The Killers: Midnight Show Meaning
Midnight Show Lyrics
I wanna take you a midnight show tonight
If you can keep a secret
I got a blanket in the back seat on my mind
And a little place that sits beneath the sky
She turned her face to speak
But no-one heard her cry
Drive...
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Well, I did hear the part about him saying "she said she loved me" right after he said "if you can keep a secret" so.....idk
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i think this song is about sex. pretty strictly about sex. brandon flowers is mormon and has even said that in ALL of his music you can find and feel the religious connections. consider his beliefs in every song you listen to.
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If you're going with the whole murder trilogy idea, you could also bring Mr. Brightside into it..him imagining his girlfriend being unfaithful.
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IT IS NOT A MURDER STORY! It is about a guy that has a mental illness and rapes a girl in the back of his friend's van. "I know what you want. I'm wanna take you to a midnight show tonight. If you can keep a secret. I got a blanket in the backseat on my mind. And a little place that sits beneath the sky." He is trying to seduce her and tells her not to tell anyone. "She turned her face to speak, but no one heard her cry" He abducts her and carries her to the friend's van. "Drive faster, boy. Drive faster, boy." He tells the friend to drive faster to a hiding place of some sort. "I know there's a hope. There's too many people trying to help me cope." He refers to the doctors and therapists treating his mental illness. "You got a real short skirt
I wanna look up, look up, look up, yeah yeah." He states how attracted he is to her and wants to have sex with her. "We were just in time. Let me take a little more off your mind." He is obviously telling her he wants to sleep with her. "There's something in my head. Somewhere in the back said 'We were just a good thing, we were such a good thing.'" He is describing voices he hears, telling him to rape her. "Make it go away without a word. But promise me you'll stay and fix these things I've hurt. Oh make it go away!" He tells her this and believes having sex with her will make the voices stop."I took my baby's breath beneath the chandelier of stars in atmosphere, and watched her disappear
into the midnight show..." He rapes her in the van and watched her mentally deteriorate because of it. "If you keep a secret, well, baby I can keep, if you can keep a secret.
If you keep a secret... well, baby I can keep, if you can keep a secret..." He tells her not to tell about the rape. -
I think that the 'Midnight Show' is a metaphor for the place you go when you die, i.e. darkness, mystery.
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Some count another addition to the trilogy, as Mr. Brightside is where she is caught cheating. Note the jealous and alibi lines.
Leave the Bourbon on the Shelf counts as the confrontation between the protagonist and "Jenny"
"Jennifer, tell me where I stand
And who's that boy holdin' your hand?"
Midnight Show is when he kills her (after drinking, as 'Leave the Bourbon on the Shelf' mentions):
I gonna take you a midnight show tonight
If you can keep a secret
I got a blanket in the back seat on my mind
And a little place that sits beneath the sky
She turned her face to speak
But no-one heard her cry
Then he dumps her body in the ocean:
The crashing tide can hide a guilty girl
With jealous hearts that start with gloss and curls
I took my baby's breath beneath the chandelier
Of stars in atmosphere
And watched her disappear
Into the midnight show...
"Jenny Was a Friend of Mine" is when the police are interrogating him about the murder as many lines suggest:
There ain't no motive for this crime
Jenny was a friend of mine
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Kk and "anonymous" from 8/8/07 clearly know The Killers and have actually thought their interpretations through. The only things I have to add:
- Not sure which "music book" Musicmonkey above got those lyrics from, but it is 100% positively "Well, [a] crashing tide can hide a guilty girl / with jealous hearts that start with BLOTS and curls." (listen to the song again and you'll hear it) Note that he smooths over the [a] to fit it better into the rhythm.
- "Crashing time" makes no sense, while "crashing tide" suggests waves crashing on the shore and is perfectly relevant to the story. Why anyone would think it's "crashing time" is beyond me.
- Not sure about the "blots and curls" - it could a reference to the way women fix their hair with fanciful curls for going out (try googling "blots and curls"!) OR, like many of the lyrics, it could be a personal line that you're not supposed to get unless you're the songwriter with a specific story in your head.
- For the record, Natalie has nothing to do with the murder trilogy - she is a young dancer who died of AIDS and it's a separate story altogether. WTF?!
- Final note: what I find really interesting in this song is the sexualization of the murder act - many of the lines have double meanings - i.e., "I've got a blanket in the back seat on my mind" is suggestive of sex in the back seat and "faster" mimics the thrusting rhythm. An amazing job of painting a vivid picture of a crazed, mentally disturbed killer who is almost getting off on his act. Freaky. -
ok so i noticed alot of you misheard the lyrics
he says "Oh crashing time can't hide a guilty girl"
not tide
and also he says"with jealous hearts that start with BLOSSOM curls"
he doesnt say gloss and curls.
ok so i hope that helped someone and dont question me i got these lyrics from my " Hot Fuss" music book.
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The the same guy from "Leave the Bourbon on the Shelf" gets overwhelmed with jealousy. He asks Jenny to go hang out somewhere. The "blanket in the back seat" is a tool. He "takes his babies breathe beneath a chandelier of stars in atmosphere" (strangled her under the sky somewhere). Then it gets a little dicey, I think that he uses the "blanket in the backseat" to wrap her up and throw her into the ocean and "watched her disappear into the midnight show". He keeps asking if you can keep a secret, and at the end he says "you can keep a secret" which to me proves that he does kill her because the best person to keep a secret is a person who can't speak (or dead)
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I think drive faster which I think actually means to thrust, is what heard jenny tell the guy she cheated on him with. . Which explains the part where he says "promise me you'll stay and fix these things I've heard" . . .
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I know I have written here before, but I must add one thing to add a touch of grotesque as I have had a sudden realization.
The Part about "gloss and curls"
"Gloss" could mean the 'stickyness' of flesh during "THE ACT", or the umm...bodily fluids.
"Curls", is the, well...pubes.
I'd hate to post this on here, but to me, it seems to make the song way more vivid. -
If you listen to this song VERY closely, you can hear Brandon sing at what sounds like from a distance, "She said she loved me," twice towards the end. (I believe it starts at 3:10 or 3:11, not sure) This is the reason why the album Hot Fuss is so wonderful. It tells a story ... and there is some interpreting, but mostly they allow their fans to interpret the songs for themselves.This song to me is about a guy who takes a girl out on a date. He likes her, she likes him, but he has a secret that he wants to tell her before they start dating exclusively. (Hence the lyric "if you can keep a secret") Perhaps he might have even taken her to the place where he hid his girlfriend's body, but that is left up to the imagination. He asks her not to leave when he tells her what happened to his last girlfriend. (hence that he "took his baby's breath beneath the chandalier of stars in atmosphere and watched her disappear into the midnight show," beautiful lyric by the way) As he is telling her (loosely Natalie) the story of what happened, he is brought back to how he felt the night he killed her. (loosely Jenny, hence the "drive faster, boy" lyric, which envokes the sense of urgency that (loosely) Andy is telling.) Sorry for all of the "looselys" but I wouldn't want anyone to get the wrong idea that I think EVERY song on Hot Fuss tells the story of what lead up to the murder and afterward, although they are all somewhat closely linked. But I've listened to the entire album both ways, integrating the Jenny, Natalie, and Andy murder trilogy story into it and just listening to the songs for songs. It's wonderful to listen to an album two different ways and it still tells a somewhat dark, complex story. Maybe I hit the interpretation right on the head, maybe I didn't. But that's half the fun of it, isn't it? I have to say that it's by far one of my favorite albums. And the fact that Brandon Flowers is certifiably gorgeous and can really sing doesn't exactly hurt things either.
Do really miss their synth, glam rock days though ... -
So the murder trilogy has three parts. 1.) Leave the Bourbon on the shelf. 2.) Midnight show 3.) Jenny was a friend of mine.
So in Bourbon he's talking to Jenny and saying he won't let her go and that he's not satisfied (probably with her explanation of why she's dumping him or her explanation of how she was not cheating on him). The song starts with her telling him she's got a new place and that she's "letting him go." He says "jennifer you know I always tried, before you say goodbye" He keeps repeating "darling give me one more chance tonight, I swear I'll make it right" So he pretty much gets his ass dumped.
Midnight show:
Right after, he is pissed an jealous of the other man who must have caused the breakup. So he either kills her (took my baby's breath beneath the chandelier) and then drives away, or he throws her in the car and then kills her. The "too many people trying to help me cope" is either him telling her that his friends are all trying to help him get over her, OR it is after he has killed her and she's gone missing for a while that his friends are saying there is still a hope and they are helping him.
Jenny was a friend:
The line he keeps dropping to the police at the station. He is talking to a detective jsut saying they had a "fight on the promenad out in the rain" He denies any reason for killing her and asks if he can leave. He gets away -
I am drawing inspiration of this interpretation from the movie "Psycho" and other interpretations done on this song. If it doesn't make sense bear with me okay?(Also-i will say the word "probably" a lot-just as a warning) Sorry if it's too long.
The Boyfriend is driving to a Midnight Show(Midnight show probably meaning the sea or lake-as in the color "Midnight Black" but containing "stars and atmosphere") The "blanket in the backseat that's on his mind" pobably holds a body(Jenny's I think.) With the part where "she turns her face to speak" he probably hit a bump and it turned her head over and he probably imagined that she told him to drive faster as said in the lyrics: "no one heard her cry, drive faster boy". When he gets to "The Midnight Show", he starts to 'prepare' her body, and he starts to think that after this is done he will get people to "help him cope" with the murder. With him wanting to look up her skirt, he's probably taking her clothes off to hide evidence(to "take a little bit off her mind"). While he's doing this, he thought about back when they "were such a good thing". He says that a "crshing tide can hide a guilty girl" saying that the water will hide her body well. He remembers why he killed her-"with jealous hearts that starts with gloss and curls" probably meaning he saw her having sex with someone else, put a "jealous heart" in this body. With "taking his baby's breath"-meaning water filled her lungs or came into her mouth. The "chandalier of stars and atmosphere" is clearly a metaphor for a sky, or is probably reflected on the water in which she is dumped in. The part where the lyrics repeat "faster, faster, faster" is probably wanting her body to sink deeper into the water. And the whole "secret" part is saying that her body and her heart are holding secrets.
This took forever and damn my fingers are sore.
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