As I'm fond of saying... the pills won't help you now, but a wee bit o' charlie will have you well sorted in no time.

OK so I lied when I said I didn't have much more to add. :P Darkstar brings up an interesting point about having a connection to the lyrics, even if he was talking about LCD Soundsystem (All My Friends is a fantastic tune) - I know I've mentioned before about the connection I have with the Pills Won't Help You Now. Same goes for Battle Scars, and earlier on with The Test and to a degree Golden Path. These songs managed to capture so many things I've felt then and how I feel now... Anyway, it's not like there's reams of poetry going on in The Pills Won't Help You Now, but what's said can speak volumes if you let it, and the overall feeling of the song from the way it swells and emotes right down to the feeling of familiarity I get when I apply it to me personally - it all hit home. I can't accurately put into words how this song has affected me. Not without sounding incoherant.

oh...i always just thought about it as being when you get to the state where no pill is going assist you in that particular moment. Maybe that's a bit of american interpretation because here we have f00k1ng pills for everything.

I disagree fully with it being about coming to any sort of terms. I believe it is purely a song about recognition of a temporary state and not necessarily anything dealing with any sort of large amount of time.

oh but i just want to say that this is my interpretation of it and though I disagree I respect everyone else's interpretations.

The "coming to terms" part I meant in relation to 'All My Friends', not TPWHYN. Sorry for any confusion. I had gone off on a bit of a tangent...

the song is about people getting really old...as in having to go to an old folks home and whatnot. I think another song that would kinda relate is LCD's "Someone Great", but an even better song to link it with would be the Verve's "The Drugs Don't Work".

"....you're probably poisoning your body"

"...Now the drugs don't work, they just make you worse...."

lol @ Darkstar - tangents are sometimes the best times!

Ok I know i have posted in the WATN thread but here is my slant on TPWHYN ;-)

For anyone who wishes them here is what i believe to be the lyrics to:

The Pills Won’t Help You Now

I thought we were going

To go up the field and wait

To join all the other living souls

But you never came

Robbed of your fortune

They gave disappointments and lies

You’re probably poisoning your body

I hope you’re alright

In the moment I feel

You dig in your heels

The pills won’t help you now

Why don’t you come?

I thought we were going

To go up the field and wait

To join all the other living souls

But you never came

Robbed of your fortune

They gave disappointment in life

You’re probably poisoning your body

I hope you’re alright

In the moment I feel

You dig in your heels

The pills won’t help you now

Why don’t you come?

Robbed of your fortune

They gave disappointments and lies

You’re probably poisoning your body

I hope you’re alright

In the moment I feel

You dig in your heels

The pills won’t help you now

Why don’t you come?

In the moment I feel

You dig in your heels

The pills won’t help you now

Why don’t you come?

I just think that they make more sense, as whoever didnt go to the field is obviously out their head and being paranoid etc etc and saying "no fucking way am I going" and "No fucking way i'm calling you either as I have been dissapointed before and I have been lied to" but what the tune is saying is that no matter where you are and if you dig in your heels, pills wont help you as you are too far gone.

You are F.U.B.A.R

What say you???

;-) Wullie

'The Pills Won't Help You Now' is about a guy with a really bad case of constipation. He tries to put some suppositories in his asshole, but sadly it doesn't help and our protagonist dies of a really big turd that ruptures his rectum.

Jeanie said : I always thought it said " in the morning field - youre digging your heels "

.

.

.

Same here. Damn French ears :(

TheThinker, I think your interpretation also applies. I see what you mean when comes a point of, ehm, saturation, where you've gone too far and nothing can help you now. FUBAR, hahaha.

Not so sure about forumslipmin's take, though. The constipation/suppositories is a whole new assessment that I really can't get behind. Heh. Bad pun on my part, I know.

Can't be antidepressants because you have to take them for at least ine month before they start working (their principles build up in the blood till the "effect level" is reached). Antidepressants have no immediate effects, while I think the song pills do. I believe it's talking about E or anxiolytic drugs as they work immediately.

tidbit from an interview I posted earlier this year:

In addition, they find themselves being hailed as a formative influence on a new wave of bands, not least another of their guests on We Are the Night, the Klaxons. The Chemical Brothers' partnership with the chart-topping new rave pioneers was not without incident. "They appeared straight from a gig in Bologna, looking a bit ... sweaty," says Rowlands, "and we thought, 'Oh dear.' Then they said they'd recorded this idea on a mobile phone and got it out and played ... well, I don't know what you'd even call it."

"It was sort of humming, wasn't it?" frowns Simons. "Then they decided they were going to sing Arnold Layne by Pink Floyd over the top of the music we'd done. We steered them away from that idea. But they were great. They were so full of energy and confidence and ideas. They'd just had a No 1 album, they were on tour, they were full of the joys of living. One of them was sitting in the living room writing lyrics, the other was singing. It was really cool to be with them."

Indeed, the most likely explanation for their upbeat mood is We Are the Night itself. The duo are justly proud of the album, which is, as bissett would have it, xcellent: a return to peak form after the patchily brilliant Push the Button and Come With Us. It pulls off the trick of sounding both coherent and wildly diverse. Aside from bissett and the Klaxons, it features both former Pharcyde rapper Fatlip - last spotted mired in cocaine abuse and accidentally courting a transvestite in the Spike Jonze documentary What's Up Fatlip? - and on the album's heartbreaking finale, The Pills Won't Help You Now, an aching performance from acclaimed Americana band Midlake. "I think the song's about someone in an old people's home," says Simons. "There's a line in it about people robbing you of your fortune, another about relying on other people. We asked for a title, thinking it was going to be something poetic, and he goes The Pills Won't Help You Now. The titles for the album have gone up on the internet," he chuckles, "and everyone thinks it's going to be our big, druggy acid-house classic: 'Yeah, the pill won't 'elp yer nah, mate.'"

Yeah, but that's just Ed's take on it. He could be as wrong as the rest of you.

ha! I'm in a "haha" kinda mood today. Downright giddy. I just love this bit:

"The titles for the album have gone up on the internet," he chuckles, "and everyone thinks it's going to be our big, druggy acid-house classic: 'Yeah, the pill won't 'elp yer nah, mate.'"

And where else would they have read the "ooooo, that's gonna be an acid house 4-to-the-floor epic stormer!!" predictions. :lol:

stashkill, my take is Ed could be as right as the rest of us. ;)