I'm analyzing this album as if Michael Emerson wrote it, and I'm posting a "teaser" of my analysis of this song while I work on the rest of the album! analysis under the cut because it's very long, also I would love to hear feedback and additional thoughts from you guys
“What have we done with innocence?/It disappeared with time, it never made much sense/Adolescent resident/Wasting another night on planning my revenge”
This applies to musical!Michael as his childhood innocence was seemingly non-existent because of his father. Seeing other children, and his own brother Sam, not having to suffer through what he did would not have felt fair or made sense to him. Teenaged Michael likely did spend time thinking about revenge on his father.
“Don't want to be your monkey wrench/One more indecent accident/I'd rather leave than suffer this/I'll never be your monkey wrench”
“Monkey Wrench” in this refers to the american phrase “Throw a monkey wrench in the gears” which means to come across an unexpected problem that is usually severe. This could mean that Michael wasn't wanted by his father or that his father was disappointed in the kind of person Michael was, I personally read this as hatred of Michael being queer. An “Indecent accident” would be a polite way of putting the fact that people often saw Michael injured and suspected that he was facing possible abuse and did not intervene. If Michael runs away he would not have to take the abuse of his father and could no longer be a disappointment if he was not around.
“Temper/Temper/Temper”
Michael worries that there is a monster inside of him that he will become one day. Michael would be conscious of controlling his temper so as to not attract abuse from his father and to make sure he does not become his father by lashing out and getting angry at his family.
“All this time to make amends/What do you do when all your enemies are friends?/Now and then I'll try to bend/Under pressure, wind up snapping in the end”
The Emersons left Phoenix when Michael was an older teenager, this was a long time he faced abuse and nobody ever tried to protect him and his childhood. He left an abusive father, someone who is supposed to love you unconditionally, and found friends in the lost boys, only to find out that they would perpetuate the cycle of abuse and turn him into a literal monster. Michael is implied to have taken the worst of his fathers abuse to protect Lucy and Sam, he accepted the abuse but knows one day he will likely snap, evidenced by him going after the hallucination of his father with a baseball bat.
“One last thing before I quit/I never wanted any more than I could fit/Into my head/I still remember every single word you said/And all the shit that somehow came along with it/Still there's one thing that comforts me/Since I was always caged and now I'm free”
This is an outlet of Michael’s rage, his last cathartic words to his father. Michael remembers all of the abusive things his father said to him and all of the physical abuse that accompanied it. He now has the comfort of knowing he has broken the cycle of abuse and is free of the shadow of his father.
why do US patriots think they own "red white and blue" there's a lotta red white and blue flags out there. "i stand for the red white and blue" yass me too let's go costa rica 🇨🇷🇨🇷🇨🇷🇨🇷 let's go laos 🇱🇦🇱🇦🇱🇦🇱🇦 fuck it up liberia 🇱🇷🇱🇷🇱🇷 nepal get triangular with it 🇳🇵🇳🇵🇳🇵
I love the fact that when adapting The Lost Boys into a musical the writers saw how in the movie they tricked Michael into drinking David’s blood and went: hey what if David just slit his hand right in front of Michael and said would you drink this and be with me forever? And Michael was like hell yeah.
i love the whole belong to someone->you belong to me transition, because at first it feels like michael is singing that he wants to ‘belong to someone’ in a community/family sense, but then as the play goes on he realized the implications of *belonging to someone* because when david says ‘you belong to me’ he means it in an ownership sense, not family. Also, its gay asf.
WOKE BLAST!!!! 🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️EVERYONE DESERVES CLEAN WATER AND FOOD🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️EVERYONE DESERVES BODILY AUTONOMY ⚧️⚧️⚧️❤️SUPPORT ONE ANOTHER🎨🎨🎨DISCRIMINATION HAS NO PLACE IN THE WORLD🧑🏼❤️💋🧑🏿👩❤️💋👩👨🏿❤️💋👨🏿HUMAN RIGHTS👩🏽🦯➡️👩🏻🦼➡️🧑🏽🦽➡️EVERYONE DESERVES HEALTHCARE💪💪🏿💪🏾💪🏽💪🏼💪🏻🦾 WE DESERVE SUNSHINE
Screaming from the rooftops about how vampires are capitalism and how in TLB that presents as Reaganism and everything that comes with that. How you’re led to believe that the “super evil bad guys” are four heavily queer-coded delinquent punks who are all “fuck the system and counter culture” leading the Good Boy From Nextdoor astray from his family, only for it to be revealed that they’re being controlled by the real big bad evil… a conservative white businessman who’s trying to build a nuclear family.
Some notes on how exactly “vampires=capitalism” for ppl who might not know bc it is a fascinating deep dive and I have written a paper on it for my anthro class:
Vampires historically are rich white dudes w seemingly infinite control and power (both literal power as in mind-control super strength etc and figurative power as in socioeconomic status money influence) who prey on young (poor) people by literally sucking the life out of them
If that doesn’t sound like capitalism idk what does
Vampires=capitalism is not a new thing which is why “vampire” as a genre tends to have a resurgence during times of economic struggle (Twilight and the 2008 recession, the Lost Boys movie and the 1987 stock market crash, the og Interview With a Vampire and the 1973 recession, hell even the Lost Boys musical and everything that’s going on economically now)
i don’t understand “pushing 30” like that is so stupid. why am i pushing 30 away? fuck that, i am pulling 30. i love her, i want her tongue in my mouth
