Owl City: Fireflies Meaning
Song Released: 2009
Fireflies Lyrics
If ten million fireflies
Lit up the world as I fell asleep
Cause they fill the open air,
And leave teardrops everywhere,you'd think me rude but I would just stand, and stare
I'd like to make myself...
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First off, I'd like to say that I hate this star system. Everyone has an interpretation, just because you don't agree with theirs doesn't mean it's not a good one...
ANYWAYS
I feel like the song is about a dreamer that would rather not stay in reality.
It does also remind me of a child how he doesn't want to stay awake, or go to sleep. He doesn't want to say goodbye to the pretty glowing bugs and he doesn't want to lose the magic of the night. -
It's about Adam's insomnia condition.
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Actually, this song is a depiction of a crystal meth trip experience. Insomnia, firelies or bugs, time or world turning slowly... if you wiki you will see the direct similarities.
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this song is about Adam's insomnia and him at nights. Fireflies are dreams in this song. when he says "i got misty eyes as they said farewell" he means that he doesnt want his dreams to go away. he has insomnia so it is a very special time when he gets to go to sleep. he says "i'd like to make myself belive that planet earth turns slowly" he means that he wants the night to last longer so that he can dream more because he rarley gets to sleep. he wanted to find a way it interpret this feeling in song so he wrote "fireflies".
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I think that the 'fireflies' used in this song refer to his childhood, all the good memories he had when he was a child
"You would not believe your eyes
If ten million fireflies
Lit up the world as I fell asleep"
He is supposedly dreaming and his dream world comes alive or is 'being lighten up' by the fireflies (childhood memories)
"Cause they'd fill the open air
And leave teardrops everywhere
You'd think me rude
But I would just stand and stare"
They'd fill every corner, every space and he'd just watch his world jump back several years.
"I'd like to make myself believe
That planet Earth turns slowly
It's hard to say that I'd rather stay
Awake when I'm asleep
'Cause everything is never as it seems"
He wants to believe Earth turns slowly to make this childhood world he sees last longer. He never wants to wake up.
"Cause I'd get a thousand hugs
From ten thousand lightning bugs
As they tried to teach me how to dance"
He wants these memories to take him back, to teach him the ways of being a kid again.
"Leave my door open just a crack
(Please take me away from here)
'Cause I feel like such an insomniac
(Please take me away from here)
Why do I tire of counting sheep
(Please take me away from here)
When I'm far too tired to fall asleep"
He wants to be swept away and taken back to being a kid again. He refers to his childhood as a dream. He's counting sheep to try to fall back into his dream but he's too old (too tired) to fall back asleep into his dream (childhood)
"To ten million fireflies
I'm weird 'cause I hate goodbyes
I got misty eyes as they said farewell"
He really wants to hold onto these memories. But all of them have to leave at some point. He begins to cry as he watches the beautiful world he once had fade away into the harsh reality.
"But I'll know where several are
If my dreams get real bizarre
'Cause I saved a few and I keep them in a jar"
He still has some of the memories, locked up somewhere deep inside his heart (jar). Somewhere deep inside himself, he's still a kid.
"I'd like to make myself believe
That planet earth turns slowly
It's hard to say that I'd rather stay
Awake when I'm asleep
Because my dreams are bursting at the seams"
The same as the regular chorus but with an extra line added at the end. This implies that all his hopes and dreams of returning to his childhood is gone, crushed by the cruel fist of reality.
This song is about what most adults want. To experience the thrill, excitement and the imagination of being a kid. Knowing that nothing in the world can hurt you, nothing is impossible. To believe in yourself, to not be let down by logic, reality or anything like that. The protagonist wants to escape a depressing world and return to the joy and happiness of being a kid again. But don't we all? -
this song is a christian song about what will come when you die? but he praises this as he involves a joy to go to sleep (die) and he also says 'it's hard to say that I'd rather stay awake while I'm asleep' to say that when he gets to heaven, it would be hard to say that he'd rather go back to earth (since heaven is so awesome). he is also the lead singer to 'relient k' which is also a christian band. he also says 'Cause everything is never as it seems' since we can't compleatly understand the world that God has made and he wispers 'when I fall asleep' to continue the idea of this is what he amagines when he dies and goes to heaven
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Useful blog website, keep me personally through searching it, I am seriously interested to find out another recommendation of it.
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It's about insomnia.
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to be honest, when i first heard this song i thought it was about getting high with fireflies...but then i thought why would the artist want to get high with fireflies? maybe a way to escape some part of his inner-being perhaps? or dealing with depression that no one can help him with...now that i am really thinking about it, maybe he just wanted to save some part of his childhood innocence that he had lost along the way of his journey to adulthood. the only way to truly know what the artist was trying to accomplish in the song "Fireflies" would be having to ask him what he was thinking and feeling at the time of writing the song
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http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=16428
Adam Young told the story behind the song to AntiMusic: "It was 2AM and I was sitting on the floor in my parent's basement with a MicroKorg on my lap. I built this synthy legato, 'ping' sound routed through a lowpass filter and ran it through a bunch of guitar pedals. I come up with a little cascading part that wound up as the intro and verses of a song called 'Fireflies.'
I have insomnia and I've always had a tough time falling asleep for as long as I can remember. I wanted to sing about my inability to sleep in a whimsical way that portrayed the condition as lighthearted and almost more of a 'blessing' than a curse. It's ironic that when sleep and I cannot bring ourselves to meet is often when inspiration strikes hardest. I'd just been on vacation to Iowa the week before I wrote the song and was amazed at how many fireflies came out at dusk. I didn't really have to think about making a connection between insomnia and lighting bugs, it just sort of happened and the song basically wrote itself. It was a lot of fun." -
Definitely just another trippy song to listen to guys, no need to get up and arms about this guys insomnia
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After listening to this song for a year, I finally settled on the interperetation of stars.
Yes, stars.
The sky.
At first I had a few interpretations as these ones, but I think the deep subconscious meaning to Adam's songs is whatever you want to make of them, like dreams. There is a secret meaning to the song, but no one knows what it is because it is a secret. A subconscious one.
Everyone has a right to their own opinion. It can mean whatever you want it to mean. Some interpretations here are ingenious. I would of never considered some of them. We're all different.
But insomnia, the city, fireflies and lights, shooting stars, life, happiness et cetera. Mush your own opinions and interpretations and put them in a blender and you get your own Owl City song meaning. -
It is all about getting high I mean who does not see this I am not a huge fan of this band. but my friends don't believe me that it is about getting high so if you agree please rate this a 5 star
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This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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This song is obviously about the artist's childhood. The first few lines, "you would not believe your eyes....10 million fireflies" shows that as a child, he was dazzled by them as he watched them from, probably, his bedroom window. The tear drops the artist talks about is most likely dew drops that appeared when the sun came up. This says he spent all night watching out his window.
When he started singing the refrain, the first time is very soft, like he is embarrassed that he feels this way. He would rather never sleep because time goes by so fast and you miss so much when you are asleep.
The second verse of the song is talking about the toys that are in his room. I believe the lightning bugs are flying around him as he is probably spinning through them.
As the second refrain gets slightly louder, he is probably speaking it, rather than whispering it. He is becoming more confident as he digs deeper into his childhood memories.
The third verse he cannot sleep. He wants to leave his door open so that light comes in and he doesn't think he is just sitting in the dark. The background singers singing "please take me away from here" represent him trying to fall asleep so he can dream about his childhood or wanting to go back in his childhood years. Most likely the wanting to go back to his childhood since he talks about how time is wasted by sleeping. The fireflies saying goodbye is when the sun is rising and they disappear.
The third refrain is when the artist is exclaiming. He is confident and knows, for sure, he wants to be a child again. At the end of the song, I believe he falls asleep, finally, after trying to fall asleep the entire song.
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