Annotations for To the End

Lyric: (Say goodnight)
Annotation:
The switch between “say goodbye” and “say goodnight” is deliberate. In the song  “Helena (So Long and goodnight)” the first chorus says “so long, not goodnight.” In this song, they said “say goodbye” originally, suggesting that they could meet again. “Say goodnight” means that it’s a final goodbye (possibly because the Demolition Man also killed all the people at the wedding).

Lyric: (And walk away) From the choice you made
Annotation:
Similar to the lines about wedding vows, this line could be referring to walking away from the choice you made in marrying somebody. In terms of the plot of the album, It could also be about the choice he made to kill the men for the devil.

Lyric: This elevator only goes up to ten
Annotation:
This line is actually really interesting because it could be interpreted as a loose allusion to the concept of Hell without Heaven. This is not farfetched for My Chemical Romance because we see in a lot of their songs, they allude to (specifically Abrahamic) religion (The Foundations of Decay, House of Wolves, Hang ‘Em High, Our Lady of Sorrows, etc.). This line following the line, “Let’s go down!” further pushes the idea that this line is referring to the nine circles of Hell under Earth. It could mean that there is no heaven. However, there are nine circles of Hell and Earth. This line precedes a line that is easily seen as a line regarding homosexuality, which is very similar to “You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us In Prison.” In terms of composition, this is a smart move because it ties the story of the album together. This song being the third song on the album follows up context for the narrative because the story behind this album is that the demolition lovers in the last song of I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love, “Demolition Lovers” have been gunned down and the guy gets sent to Hell. When he is there, he is allowed a deal with the devil stating that if he kills 1000 men, then he will be able to be with his wife again. This song is the first step in this process. We follow the demolition lover crashing a wedding and murdering the attendants.

Lyric: Increase the medication,
Annotation:
This could be a reference to poison, or the leading lady of the song’s drug problems.

Lyric: If you marry me
 Would you bury me?
 Would you carry me to the end?
Annotation:
This verse takes a morbid play on wedding vows, beginning with a standard “If you marry me” introduction, but quickly turning dark as they reference their inevitable death and ask their lover if they will bury them when they die. This line may also be a reference to the line, “Married, buried”, off of the  Nirvana song,  “All Apologies”.

Lyric: (Woah-oh) To the last parade
 (Woah-oh) When the parties fade
 (Woah-oh) And the choice you made
 To the end
Annotation:
Foreshadowing of The Black Parade album, created to represent some of Gerard’s belief of when you die, your happy memories come to take you away on the Black Parade. When the last person dies and the party fades, then the choices you made to “drink the cyanide” all kick in, To the End of the world we go.

Lyric: If you ever say never too late
 I’ll forget all the diamonds you ate (Oh, oh, oh, oh)
Annotation:
PROPOSED SUGGESTION: I think diamonds refers to the vow, like you give diamonds to someone you love as a symbol of eternal love. Eating diamonds means breaking a vow just as chorus says.

Lyric: (And say goodbye) To the last parade
Annotation:
Meaning that she must say goodbye to the very last wedding she had. “The last parade” is meaning the reception from the wedding before her death. Proposed edit: This could also mean the bury of her fiance. As in “The Black Parade” the last parade is a funeral.

Lyric: She drives at ninety by the
Annotation:
(This annotation should also include the last three words of this line, but someone already beat me to it.) She drives so quickly past the perfect and stereotypical people, that they are all just such a blur to her, and she doesn’t see much of them.

Lyric: (Say goodbye) To the vows you take
 (Say goodbye) To the life you make
 (And say goodbye) To the heart you break
Annotation:
She’s dead, she killed herself, she drank cyanide and  In the short story “A Rose for Emily” which this song is based on, Emily kills the man that she loved with poison (arsenic originally) because, as stated in the book, he liked other men. When the song is saying “say goodbye to the hearts you break” it may be referring to Emily and how he had broken her heart by not loving her back. The lyrics are written as if they are speaking directly towards Homer (the man she loved) and telling him to say goodbye to everything in his life, before Emily poisons him.

Lyric: Got nasty blisters from the money she spends
Annotation:
Since Emily’s love interest comes from money, she is sworn into the rich lifestyle. She spends tons of money preparing for her wedding, going as far as buying cufflinks for her beau. However, little does she know, he’s homosexual. When he tells her he’s out, she freaks. She buys arsenic and kills him. Arsenic is a  blister agent, meaning exposure can cause severe, and sometimes lethal, blistering on the skin. It’s more than likely that Emily would get a little bit on herself while finishing off her fiance.

Lyric: Lost in coma and covered in cake (Oh, oh)
Annotation:
The groom has been drugged, and lies unconscious in the wedding cake. This line could allude to the emptiness of her high society life. Her life is so empty that she might as well be in a coma. “Covered in cake” alludes to the opulence she lives in, while still operating within wedding imagery. However, when you think more, being covered in cake would be entirely unpleasant- just like the plastic life she is trapped in.

Lyric: She’s got a life of her own and it shows by the Benz
Annotation:
A Mercedes Benz is a luxury car with prices starting at  over $30,000. If the subject can afford the car, you know that she’s got a nice salary or she is rich enough to afford the car.  In  A Rose For Emily, the title character’s husband is homosexual, and she’s with him for his money, which they both know. They live separate lives and hardly ever associate with each other unless they need to pretend to be a happy couple.

Lyric: Share the vows at the wake
 (Kiss the bride)
Annotation:
… A perfect example of this line can be found in Panic! At The Disco’s  The Ballad of Mona Lisa video. She’s killed her sugar daddy or unsuspecting fiancee, and is at the wake putting on a show of how much she loved him and expressing the vows that she rehearsed for the wedding (knowing it wouldn’t happen to begin with).

Lyric: She keeps a picture of the body she lends
Annotation:
She only has Homer’s body. His mind is not there because he’s dead. there’s a picture of her younger self next to Homer’s dead body on the bed.

Lyric: Down by the pool, he doesn’t have many friends (Oh, oh)
 As they are face-down and bloated, snap a shot with the lens
Annotation:
He doesn’t have many friends because he comes in and out of town just for work. The ones he does have have been chased away or killed.

Lyric: He’s always chokin’ from the stench and the fume
 The weddin’ party all collapsed in the room
 So send my resignation to the bride and the groom
Annotation:
The stench of death is a strong one. The groom has been dead in this house for a long time, and it’s starting to smell. In the case of the short story, the guests would collapse due to the horrible smell. In terms of the  Three Cheers storyline, it’s likely that the protagonist has crashed a wedding party to kill the guests. These murders would get him closer to his goal of killing a thousand souls so he could be reunited with his wife. In this instance, the guests would collapse on the floor, dead. Without the guests there’s no party, so he’ll have to decline the bride and groom’s invite.  MCR guitarist  Frank Iero knows quite a bit about collapsing — it wasn’t uncommon for him to lay on stage while shredding at shows.

Lyric: He’s not around, he’s always looking at men (Oh, oh, oh)
Annotation:
In  “A Rose For Emily,” the story that inspired the song, the main character’s lover is seemingly gay. After the death of her father, she needs company, but can’t reach the love she needs due to her husband’s sexuality. In terms of the album, the male demolition lover may be questioning his sexuality. This wouldn’t be the only time, as he does the same in  “You Know What They Do To Guys Like Us In Prison”: We’re just two men as God had made us But I can’t, well, I can Alternatively, this could be referring to the fact that the  demolition lovers don’t spend too much time together as one of them is always away murdering others.

Lyric: He calls the mansion, not a house, but a tomb
Annotation:
This song is based on the short story  ‘A Rose For Emily’ by William Faulkner. In it, the groom is literally dead in the mansion. Although he stays there, ​he cannot enjoy it because he is dead. An excerpt from the tale reads, For a long while we just stood there, looking down at the profound and fleshless grin. The body had apparently once lain in the attitude of an embrace, but now the long sleep that outlasts love, that conquers even the grimace of love, had cuckolded him.

Lyric: Barbies and Kens
Annotation:
“Barbies and Kens” references plastic dolls. This allusion probably means: preppy, plastic (surgery), nondescript, conforming.

Lyric: And all the cyanide you drank
Annotation:
Cyanide (though in the story, it was arsenic) is what Emily used to kill her fiancee, Homer, in  “A Rose For Emily.” Then again, arsenic is rather hard to rhyme words with. From the  story: ‘I want some poison,’ she said. ‘Yes, Miss Emily. What kind? For rats and such? I’d recom—’ ‘I want the best you have. I don’t care what kind.’

