song is about the death... not like a horrible thing, but a nice hopeful end of anyones hard life...
   All the analogies that the song made about death (bullet hitting her, train struck her, etc), are really about moments where people died and even though their life were rough, find real peace in death.
   
   When the songs mentions about leaving all behind, its a symbolysm about the transition between life and death (and that all things are left behind when that happens).
   The same symbolysm about death could be interpreted when it mention about wanting everything it have (god requesting her/him everything).
   The Horses are about the horses of death mentioned in the bible.
3. anonymous

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   Jan 9th 2014 !⃝

   I believe that the song is about getting over a heroin addiction and shes now running as far away as possible from those days. For instance when she talks about flushing something down the sink

   This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
4. anonymous

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   Nov 25th 2013 !⃝

   Death
5. anonymous

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   Jun 10th 2013 !⃝

   When I first heard this song, I thought she was singing, "The Dark Days are Over..." so to me, the "dog days" are the dark days.
   
   "Leave all your love and your longing behind you....can't carry it with you if you want to survive"
   
   -For me, that is like leaving someone because you know it's a bad situation, but you still love the person, but you know it's messed up if you stay in it. Like trying to leave an addicted or abusive spouse.
   
   But for me, it's a happy song basically saying she's leaving the negative life she had behind her and she should run towards a happier future.
6. cisnerosjanet

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   Oct 18th 2012 !⃝

   When it goes on to say the dog days are over, I think that the worse is behind. Awareness although painful, a bullet to the head, will bring happiness because it is personal freedom.
7. cisnerosjanet

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   Oct 18th 2012 !⃝

   This song addresses freedom and our personal responsibility to protect ourselves from losing it. As children we are in a state of innocent bliss with zeal, curiosity and our love for living. Happiness is a successful state of early life. But as life continues and we grow older we lose ourselves. We self sacrifice to lovers whims and rather be in a drunkard stupor that face the reality, that we betrayed our responsibility to being our own greatest value. Without that morality we have nothing, we have death. In a final attempt, through awareness we try to save the last remnants of our self. Understanding that we can not love others before loving ourselves. She is angry because she thinks she should not have allowed or accepted a state of self sacrificing to blind faith. Guilt, the love for others, and religion also asks that a person renounce the self.
8. anonymous

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   Oct 16th 2012 !⃝

   I think it means that you should leave all the difficulties, and tragedies behind and to never look back, just keep on running or moving forward so you can reach what you are looking for: hope, unity, and love.
9. anonymous

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   Aug 10th 2012 !⃝

   This is probably not the actual meaning of the lyrics as intended by the singer, but I actually think that the song could be about war, not love. (Though I've read a lot of very legitimate interpretations involving romance/breakups.) This impression comes mostly from the refrain, about running for your loved ones and leaving your burdens behind, with the "horses" coming and providing some sort of threat to the narrator and her family. The verses about blind love- "killing with kisses" and "happiness hitting like a train" could be about the sort of madly passionate but not deep or entirely real romances that boom around times of war. As in, when people are scared and they don't know whether they're going to live or die, they tend to behave rashly and emotionally. Everyone wants someone to hold their hand during their last moments, when the bombers are roaring overhead or enemy troops are smashing the windows in the nearby houses. You want someone to love, whether they love you back or not. This is just my guess, and it's far more likely to be about a girl leaving behind an abusive relationship and whatnot, but that was my impression of the song.

   This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
10. anonymous

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    Jul 2nd 2012 !⃝

    I is about a woman who has been separated from her boyfriend and is drinking to feel better. She is running for happiness and can't carry her love for her boyfriend because of what he did to her. She is leaving her boyfriend behind and running for a new future.
11. anonymous

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    Jun 29th 2012 !⃝

    For me its about coming into awareness of yourself as a person, and experiencing life at its fullest. it points out the beauty of life that surrounds us.
12. anonymous

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    Jun 12th 2012 !⃝

    She is in the midst of a new level of consciousness, and the important love to bring along to that level is her family's love. Because only through them can she meet that new level. She will not survive if she keeps to her old vices/compulsions/coping mechanisms such as alcohol, meaningless sex, maybe a disconnected spouse. Hiding from her true self for fear of what she might find---which is Happiness. If she continues to try to "find" herself thru her compulsions, it will destroy her. Now that happiness is here she needs to leave her longing for her compulsions behind. They helped her along this far,and she loved them for it, but now at this point they will be her demise. I believe she ultimately feared happiness, because if she becomes so happy, she worries that something tragic will happen. She fears true happiness is too good to be true. But at this point she doesn't have a choice. Happiness/new consciousness is here and she either runs toward it or not. She wanted her other loves (alcohol etc..) to solve everything and make her happy. She wanted everything from them and more,and that was not possible, she can only find happiness within herself. And you can't force it to happen, it unfolds when the time is right. And her time is now, so run fast for it before her vices decide they need her more than she needs happiness.
13. anonymous

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    May 31st 2012 !⃝

    I think "dog days" symbolize the end of the world and chaotic running through the streets and in that there is a moment of freedom
    
    I think that the meaning of the song is that the world is ending and she is hiding and drinking her problems away . And the biblical horses are comming and she's running for her life and she is suddenly happy in that moment of freedom . She's running because her family went with god in the apocalypse and she didn't and they would have wanted her to survive . She can't keep dwelling on the fact that her family is gone or she won't survive.
    
    Sorry for bad grammar I am only 11
14. anonymous

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    May 22nd 2012 !⃝

    The "dog days," as described on Wikipedia, refer to the hot days of summer, called so because people used to associate hot weather with Sirius, the Dog Star.
    
    I think it means that the boring days are over, and she's "running" towards happiness.
    
    No clue as to what the horses mean, though.
15. anonymous

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    May 8th 2012 !⃝

    Its about the apocalypse

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