Annotations for Teenagers

Lyric: They’re gonna rip up your heads, your aspirations to shreds
Annotation:
“they” are refering to the goverment making teenagers “normal” saying they shouldnt stand out, but fit in

Lyric: Because they sleep with a gun and keep an eye on you, son
 So they can watch all the things you do
Annotation:
Adults are often scared of teenagers; they fear teenagers might do something stupid and get into trouble, or even worse something against them. The parents sleeping with a gun can be taken both literally (they sleep with a weapon near them so they can use it if their kids threaten them) or metaphorically (they’re always watching what their kids do and can react if they see they are behaving in a wrong way).

Lyric: They could care less as long as someone’ll bleed”
Annotation:
The narrator says that grown-ups think teenagers don’t give a shit about anything, just wanting to obtain what they came for, regardless of the cost.

Lyric: Another cog in the murder machine
Annotation:
High school kids segregate themselves into cliques based on merit, appearance, intelligence, family, social status, gender, and personality. During public school & the early years of high school they tend to ostracize those who don’t fit in, and while this does eventually change, most kids are forced to conform to the whims of other kids for a time. While this is ultimately worth it for the friendship, support, social status, and emotional attachment. Lots of kids struggle to suppress the urge to act out all their desires, and those who don’t become emo kids who complain about everything, mostly conformity, while conforming more than anyone else and wiping out individuality by being mutually miserable, dressing the same, acting the same, listening to the same music, etc;

Lyric: Because the drugs never work, they’re gonna give you a smirk
 ’Cause they got methods of keeping you clean
Annotation:
The “drugs never work” line might be a double-entendre. In the sense that the drugs don’t work (from a teen’s POV) because you are bored, lonely and stressed out, and your parents are gonna fuck you over and not let you have any fun doing drugs. Or the drugs don’t work (from an adult’s POV) because Ritalin isn’t keeping your little spawn of Satan from misbehaving and not giving a shit about anything.

Lyric: So darken your clothes or strike a violent pose
 Maybe they’ll leave you alone, but not me
Annotation:
“Darken your clothes and strike a violent pose” shouldn’t be taken in the literal meaning here. Darken your clothes would mean keeping a low-profile, not making too much noise, or the alternative (strike a violent pose), which is going all out and confronting the teenagers with a strong pose. In this sense, the narrator still mocks the adults, who think they can get away from their kids by doing what I’ve explained above, but the narrator  WILL NOT stop fucking with them.

Lyric: They said, ”All teenagers scare the living shit out of me
Annotation:
This is a teen talking, or pretending to talk, from an adult’s point of view, mocking what an adult might think of those trouble-making teens. Gerard Way actually came up with this song whilst he was on the subway. A bunch of teenagers were getting out of school and “they were breaking shit and being crazy”.

Lyric: But if you’re troubled and hurt, what you got under your shirt
 Will make them pay for the things that they did
Annotation:
“What you got under your shirt” could refer to a gun or other weapon that the teenager is hiding under it. Perhaps he plans to get revenge on those that wronged him by shooting/hurting them, or even to intimidate them enough that they’ll see their wrong-doings because they don’t wanna get hurt.  Alternately, it could refer to the scars on his body caused by either himself or the bullies that wronged him, which lay dormant under his shirt. In response, he would use that body to get revenge on the bullies/whoever caused him to make him harm himself in the first place, with or without a weapon. Or he would show those scars to them so that they would see what they did to him in the hopes that they may regret what they’ve done. In the music video, the dancers pull out nightsticks and pretend to shoot them like guns at Gerard, further making the “gun” interpretation more valid.  The possible allusion to shooting up a school in these lines is the reason why it says “violence is never the answer” at the end of the music video: to let the audience know that MCR isn’t really endorsing that you shoot up your school to get back at the ones that wronged you.

Lyric: The boys and girls in the clique, the awful names that they stick
 You’re never gonna fit in much, kid
Annotation:
A stereotype that popular kids, or bullies is that they give less popular kids bad nicknames. If you are the one receiving this mistreatment you will probably not have a good time in high school. In these lines we switch the focus of the teen’s monologue. Now the parent’s aren’t the only problem, the other kids are too.

Lyric: They’re gonna clean up your looks with all the lies in the books
 To make a citizen out of you
Annotation:
The focus itself of the song is illustrated perfectly in these lines. Adults think they know everything and so they’ll try and change us, teenagers, because they don’t like the way we are. It’s the perfect way to express the “us against them” mentality most teens have. This could mean that the adults are trying to get teenagers to act a certain way, by sometimes lying. All for the means of making them a “responsible adult”

