heyo, my fellow All Time Low fans! after some back and forth, I decided to make the subject of today's post Everything Is Fine! I don't see people talking about this one much, so I consider it to be one of my underrated favorites. it's a little too relatable and it also rings true to today's world in a lot of ways (okay quick little side note, I'm cracking up over how Calm Down started playing when I started typing this cause I look at that song as a foil and/or sequel to EIF). without further ado, let's get into it!
"I think the whole world's crazy" I love this opener. really gets straight to the point. and the whole world is indeed crazy (seriously, what's even going on anymore?). though crazy is an understatement
"I don't want to leave my bedroom" and here's the first of many relatable lyrics throughout this song. I've had this thought so many times, just not wanting to go outside 🫠
"there's a devil on my shoulder and a monster in the television" this lyric scratches my brain just right. I've heard the "devil on shoulder" expression a lot of times, and I think it fits well here. the speaker's dealing with a lot and that voice might be trying to convince him to do something as a result. I took the monster in the television to refer to newscasters/the news. that's often how we learn of what's going on in the world, so I imagine that's the case for the speaker. the monster is real, and it's in his TV
"set me up for failure, all I wanted was some options" I took the first part of this lyric to mean that the speaker feels as if he was set up for failure just by being born in this world as it all falls apart (don't mind the HU reference lol). he just wanted some options that didn't involve having to try and cope with how insane the world feels
"but my only choice is leaving like time is not a crocodile" little bit (heh) morbid, but I do wonder if "leave" is being used as a euphemism for "die" here, like maybe the speaker feels like his only option to escape the madness of the world is to leave it. or alternatively, maybe he means that he feels like he needs to leave certain things behind to try and cope. and I love the peter pan reference in this lyric about the tick-tock-croc
"but I don't mind, I don't mind" the way this lyric gets stretched out is a really nice touch. the speaker is trying his best to sound convincing, but it just shows how much he does mind
"everything is fine and nothing matters" and here we've got the first insistence that everything is fine. the speaker seems to think that if he convinces himself enough that it'll be fine, it'll eventually become true (and isn't that relatable)
"weather's always nice inside my head" and here's one of the multiple times that ATL references the weather in their songs. in a lot of cases, I've noticed that they use it as a metaphor for the mental state. and that's the case here. the speaker's saying that his mental state is good (but is it really?)
"I turn my music up so loud, tired of bullshit, drown it out" this is probably the most relatable lyric in this entire song to me. when I'm not doing well, one of my biggest coping mechanisms is to listen to music and just try to drown everything out for a bit (and surprise surprise, ATL is very often who I end up listening to during those times). the idea of just feeling so done with everything and wanting to drown it out is something that a lot of us can probably relate to
"everything is fine and nothing matters anyway if I don't care" I like how the chorus opens and closes with the same verse. makes me think of a paragraph in an essay and how it has the topic sentence, a couple more, and then the closing sentence (don't mind my English-major self casually nerding out there a bit lol). but moving on, the "if I don't care" tacked onto the end makes a pretty big change to the whole lyric. it's easy for some people to pretend everything is fine, sometimes because they don't care
"pull the curtains back" the speaker is finally opening his curtains after having presumably closed them so he didn't have to look at the crazy world just outside his window. and as we're about to see in the next lyric, it hasn't done anything to change things positively
"I think my neighborhood's on fire again" first of all, again? the neighborhood on fire is a common occurrence? sounds a bit concerning dude 🤨 jokes aside, I love how this lyric follows one that's arguably more casual. it just went from 0 to 100. the speaker trying to ignore everything going wrong didn't fix it
"the kids are not alright it seems, at least they went outside this time" the first thing this lyric made me think of was "The Kids Aren't Alright" by The Offspring. the second thing this lyric made me think of was that the "at least they went outside this time" was a commentary on how kids today often play on devices instead of going outside and how it was seen as an improvement that they went outside this time even if they still aren't alright (or maybe I'm looking too deep into it. but hey, what else are analysis posts for?)
"the gunshot has gone off" welcome to america 🫠 okay moving on, this only adds to my interpretation of this song being about a guy living in the US and seeing everything that's going wrong. crazy how a song from almost a decade ago aged this well. probably even more so than it did back then
"but I am swimming in a footrace" I LOVE how this is worded. everyone's running, but the speaker is swimming. he can't keep up with them all. everyone else is performing in a way that he can't seem to. I'm not sure if this was intentional on ATL's part, but I think this lyric also serves as a nice allegory for being a neurodivergent person living in a neurotypical society. living that kind of life often comes with a sense of unbelonging and not knowing why we can't seem to do what everyone seems to find so easy. ...and now there's another reason why I find this song so relatable
"there's no finish line in sight" oh hey, another relatable lyric. living often feels like running a race with no end in sight. we just keep running and running and wondering when it can end and we can take a rest. I love how ATL words things in their songs
"and they already gave the first place medal" I love how this lyric builds on the previous one. there are times when we feel like we're trying to win the race of life, but then we see that someone already won the proverbial first place medal (i.e. when they achieve something by a certain time and it makes us feel like we're falling behind). and now the speaker is feeling that way
the chorus is repeated here, so I'll skip to the bridge now!
"everything's alright, everything is fine, everything's alright" and here we've got the speaker trying to convince himself (and possibly everyone else too) that everything is fine. like if he just keeps repeating it, it'll become true. as if he wasn't believing it hard enough
alrighty, I'm going to end my lyric interpretation here. as I said a few times throughout this post, I love this song and find it to be a little too relatable. whether it's about how I listen to music when I'm not feeling great or the way I've felt like I'm falling behind in life, this song covers it all. ATL scores again
quick little thing before I wrap up this post: I don't know if anyone remembers this, but I made a little post awhile back about how there are some similarities between Everything Is Fine and Calm Down. I also described Calm Down as an indirect sequel to EIF because of the similarities that I found. my theory here includes that it's the same speaker in both songs, Calm Down is set a few years later, and now the speaker has gone from trying to convince himself everything is fine to doing a complete 180 and now not understanding why or how anyone can be calm when the world is in the state that it's in. I'm planning on making a post about this and going further into depth there sometime in the possibly near future, but I started thinking about this again as I was making the post. so ofc I had to bring it up lol
okay, that wraps up my "Everything Is Fine" essay! I'm still trying to decide for sure which song I want to analyze next week. but as of right now, it's most likely going to be "Tidal Waves". I love that song so much and I've been planning on analyzing it for awhile now. so you can most likely expect that. thanks for reading!
