fully understanding what boy division is about was like getting electrocuted and thrown off a bridge
boy division is a black satire. It’s a parodic look at the band’s history, the for-profit music industry, as well as gerard’s struggles with identity, substance, mental illness, and the faults of fame. It’s a firecracker reference to songs and experiences throughout mcr’s career, pseudo-laughing at its own wounds.
one of the key things to understand about boy division is the time period it was written during. the band’s last concert was the famed and disastrous 2008 madison square garden where they had nearly broken up. gerard was already primed with stress and cynicism; the black parade was dead, and gerard’s plans they'd written up way back during bullets had run their course. the band was essentially left without a narrative identity. despite all this, the band’s label was pressuring them to create another album they had no spark for. this is the context boy division was created under, which informs its panicked and mockingly retrospective tone.
the first lines in the song already drip with sarcasm, setting up this theme of ironic self-destruction. gerard is talking to themselves, the audience, and the music industry; would you lay back and watch them flay themselves open for your own entertainment/profit? because gerard certainly has; they've spoken many times about how they fell over and over again into the trap of feeling like they could only create art when on the brink of falling apart. this song lays out their fear at having that cycle repeated.
the next lines make me go batshit for obvious reasons:
this is a direct reference to bury me in black which is already insane on its own. bury me in black, at least in my and many others’ reading, is about gender identity and yearning for conceptual femininity, likening lipgloss to heroin and lipstick to battle scars. in boy division, these lines are sarcastic, almost like it’s mocking gerard’s lyrical identity struggles and how they dressed during revenge as well as how the industry ‘bought’ their casket outfit, another jab at profit over creativity.
these are probably the most famous lines in boy division which. yeah. makes sense. not only is this another dig at stage costumes, it's also a glaring reference to the don’t ask don’t tell US military policy. gerard had an unofficial ‘code of silence' during mcr that didn't allow them to admit if they were gay or straight, and these lines could easily be about that experience.
remember the self-destruction motif? gerard makes it explicit here. this is such a raw chorus because they're a blip of unfiltered truth behind all the angry mockery. they don't want to fall into this cycle again, but they don't know if they can save themselves on their own.
this is an interesting line; danger days has a bonus track called ‘we don't need another song about california’, which is a glaring point of irony. it's almost as if gerard was mocking danger days before it was even finished. this reads as another satirical insult against the band’s label pushing them to make another album despite their exhaustion.
okay. this verse is tough. gerard is essentially mocking his own cocaine addiction, in a way that’s self-flagellating instead of comedic. he’s talking once again about self-destruction, and how he feels he gave his enemies (addiction, illness, etc.) the very weapons they needed to kill him. this verse is stating its self-awareness of the cycle that gerard's been in before and are falling into again. you'd think the sentiment would be sweetened by its joking tone, but the second prechorus kinda dashes that to bits.
this is the hidden thesis statement of the song. gerard lays it out flat here: the satire is a facade. the song isn't funny. it’s not a joke. working within a massive industry, having to stay closeted, struggling with creating art outside of crisis, the endless cycle they can’t seem to break out of, these are all real things they’ve gone through.
this is a third dig at the revenge/black parade costume visuals, and i second @milfygerard 's statement that it’s also a reference to fashion statement, another song that can be read as being about identity and presentation. even the title is incredibly explicit; it’s not a fashion statement, it's a fucking deathwish. the title admits that the way gerard dressed during revenge was more than just theatrics, but spoke to something about them that would prompt harm from other people. once again, femininity is the cause of external violence. pair the prechorus together, and it reads as gerard admitting the very thing bury me in black tries to shove away; that their glam theatrics, their morbid femininity, the way they dressed, none of it was ever a joke, and it was dangerous enough that they tried to pass it off as one.
boy division is a song about identity; as a creative group, as an artist, and as a person. the high-energy pace of the track highlights the irony of the lyrics as well as the manic anxiety in the face of a potentially directionless band. the rest of the song repeats the vampire money lyric 'we got the bomb', rising in volume until the track ends with gerard in a full-throated scream, threatening to blow everything he'd sung about to bits. as we learned a few years later, he actually had wished they'd ended the band after black parade was over. they hadn't been able to pull the grenade pin, and maybe that was a mistake.
none of this is meant to be a downer. boy division was always one of my favorite songs because of how self-aware it was. i thought they'd never make another song that was as revealing. then foundations blew it out of the water. to me, boy division and foundations are black mirror images of each other, both reflecting on the scars that mcr left on the band and gerard, both criticizing how they dealt with those scars, but where boy division ends with destruction, tearing it to shreds before anything else could happen, foundations ends with a hopeful call to action. what a fucking progression that is.
