Song Details
- Album Release Date: 2012
- Genre: emo
Song Meaning of “Drown” by Citizen
‘Drown’ by Citizen is a song about the struggles of life, the pain of existence, and the search for an escape from it. The narrator of the song is desperate for an escape from their pain, even if it means death. The lyrics express a sense of loneliness and despair, and of wanting to be alone to process the difficulties of life. The narrator’s desire is to find a way out of the darkness, even if it requires metaphorically “drowning” in the process.
The song opens with a sense of desperation in the lyrics, “I don’t want to feel like this no more, I don’t wanna be so low no more”, expressing the narrator’s intense emotional pain and anguish. This desperation continues to build throughout the song, culminating in the refrain “I wanna drown”. This motif of drowning expresses the desire to get away from it all, to detach from the world and its suffering, even if that requires an end to life itself.
The narrator’s despair intensifies with the bridge “All the wasted time, all the empty roads, I just want a way out of this hole”. This expresses the pointlessness of life, and the longing for an end. The refrain “I wanna drown” is repeated with greater intensity as the narrator increasingly yearns for a way out.
The song ends with a sense of acceptance of the narrator’s plight, with the line “I’m gonna take this one last ride, I’m gonna take myself some place so high”. Even though the narrator is going through a lot of pain and despair, they understand that to move on they must accept what they are going through.
In ‘Drown’, Citizen presents an intense and emotive expression of the struggles of life and the search for an escape. Through the metaphor of drowning, the song explores an intense longing for an end to the suffering, even if that end involves death. The song ultimately shows that even in times of despair, hope and acceptance can be found by facing the difficulties of life.