Snow Patrol dedicated this song to their canine companions. After “Barking at the Wind” and “Sniffing Butts,” it is still the third most played song ever. Possibly it’s not meant for canine consumption. Or anything else, for that matter, concerning dogs. However, dogs are mentioned in the Chasing Cars lyrics. The idea of the song is less important than the story behind the lyrics of the song and the opening lyrics, as Lightbody indicates in a YouTube Interview with Classic Channel.
Read on to find out the meaning behind the show’s lyrics and the subject matter of Snow Patrol’s biggest hit to date.
Chasing Cars Song Lyrics and their Meaning
Within years after its release, Snow Patrol’s Chasing Cars became one of the band’s most popular songs, and it was recently found to be the highest-played song on British radio in the past two decades. Gary Lightbody, the band’s lead singer, wrote this pensive ballad. It became widely known in the United States after being featured in the May 15th, 2006, final series of the series drama Grey’s Anatomy.
Lightbody called it the cleanest love music he had ever composed, and the lyrics were meant to convey the depth of his feelings for his partner at the time. The vocalist expresses his hopes and dreams for the future of the connection he is now in through the song’s lyrics. On June 6th, the same year, the band recorded Chasing Cars as the second album of “Eyes Open,” their fourth album, and the single track became the biggest hit, as noted in an article posted on the Smooth Radio website.
The record reached a peak of six on the UK Chart Singles and number 5 on the US Hot 100 Billboard, and it was the fourteenth best-selling track in the UK all of 2006. It has sold more copies than any other single by Snow Patrol. Before we dive into our interpretation, let’s examine the full lyrics.
Chasing the Cars Meaning in the Song
Lightbody delivers the lyrics of a song to his companion in the third stanza: “Let’s spend time chasing vehicles around our minds.” As the song’s final three words make clear, “chasing vehicles” is a symbolic statement, not a literal one. Gary Lightbody’s father used the idiom, “you’re similar to a pup chasing a vehicle,” to characterize his son’s ardor for a certain woman. Lightbody later admitted that he had gotten the statement from his dad.
You’ll never be able to get it, and even if you could, you’d have no idea how to use it. Lightbody wasn’t intending to imply that he and his girlfriend were wasting their time together; rather, he just wanted to spend quality time with her while doing nothing except talking. In the chorus, the singer asks, “Could you sleep with me and ignore the world if I simply lay here?”
The Guitar clarifies that Lightbody’s adoration for the object of his affection is returned in the lyrics, proclaiming, “All which I am, everything that I once was, is present in your gorgeous eyes. They’re everything I’m able to see.” Consequently, he can deduce her emotions from how she stares at him. The sparse instrumentation, primarily consisting of an alternating two-guitar pattern, works well with the music’s words.
Lyrics
We’ll do it all
Everything
On our own
We don’t need
Anything
Or anyone
If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
I don’t quite know
How to say
How I feel
Those three words
Are said too much
They’re not enough
If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
Forget what we’re told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that’s bursting into life
Let’s waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads
I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own
If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
Forget what we’re told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that’s bursting into life
All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes, they’re all I can see
I don’t know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things will never change for us at all
If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Gary Lightbody / Jonathan Quinn / Natah Connolly / Paul Wilson / Tom Simpson
Chasing Cars lyrics © O/B/O Capasso, Universal Music Publishing Group
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