System of a Down: Soldier Side (Intro) Meaning
Soldier Side (Intro) Lyrics
where there's no one here but me.
People all grow up to die.
There is no one here but me.
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1TOP RATED
#1 top rated interpretation:Being a veteran of the Iraq war this is what the intro. means to me. When someone comes home from a war they are changed. One veteran to another saying "welcome to the soldiers side". "Where there is no one here but me" says to me just the way I feel. Alone. I can go to all the PTSD counseling that I want but nothing helps how I feel inside, and I just feel alone all the time even though I am surrounded by friends and family. The other Soldiers side has a couple of different meanings for me. Parts of this song remind me of Iraq especially the part that says he's come so far to find the truth he's never going home. I went and serve my country and feel like I did a good thing. But the old me died there. I am different. I question if I actually made a difference for Iraq and America. One of my Ex's said she wanted the old me back, I told her he was dead in Iraq and to go find him. Reminds me of my mom too when they sing, they were crying when their sons left, all young men must go.
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2TOP RATED
#2 top rated interpretation:“dead men lying on the bottom of the grave” – lying in the trenches, with many soldiers laying there dead like an open grave.
“wondering when savoir comes, is he gonna be saved” – the worst thing anyone could possibly imagine is happening and the soldier is contemplating the existence of god
“maybe you're a sinner into your alternate life maybe you're a joker, maybe you deserve to die” – the soldier is trying to think what he could have done to deserve all of this.
“god is wearing black” – even god has no hope for these soldiers.
“he's gone so far to find no hope he's never coming back” – the soldiers have been close to death for so long they have no hope of ever returning home.
“he's come so far to find the truth he's never going home” – the soldiers found the truth and realised they’re never going home.
“all young men must go” – this is referring to the conscription.
“young men standing on the top of their own graves” – the soldiers are condemned to die in the trenches. -
3TOP RATED
#3 top rated interpretation:I should have added this to my interpretation but I didn't want to make it long. After thinking about it, I said screw it.
"Welcome, to the soldier side, Where there's no one here but me...." Basically saying welcome to my side of thing where I'm actually here, not all those people mentioned previously speaking for me.
"People all grow up to die, There is no one here but me." Everyone dies but I'm the one who will be facing death as a result of this war not ...The Politicians, Reporters, or Talkshow hosts. -
When you have seen death, it is a transformative process. One might say that being so close to it, you become it. Many are oblivious to this aspect of reality, until an experience with death brings them to “the soldiers side”. Death is the ending of the illusion, the waking up from the dream. Death figuratively comes to wake us up from the dream that our life was. The illusion that we are separate causes facing the reality that “there is no one here but me.” When the dreamer wakes up, it sees there is only one consciousness… during the dream, this consciousness become many. Returning “back to one” can be a beautiful realization of enlightenment, or a destruction of all that brought one happiness. Holding onto the illusion causes grief, suffering, misery. Embracing the truth with acceptance can bring joy, liberation, compassion.
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"dead men lying on the bottom of.." this is a reference to how soldiers are trained to think that they're already dead and that everywhere they walk can be their grave
"god is wearing black" Color has meaning black, depending on its context usually means one of two things, power or death. god is wearing black like anyone would to a funeral.
"hes gone so far to find no hope, hes never coming back" this means that god has gone so far to find hope in humanity but has lost it all because of our need to be better than someone or have something someone else has, hence why we have so many wars.
"hes come so far to find no truth hes never coming home" this is talking about how soldiers leave as 'kids' or 'young men' and while they're fighting they seek for the truth only to find none and they dont come back as the same person.
"all young men must go" now at this point they aren't necessarily saying that all young men must go to war but they must go out to seek their own truth and fight for what they want.
"young men standing on top of.." this is referring to how when they first go that they dont know what thing they will see that make them dig their own graves (this is a mental grave of course)
"they were crying when their sons left." no one wants to willingly give up their son knowing that they wont be the same when they come back or if they will come back at all
"Welcome to the soldier side. there is no one here but me" every soldier experiences war differently and in their minds no one can understand what they went through hence "there is no one here but me"
"we all grow up to die" this can be taken for its literal meaning or you can dig into it.
This was my interpretation. -
This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
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"Welcome to the Soldier Side, where theres no one here but me" the "me" could also be Death, because after War there will be no one there but dead people. During war there is no Savior or Jesus on the Battleground theres just Death. "People, all grow up to die" Death already knows that everyone, at anytime, somehow will die.
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it's about the Armenian Genocide, cause at first they said that every man who was still able of going to war should unite (armenians only and few others also) to go to war to defend their country in the World War II, they took them and drove the, away and before this they gave them guns and told them they were going to teach them to fire, by arriving there they told them to drop the guns and gave them shovels and told them to dig after they dug the hole they said to them that it was their grave and told them to pray, it says that some of them were waiting for God to save them, others were thinking of what was going to happen of their wives and others just cursing his holy name,"he's come so far to find the truth he's never going home". Their sons got away but never came back, by learning this their mothers cried.
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Well i think that when hi said ""wondering when jesus comes, is he going to be saved", he refers to re repent of the soldiers because they kill a lot of people, so a lot of them think they don't deserve to be saved
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I beleive the line "there is no one here but me" refers to the fact that he no longer beleives in god and knows that only he, and his gun can save him.
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"they were crying when their sons left
all young men must go
he's come so far to find no truth
he's never going home."
This interpretation is basically saying when we all left for war our parent's our devastated cause they lost there child...thinking we are out to do something good and straighten out our lives in any military base that no matter what we do with all that hate and guilt for murdering innocent people over men, money, and oil that you will never be yourself again with images like that burned into your brain. The government is doing this to us for their rich filthy pleasures! -
This song is basically about what it's like to be at war, the damage it causes, and how young people are sent to war like in "They were crying when their sons left
All young men must go
He's come so far to find the truth
He's never going home"
Also "They were crying when their sons left, God is wearing black" is trying to express how much of an impact having family sent off to the war to die is, not only to the dying one, but to his/her friends & family.
"Welcome to the soldier side, where there's no one here but me" is saying that many people such as news stations and reporters talk all about it, but really it's the soldier doing the work, dying for what they are sent to do, the news stations and such can all talk about it, but really it's the soldiers there, and they're alone..
"He's come so far to find no truth
He's never going home"
I personally believe that this means that there will never be truth in war, there is always lies, even to your own country and soldiers.
"Cruelty to the winner, Bishop tells the King his lies"
This line, basically supports what I just said above, war is never 100% truthful. -
welcome to the soldiers side. this can refer to a side of a soldier when either returning home or during battle. when a soldier has come back from a tour he might feel depression or guilt even fear which no one else can experience unless they have done the same as the soldiers out there on the mission. during battle it might be the realisation of combat and the soldier is ironically welcomed to a dark side of human conscience were every man is changed mentally and realise God, religion,good or bad has no meaning. and the soldier realises "there's no one here but me".
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"welcome to the soldier side, where's there's no one here but me..." this talks about a soldier who is all by himself because everyone that he has known and loved has been killed. he is a lone soldier and he's welcoming you to see his side.
"People all grow up to die, there is no one here but me" i think that this is the soldier saying that everybody grows up to die. the only reason that these soldiers grew up was to just go fight in a war that killed them all off. that line i think represents how depressed he must be. -
Funny how a song label soldiers side and all the interpretations are about the war and whose side people are on in the war.
Maybe it's System who is describing what the soldier is going threw and it is SOAD on the side of the soldier as a posed to a side of this war. -
The song is obviously about the terrible nature of war,but it may have a deeper meaning
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Here, I will treat the author as feminine because I am the author without proof and I am referring to my own feelings, which are basically the exact same as the supposed mind of the band, Daron, pronounced in Japanese as Dah-rhon. And of course, I know something true that you haven't heard and probably never will because it is too deep of a secret.
In Soldier Side the author is a storyteller telling the tale of a soldier that goes into a land of war for no good reason, and is sad that it isn't a different way in relation to the world today. There are two sides to the term Soldier Side. If you will notice, the view of the term Soldier Side means the land on the other side of the world, in all reality where a war was fought, and where the times were less domesticated. There is also the side where the author feels like a soldier at the very end of the song based on that she is a bigger person and feels upset that there's no one else like her, and also proud that she doesn't have to fight a war, proud that she is the only one on the other side noticing this fact. The point to this song that the author is making is that WAR IS POINTLESS, because it brings no hope for the future. There is only one author here that has written this song in its originality. The song is coming from the author's heart, and it is a very personal issue that bothers the author so much, they had to bring about the feelings they have about war and put it with music.
So, the author opens up her visual senses and has empathy for the dead soldiers specifically referring to a particular war, which she has experienced partially in visual form. Otherwise, why would she feel so personal about it? This author uses words such as "joker" which in the Southern States, is a derogatory statement meaning basically the same as "***hole, and *ucker" in certain situations, and it is used to express hatred toward someone or an object...For example..."Damn, if that joker ever decides to come back here, I'm gonna rip and destroy him for stealing my song." or "Let's see if we can get that joker(object)apart." There is constant empathy for mother's, father's, and Soldier's in this song, and there is even the worry that mothers instinctively do. The author creates the illusion that the soldier's are on the other side of it all, yet she is imagining that she is also a soldier of peace. She sees it all right before her very eyes, and understands it from more of a father's viewpoint also by realizing...it's a fact of life that "All young men must go" whereas a mother wouldn't want their child to go off to war. The mother's worry would be the son's losing their life. Why did you go off to war? What was the point? To accomplish what? The truth is that the only truth to find is that war is meaningless, and leaves us to be lonely people, where the only one's to survive. "He's come so far to find the truth" -the soldier is so far away, and is imagining and worrying that he can't get out of there.
The Soldier Side is the other side of the world where war has taken place. It is also the author's viewpoint of how to refer to the people that have grown up all for the sake of becoming "true" men and women by pleasing their Fathers and going off to make their Fathers proud and fight in the war of whatever period of time. This author is not specifying a war to be a holy war, where they're fighting to prove a point that their religion's better, and that you know, "this is the only God" there is in the whole existence of eternity. And, she's not talking about the Armenian Genocide either, because the Armenian Genocide was not a war. The Armenian Genocide was purely manslaughter. There was no declaration of war. The Turks were threatened by the intelligence of the Armenian people. Look at some of the architecture of the past, and other things too while you're at it.
The author uses somewhat poetic verse, and bad grammar to make every syllable sound right for the purpose of the music sounding on beat for the rest of the song. Like "Dead Men lying on the bottom of the grave," "wondering when Savior comes" "is he gonna be saved" the word "gonna" is not proper grammar, but it holds the syllables of the music in place, and we all know what it means. The Soldier on Soldier Side is going off to fight a war for the hopes of returning with a trophy, but using the author's point of view, there is no prize.
People generally talk with reference to the past statement. Not this author. The author is treating herself as a masculine God and putting herself in His shoes at times. If you will notice the word "Savior" is capitalized. This suggests no disrespect to who the God is to this author..which is Jesus. The author even suggests how Jewish people thought back then...wondering if "Savior" or messiah would come. Let us not forget that at the beginning and end of the song it says "Welcome to the soldier side" "Where there's no one here but me," Treating the term "me" as if the word "me" serves to play many roles..which are the soldier, the land of war, the witness, God, and the peace maker. And the reader has to guess which one "me" is by the end of the song, which becomes the peace maker, where it is written..."People on the soldier's side," "There is no one here but me." That's the whole point right there of the song...that there's people who are on the soldier's side, and who believe in war, and there's not enough people that believe that peace-making works.
Thanks everybody.
Yalla, I'm outta here.
The author does have an existential vision on what is happening beneath the land, as if she is a mysterious witness having an outer body experience. The author also treats itself as God and the Devil at the same time wondering if she will go to heaven or hell treating herself as the soldier there by saying to herself "Maybe you're a sinner into your alternate life" and makes herself feel guilty for anything she's ever done to the point where she would carry the things she's done into her next life. The author has both a male and female perspective on the song and treats the line "Maybe you're a joker, maybe you deserve to die" as if she is a queen with the power to order to kill someone on command.
The author, again, is back to having the outlook of a witness having empathy for the son's mothers "They were crying when their son's left." The next line, the author uses more of a masculine statement that came from an actual visualization she actually had in a dream where..."God is wearing black"...this line is expressing that God is a man that wears black clothing, and is presently void, representing death, and that God is in the mood to have wrath. The author then treats the statement God is wearing black as a reference to a son or father a father figure -
Here is my interpretation of this song. I will not only look at the intro from Mesmerize, but also the full length song from Hypnotize.
"They were crying when their sons left
All young men must go
He's come so far to find no truth
He's never going home."
This, to me, is the key verse of the song. This song is about the current war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. I was married to an Armenian woman whose family immigrated to the US so that her younger brother wouldn't be drafted into that war. "All young men must go" refers to the fact all Armenian men at the age of 18 must perform military service. I have heard horrible stories about young draftees, friends of my ex-wife's family, being raped and abused by Armenian officers, and not to mention being killed on the front lines of the war. I believe that this song can also be applied to the plight of ANY soldier in ANY war, though.
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