Annotations for Tomorrows Money

Lyric: You gotta take it from me, I’m gonna take it from you
Annotation:
This continues the idea of “vampires” as meaning people who take from a relationship and don’t give anything back. It’s implying that the narrator is the “vampire” and is encouraging the person he’s addressing to be more of a “vampire” as well in order to make the relationship more equal.

Lyric: When the mixtape plays
 Choke down the words with no meaning
Annotation:
Modern songs (and many other things) that are popular, importan, famous, have most likely no meaning. Geard is trying to criticize this.

Lyric: We got no heroes, ’cause our heroes are dead
Annotation:
The Conventional Weapons songs were originally intended to be part of Danger Days, and in its storyline two of the Killjoys—Jet-Star (Ray Toro) and Kobra Kid (Mikey Way)—are killed, as explained in Jet-Star and the Kobra Kid / Traffic Report. This line is possibly a reference to their deaths, as the Killjoys are/were the heroes of the Danger Days story.

Lyric: While the army wives
 Choke down the war with no meaning
Annotation:
Army wives, the wives of soldiers in the military, are the counterpart to the “kid behind that gun.” These “kids,” have to go fight in a war that has no real value, and is just about feeding the material interests of the already wealthy. When they do, they have to leave behind spouses, friends and everything they care about, and those people just have to suck it up and deal with it as the people they care for are used to fight a war for someone that doesn’t give a shit about them.

Lyric: When the mixtape plays
 Choke down the words with no meaning
Annotation:
This is about the concepts behind things that are popular. In this line, the singer states that the mixtape is words with no meaning, which, based on what is already known about the artist, is probably talking about how popular songs and mainstream media create the illusion of importance, while they actually have no substance whatsoever.

Lyric: The microphone’s got a tap wire!
Annotation:
Tap wires are most often used to listen in on phone conversations. This might symbolize how some fans try to get close to the band by stalking them and trying to learn their feelings, but the band feels like they’re already broadcasting those feelings through their music.

Lyric: You’re loaded up with the fame
 You’re dressing up like a virus
Annotation:
This could be Gerard Way referring to his own habits, that he simply became overburdened with the amount of fame he was getting, and to maintain his image, he began falling into unhealthy habits.

Lyric: I stopped bleeding three years ago
Annotation:
In this line, frontman Gerard Way is referencing his going sober in 2006. Although  Conventional Weapons was released in 2013, the album itself was written in 2009, making it three years since Gerard quit drinking and drugs. In an  interview, he talked about how he felt as if alcohol made him who he was on stage, and how hard it was to get rid of it. [I felt] as though I was trying to be someone fake. It was as though I’d lost the thing that made me Gerard Way. I had to concentrate on being creative, on letting that overtake the alcoholic side.

Lyric: But the words get lost when we all look the same
Annotation:
Sounds like the very definition of “sheeple” but in a very sophisticated and poetic way and it holds in it a warning as well, if you fall in line truth will fall on def ears.

Lyric: Because rebellion’s not a T-shirt you sell
 You keep your money, and I’ll see you in hell
Annotation:
https://twitter.com/gerardway/status/318762684776587268

Lyric: They’re sitting back on an empire
 While the world lays back, puts a kid behind that gun
Annotation:
These lines are about the fact that while the majority of world’s population has to fight for their lives and work hard to survive but it’s a little minority who profits from their sacrifice. These people are taking your money, but don’t care about your life or welfare at all. When you go to a movie theater you buy tickets to see a movie for entertainment and most of the times the creators don’t have any consideration for the public; they just want your money. The same happens in every single aspect of daily life, and money becomes the master of society: if people don’t have money, then they’re basically screwed. In “puts a kid behind that gun”, I say like sometimes young people like 18-30 years old go to war. They’re forced to fight a war way bigger than them, one that is not even about justice anymore, is a military industry feeding  the interests of people who’ll never die in the battlefield.

Lyric: You fell in love with a vampire
 Do you wanna get it for free
Annotation:
My Chemical Romance has long been associated with vampires, most evidently found in the way the dress.  They also include the fictional creatures in their songs, including  “Vampires Will Never Hurt You” and  “Vampire Money.” In this line, vampire may be used as a metaphor instead. Falling in love with a vampire could be talking about a person who likes to take from a relationship and not give back- much like how a vampire would suck blood from a victim at the victim’s expense.

Lyric: Me and my surgeons and my street walking friends
Annotation:
The people that make him who he is.

Lyric: If we crash this time
 They got machines to keep us alive
Annotation:
This line is pretty much a big “screw it.” It’s saying that worrying about death is unnecessary and if anything happens it’s won’t affect you. This mindset can be seen in the following album,  Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys and can be seen in the lines: ‘Cause all the good times They give you cancer If we were all like you in the end Oh, we’d be killing ourselves by sleeping in and We’re never leaving this place alive But if you sing these words, we’ll never die

