Song Meaning

The lyrics paint a picture of fluctuating emotional states, oscillating between vibrant highs and deep lows. The narrator opens by describing days feeling "tangerine" – a bright, perhaps intense, color – contrasted with days feeling "blue." This sets up a core tension: the desire to escape overwhelming feelings, specifically those tied to a past relationship, by "black out" and discarding memories, even while paradoxically holding onto tangible reminders like a photograph. The central conflict seems to stem from the lingering impact of a past love, symbolized by the "tangerine colour / Of your negligee." This vivid image is so potent it drives the narrator to seek distraction, even through financial recklessness like making and giving away money. The act of using the photograph as a coaster, drinking "the overflow," suggests a destructive coping mechanism, attempting to drown out or devalue intense memories and emotions. The writing cleverly uses color as a metaphor for emotional intensity and memory. The "tangerine" represents a specific, perhaps passionate or overwhelming, past experience, while "blue" signifies sadness or depression. The narrator’s actions – taking pictures but then defacing them, making money only to discard it – highlight a struggle between wanting to hold on and needing to let go, a push-and-pull that defines their current emotional landscape. The final lines, "Some days I feel tangerine / Some days I miss you 2," bring the cycle back, suggesting the intense feelings and the longing are still present, even after the attempts to suppress them. This piece resonates because it captures the messy, often contradictory ways people deal with heartbreak and intense memories. The narrator’s actions, while self-destructive, feel deeply human – a desperate attempt to manage overwhelming feelings. The specific, almost mundane details, like using a photo as a coaster, ground the abstract emotional turmoil in relatable, if bleak, actions, making the internal struggle palpable.