What Does It Mean? And Why Did I Care So Much?

I enjoy trying to figure out the message and the meaning of different types of media; whether it be songs, books, movies or TV. I want to understand the perspective of the artist that is behind the song.

            A song that I’ve spent a fair amount of time deciphering lately is “Through Glass” by Stone Sour. Take a minute and at least scan through the lyrics. Here’s the link to the song on Grooveshark; listen to that if you so desire. Musically, it appeals to pretty much everybody.  

I thought for awhile that this song was just postmodern. It didn’t really mean anything at all; but that’s really not the case. Let’s take a look at some key lyrical points in the song.  

“I'm looking at you through the glass
Don't know how much time has passed”

“I” (We don’t know who the singer is yet) is looking at somebody else, through some kind of barrier, and has been for so long that they don’t even know how long they’ve been doing it.

“So while you're outside looking in
Describing what you see
Remember what you're staring at is me”

So the singer is “in” he is being stared at and dehumanized in some way; and he is asking that we remember that he is an actual person.

From the previous two passages, here is what we know so far:

1. There is a transparent barrier that is keeping people from the singer.
2. People look through this barrier for long periods of time
3. People mentally dehumanize the singer

With those three points in mind, let’s keep going

“How much is real?
So much to question
An epidemic of the mannequins
Contaminating everything

We thought came from the heart
But never did right from the start” 

Those first two lines are what made me call this song postmodern for as long as I did; but that’s not what it is. Look at the lines after it. What are mannequins? They’re fake people. Fake people. Contaminating everything we thought was from the heart; but it never did.  

So now, here’s what we know:

4. There are people involved who the singer thought were “real”.
5. These people are “fake” and are “contaminating” something that the singer thought was pure
6. This “contaminated” stuff has always been contaminated.

Okay, now for me to reveal the advantage that I had while I was analyzing: I was aware that two out of the four band members (The vocalist/lyricist and the guitarist) are also members of Slipknot. What is one thing that Slipknot’s famous for? They wear masks onstage; which would definitely lead to the dehumanization of the performers by the audience. And here’s a quote from the vocalist Corey Taylor

 "Originally, we were just going to wear the jumpsuits [...] we figured we might as well take that further and number ourselves. [...] We were basically saying, 'Hey, we're a product!'"

This would definitely lead to the perception, even if it were subconscious; of himself and his fellow band members as “fake” Now we seem to be getting somewhere, but first, we need to look at two more key lyrics.

“And it's the stars
The stars that shine for you, yeah ah
And it's the stars
The stars that lie to you, yeah yeah

Oh when the stars
Oh when the stars they lie.”

Now, we need to clarify something. These lyrics came from elyrics.net. If you Google “Through Glass lyrics”; look at the top four results and scroll down to the very bottom of each, all of them have different interpretations of that last line. My proposal: They’re all wrong. That last line should read “Oh we’re the stars, Oh we’re the stars that lie”. Take a listen (start at 4:25), and decide if I’m right or wrong.

The key question here is if he’s talking about literal or metaphorical “stars”. Since the stars “lie to you”; I think we can safely classify them as metaphorical. Slipknot and Stone Sour both definitely count as “stars” of the music world. And if you believe my interpretation of the last two lines, then Corey Taylor is openly declaring “We are stars. We shine for you (meaning, so you can enjoy our music) but we’re lying to you. We’re fake.”

This, I believe, is what this song is really declaring. It is someone on “the inside” declaring to those on the “outside looking in” that the people they see are “mannequins”. That what they produce is just that, a product, it’s not anything that came “from the heart”. The singer may have believed it was when he got into the music world; but since he has realized that it’s all “contaminated” (Note that he said “WE thought (the contaminated stuff came from the heart”). Taylor is telling his audience that he and his fellow music-makers are fake; that they merely produce a product, and that product happens to be music.

But now the real crux of the matter. At church the last couple of weeks, we’ve discussed two questions. Taking the premise of “We are all worshipers”, the questions become: A) What do you worship? B) What should you worship? And I determined that while I do worship God; the question came to mind: “What if you spent this much time doing this kind of analysis on the Bible, rather than the rantings of secular heathens?” Ad thus, I decided I was going to put my thoughts down on paper, be done with it, and go apply my analytical powers, such as they are, to the Word of God, which will in the end, serve me much better than analyzing Corey Taylor.