Awful

Song Meaning

The lyrics paint a stark contrast between a present moment of joy and an anticipated, dreaded future. The opening lines immediately establish a sense of foreboding, repeating "Tomorrow it was awful" and "Tomorrow it was hard," setting a tone of dread that hangs over the narrative. This future misery is juxtaposed with the immediate present, where "Today we felt delightful" and "Today we feel colossal," suggesting a fleeting, perhaps fragile, happiness. The central tension lies in this temporal dissonance: the overwhelming certainty of future pain versus the vibrant, almost defiant, present joy. The city itself is presented as a dangerous, dual-edged entity, described as "knife and rifle" and later as "fuel and fossil." This imagery implies that the environment is both a source of potential destruction and a necessary, perhaps even volatile, element for progress or survival. The repeated phrase "Tell me whatsoever" in the chorus acts as a desperate plea or a challenge, a demand for clarity or perhaps an acknowledgment of the unknown. It’s a sonic void, a space where the narrator seems to be waiting for an answer or a sign amidst the emotional whiplash. The shift from "nothing" to "laughing" and "celebrate" in Verse 2, alongside the "colossal" feeling, highlights how quickly the perceived future can change, or how the present moment can be amplified to counteract the dread. Ultimately, the effectiveness of these lyrics stems from their raw, almost primal, expression of emotional whiplash. The simple, repetitive structure amplifies the feeling of being caught between two opposing forces – the crushing weight of what's to come and the intoxicating, albeit temporary, relief of the present. The ambiguity of "whatsoever" leaves the listener suspended, mirroring the narrator's own precarious emotional state.