Green Day: 21 Guns Meaning
Song Released: 2009
21 Guns Lyrics
When it's not worth dying for?
Does it take your breath away
And you feel yourself suffocating?
Does the pain weigh out the pride?
And you look for a place to hide?
Did someone break your heart...
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1TOP RATED
#1 top rated interpretation:"Do you know what's worth fighting for,
When it's not worth dying for?
Does it take your breath away
And you feel yourself suffocating?"
First two lines are pretty self explanatory. do you kow what's important to you, even if it isn't worth dying or?
"Does the pain weigh out the pride?
And you look for a place to hide?
Did someone break your heart inside?
You're in ruins"
You're in pain, but you're just too proud to get help, so you're hiding your emotions. You're in pain or "ruis" becau you've lost someone very important to you.
"One, 21 guns
Lay down your arms
Give up the fight
One, 21 guns
Throw up your arms into the sky,
You and I"
This to me is like... Someone is trying to deal with pain by themselves, and thi other person is knd of sying "give up on pushing people away and just let me help you through this"
"When you're at the end of the road
And you lost all sense of control
And your thoughts have taken their toll
When your mind breaks the spirit of your soul"
This person is feling really lost and hurt, and thinking about what happened and analyzing things is making everything worse.
"Your faith walks on broken glass
And the hangover doesn't pass
Nothing's ever built to last
You're in ruins"
Maybe they're losing their faith in love or "forever" ("Nothing's ever built to last") or even god because of what happened. Secnnd line, the pain isn't get any better. They're in ruins.
"Did you try to live on your own
When you burned down the house and home?
Did you stand too close to the fire?
Like a liar looking for forgiveness from a stone"
they're trying to do things on their own and still trying to deal with eveything by themselves, and they're taking it to an extreme by not letting anyone in ("Did you stand too close to the fire")And they just can't do it alone, like you can't get forgiveness from a stone.
"When it's time to live and let die
And you can't get another try
Something inside this heart has died
You're in ruins"
They're realizing that they can't get that person back and they have to move on and continue living their life, but soemthing is missing in their heart, and it's never going to heal; they're never going to be quite the same. They're going to continue to be in rins for a long time, ut they know they have to move on some time.
"One, 21 guns
Lay down your arms
Give up the fight
One, 21 guns
Throw up your arms into the sky
One, 21 guns
Lay down your arms
Give up the fight
One, 21 guns
Throw up your arms into the sky,
You and I"
Then I think when this is repeated at the end, the person is realizing they need help, and they need to stop fighting people who want to help and ind a new way to mourn their loss, mabe with someone who was also close to the deceased.
And I think taken into the context of the album it's about Christian losing Gloria. -
2TOP RATED
#2 top rated interpretation:Most people don't seem to know the difference between the 21 gun salute and the 3-volley salute. The latter is indeed used for funerals while the former refers to a warship emtpying its guns, effectively disarming itself to show the lack of hostile intent.
This meaning fits well into the general theme of the song: surrender, giving up the fight that is not worth dying for. -
3TOP RATED
#3 top rated interpretation:First of all I'd like to point out this song is a story, nor is it about what you 'feel' it is about in your life. Giving abstract meanings like this helps nobody.
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21 Guns is a direct slap in the face to the US Govt for the war on terror.The significance of the title, as others have pointed out is when a battleship releases all of it's ammunition to show its peaceful intentions through disarming itself.
""Do you know what's worth fighting for,
When it's not worth dying for?
Does the pain weigh out the pride?""
This is mocking the US for it's rationalization for the war.
""And you look for a place to hide?
Did someone break your heart inside?
You're in ruins""
Referencing to 9/11 and how the US started the war out of fear without consideration for what would happen, and how it was because after 9/11 the US was in 'ruins'.
""Lay down your arms
Give up the fight
Throw up your arms into the sky,
You and I""
This is the call against the fighting. This song is a modern day protest song after all.
""When you're at the end of the road
And you lost all sense of control
And your thoughts have taken their toll
When your mind breaks the spirit of your soul
Your faith walks on broken glass
And the hangover doesn't pass
Nothing's ever built to last
You're in ruins""
Green Day is saying the US will gain nothing from the war and come out the way it went in, 'in ruins.'
""One, 21 guns
Lay down your arms
Give up the fight
One, 21 guns
Throw up your arms into the sky,
You and I""
Another call for opposition against the war.
""Did you try to live on your own""
This is saying the US has alienated itself with it's policies of policing the world.
""When you burned down the house and home?
Did you stand too close to the fire?""
This is a direct reference to the amount of destruction the US has caused in the Middle East.
""Like a liar looking for forgiveness from a stone
When it's time to live and let die
And you can't get another try
Something inside this heart has died
You're in ruins""
These lines are the key to the song as it ties it together. Green Day is saying that once the US realized it made the wrong decision it was already to late, it had destroyed the middle east, alienated itself, and it won't be able to resolve the problems it caused. Again it is in 'ruins,' just as it had been after 9/11, which was the cause for the war on terror which was meant to bring it out of ruins. The US will make no progress from 9/11 by starting a war.
""One, 21 guns
Lay down your arms
Give up the fight
One, 21 guns
Throw up your arms into the sky
One, 21 guns
Lay down your arms
Give up the fight
One, 21 guns
Throw up your arms into the sky,
You and I""
Green Day is restating their message by saying the way to avoid this outcome of being in permanent state of post-9/11 is to end the war on terror. -
This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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This is a Irag/ Middle East War Anthem. It's a face value old fashioned protest song about the fact that we use war to solve problems that can't be solved by war. That wars use false flags (but real events, even those purposely created) for making money, for oil, for opium fields, for power, greed, ect.. but the soldier believes in fighting for his country even though it may be a lie.
Leaving and coming home in ruins refers to how war solves nothing in many cases. Sadly, the soldiers die for their own people ON all fronts. They leave ruins and ruined countries and come home with PTSD and lost years, limbs and life.
1 is the soldier, 21 guns is the military honor given at his/her funeral.
A 21 guns salute for honor. Yet 1 life lost.
This song is at face value saying lay down your guns.
This is not a relationship or suicide or drug addiction. Many songwriters I know own are blown away at the things people come up with and think we were writing about. Don't over analyze the lyrics. Sometimes things can have multiple meanings, but some are face value as well. Good songwriters leave things a little grey for everyone to make there own.
This is simply an Antiwar anthem and is a rarity in that few of them written ever make it these days... This should be taken at face value. This is an awesome protest song! -
I think this song has 3 meanings:
1) The war theme
2) The couple theme
3) The universal meaning: don't back off because life gets hard and do what it takes to move forward. -
Thank you for interpreting that song. It helped a lot for me to look at the deeper meaning of it.
-
This song reminds me of a friend of mine. One day, she came to me and started telling me her problems. Her grandpa was dying from cancer ''Do you know what's worth fighting for'' reminds me of that kind of. Her boyfriend broke up with her. ''and you're looking for a place to hide. Did someone break your heart inside? You're in ruins'' fits that. I thought she'd leave in a few days but she stayed. ''When you're at the end of the road and you've all sense of control reminds me of that. Any comments?
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I agree with top answer 2. i think it's about losing someone. I also think it's about drowning your feelings in anti-depressants and alcohol because of the writing on the walls in the video.
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There is to me two different meaning of course the first one is about the war and how it has affected all the soldiers and their loved ones
the second one is about a couple who went through lots of hard time in their relation ship and when they decide to go alone they realize how hard it is and that they can do it together. -
This is an awesome song, with a deep meaning. Much better than JB and stupid modern day COMPUTER-GENERATED songs
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I think this song is about people who fight about things that aren't worth it. Their fighting pulls them apart, and they're miserable because all they can do is fight.
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I think that the song is about a long distance relationship, and the two people in the relationship (Christian and Gloria) are teenagers who don't have much control over where they are, but they love each other anyway. Although people always tell them to
"Lay down your arms. Give up the fight," -meaning break up with him/her- they don't listen and they say to each other "Throw up your arms into the sky, you and I," meaning "Stay with me, it will be better later." At the end of the song, Christian and Gloria end up together despite all the doubt that other people had for their relationship because, again, the last words of the song were stated "Throw up your arms into the sky. You and I". They wanted to say that, as well as tie in the anti-war theme of the album and the song was created. -
This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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Did you try to live on your own
When you burned down the house and home?
Did you stand too close to the fire?
Like a liar looking for forgiveness from a stone
The part about the liar probably represents a person wanting to redeem themself to a dead person
Stone=Grave -
There are a lot of great interpretations here.
For me, it is about a specific elderly person that has dementia. They won't give up the struggle and try to maintain control, even though they need help. In life, we must surrender control to others at some point, even though we don't trust them fully.
Ultimately we must surrender to death. -
It's about how when you are young and naive, you fight pointlessly, in wars or relationships. But in the end, when you finally look back and see what's 'worth fighting for' and 'what's worth dying for'--when 'it's time to live and let die'--you realize that you could have sought peace and love, hence '21 Guns', the military's sign of no hostility. But it's too late.
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I think that it is about choices. It tells you that it is your choice whether you lie or not, kill or not, etc. I think it also trie to warn us not to give up, or make the wrong choice or the choice that will lead to destruction.
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