20 dollar nose bleed analysis: fourteen carats but no clarity

so, i recently received an ask asking me to analyze 20 dollar nose bleed, and in trying to post the ask with the analysis it literally vanished lmao! so, i'm posting it instead like this <3

the song is a very interesting and complex one that was Quite daunting to analyze, so i can only hope i did it justice and that u enjoy reading this! analysis is under the cut:

So, to analyze 20 dollar nose bleed, we’re gonna start off, naturally, with the first verse and break it down lyric by lyric, with said first verse going, “Have you ever wanted to disappear? / And join a monastery, go out and preach on Manic Street? / Who will I be when I wake up next to a stranger / On a passenger plane? (Passenger plane)” 

The interesting thing about these lyrics is that we have direct confirmation from fob/pete (via genius verified annotations) that the first two lines are about Richey Edwards, who was the rhythm guitarist of rock band Manic Street Preachers, who went missing in 1995 and was presumed dead in 2009. Pete says that the first piece, “Have you ever wanted to disappear? / And join a monastery,” is a direct juxtaposition to the “go out and preach on Manic Street.” And that direct juxtaposition is absolutely the most notable thing about these lyrics, with a monastery being a holy place, typically portrayed as very quiet and simple in terms of commodities, etc., versus rockstar life which is literally the exact opposite- being constantly very chaotic and loud and complicated, not to mention not being very holy, typically speaking. What I believe is that the narrator here is questioning, maybe themselves, maybe somebody else, or just in general, if the ‘you’ have ever wanted to disappear from this life to join a monastery, to have this quiet, simple life away from everybody and everything, or if you’ve ever wanted to disappear into being a rockstar, away from yourself and everybody and everything in a completely different way. Either way, you’re losing yourself to one extreme or another. You’re disappearing into it. I could also see this in connecting back to Richey Edwards, saying have you ever wanted to disappear from the rockstar life? As common with fob songs, i honestly feel it could be meaning both things, and overall the meaning is- pick your poison onto how you wanna escape yourself and your life.

To move onto the second portion of the verse, the narrator begins to question, who will they be if they wake up next to a stranger on a passenger plane? Which is continuing this idea of disappearing, i think. i believe this is meant to be playing with the idea that, on a plane, nobody knows who you are, you’re as good as disappeared when you’re on a plane surrounded by people who don’t know you. So, truly, who will you be if you wake up next to a stranger on a passenger plane? When you could be anybody, you could make them believe you’re anybody, you can use this as an opportunity to escape yourself and your life, who will you be? 

Then, the pre-chorus kicks in, with the lyrics going, “Oh, permanent jet lag, please take me back (Please take me back) / Please take me back, I'm a stray dog / Sick, please let me in (Please let me in), the mad key's / Tripping, singing vows before we exchange smoke rings”, which is a series of some real fun, tricky lyrics lmao. The permanent jet lag, in my mind, no doubt connects to the lyric directly before it- perhaps, the narrator is now regretting all the hoping and wishing and trying to be another person, they feel permanently jet lagged now, permanently exhausted and bleary and not fully there and they just want to go back. Back to where is the imperative question and severely up to interpretation, I’ll offer a few options- back to who they were before possible fame, before they started trying to disappear, before they got dependent on drugs (this song is so about drugs), or just… back to a better time for them, in general. The stray dog lyric also has some verified annotations by fob/pete, with him saying that it’s, about that moment where you’re so desperate to come back, you’re like a stray dog, which can either be pathetic or endearing depending on your perspective. To me, this really cooberates what i’m already saying about this pre-chorus- they’re desperate to be let back to where they were before, before things went wrong. Now, the ‘mad key’ reference took a bit of looking into, but apparently a ‘key’ is sometimes used as another term for a drug dealer, which i feel could be very applicable to the themes of this song (drugs), it could also just be a reference to say they don’t have the key to get back to where they long so desperately to be. Either way, the last pre-chorus lyric’s meaning is pretty clear to me, thankfully- they’re making promises, vow-like promises, before exchanging smoke rings, which is almost positively a drug reference. it screams of unseriousness, lack of commitment, the vows are being sung and the rings are made of smoke. they’re doped up on drugs, they’re desperate and yearning and not themselves. these vows are not real and the rings are as flimsy a commitment, to whoever or whatever this specific lyric could be about, as the smoke is.

After that insane pre-chorus, we get into the possibly more insane chorus, saying, “Give me a pen, call me Mr. Benzedrine / But don't let the doctor in, I wanna blow off steam / And call me Mr. Benzedrine (Mr. Benzedrine) / But don't let the doctor, don't let the doctor in”. The first thing we need to establish here, now that we’ve gotten the core of the drug theme, is what benzedrine is- it’s a form of amphetamine used for depression, as well as PTSD and those with sleeping troubles (it’s a stimulant!), with some of the side effects possibly pertinent to the song being drowsiness and nose bleeds (snorting it is a common way of ingestion also). This starting with ‘give me a pen, call me Mr. Benzedrine’ automatically has me thinking it is just an all around drug reference with the narrator alluding to the fact they’re snorting benzedrine to try and aid them with their problems. They’ve already alluded to having depression and permanent jetlag (drowsiness/problems with sleep, perhaps?) through lyrics before this, making it perhaps no surprise that they’re going to the lengths of snorting this medication to try and help them. Help take them back to where they so desperately wanna go back to, maybe? With the second lyric of the chorus, “But don’t let the doctor in, I wanna blow off steam” saying to me that they’re basically taking these drugs, perhaps to a concerning extent, but are then going and saying they don’t want help, they don’t want a doctor, they don’t want people to show concern for them or what they have going on, they just wanna let off steam. They just wanna cope in their own way without intervention, so don’t let the doctor in.

After the chorus, we have the second verse, which states, “It feels like fourteen carats, but no clarity, when I look at the / Man who would be king, the man who would be king / Goes to the desert, the same war his dad rehearsed / Came back with flags on coffins and said, "We won, oh, we won"”. This is an interesting break from the themes we’ve already had in this song, as before we’ve had the narrator talking only of their disillusionment with their own personal life and reality and the troubles they’re going through to cope with those feelings. However, here, it seems they’ve shifted from speaking on their disillusionment with their own life to their disillusionment with the world. The very first line is essentially saying that not everything is as it seems- a diamond can be hyped up as being so big and expensive, but end up being horrible quality. This allusion could be made about anything- what you’re told is not always reality. What you want to be reality isn’t always reality. This almost feels the thesis statement for the song, honestly (there is a reason i titled this analysis with this!). And if not for the whole song, definitely for this verse, as the rest of the verse is a direct commentary on George W. Bush (former President of the United States) and the wars he launched in the Middle East (specifically Iraq and Afghanistan). Many protested the wars as being incredibly destructive and terrorizing on the countries impacted by them, not to mention not being fair fights and being possible fronts for America to enter the Middle East for oil and exploit them. This stance is the one being taken with these lyrics, as the lyrics are essentially saying that the “man who would be king” (Bush), goes to the desert (Middle East) to terrorize the Middle East just like his father (also a former horrible president) did, only to come back claiming he won with thousands of soldiers dead due to his actions, bitingly calling out the celebration of victory when so much life was lost so tragically for virtually no reason.

Before the spoken word piece at the end of the song, there is only two other lines that are deviating from the pre-chorus and chorus we’ve already discussed, with those lines being, “Only one book really matters, the rest / Of the proof is on the television, on the,” I feel as though these lyrics really summarize a lot of what we’ve already talked about in a way, that way being that it really conveys further disillusionment for the state of things and is a biting commentary of that. The narrator is saying, what a lot of people truly believe, that the only book in the world that matters is the Bible, with nothing else being worth reading or trusting, while the rest of the ‘proof’ (proof of what is laid out in the bible, beliefs and morals that people blindly follow) is on the television. People will so often just blindly follow religion or what they see on the news and never dare to look deeper into things, keeping so much of the world cut off (sort of like the lyric is cut off at the end of it) or censored from themselves.

The spoken word part is as follows, and is a lot to unpack so we’re gonna try to do it lyric chunk by lyric chunk, “It's not me, it's you / Actually, it's the taxidermy of you and me / Untie the balloons from around my neck / And ground me / I'm just a racehorse on the track / Send me back to the glue factory / Always thought I'd float away / And never come back / But I've got enough miles on my card / To fly the boys home on my own / But you know me, I like being all alone / And keeping you all alone / And the charts are boring, and the kids are snoring / And my ego's in a sling / You say you're not listening and I said I'm wishing / And I said…I said!”

To start dissecting this, we’ll look at the section, “It’s not me, it’s you / Actually, it’s the taxidermy of you and me / Unite the balloons from around my neck / And ground me / I’m just a racehorse on the track / Send me back to the glue factory / Always thought I’d float away / And never come back”. Though this seems like a lot to look at at once, it’s relatively easy to boil it down to the fact the narrator is back to speaking about their disillusionment with their own life and problems, speaking to a possible romantic partner in saying the classic breakup line of, it’s not you, it’s me, except turned on its head to directly blame the other person instead of taking blame. They’re also saying, though, that the blame isn’t exactly on the other person directly but is more on the fact that the relationship was already dead (taxidermy of you and me). They’re then asking this person, symbolically, to untie balloons from around their neck and let them be grounded. This could be saying their partner was putting them up on a sort of pedestal, putting them above others, but with the line ‘I’d always thought I’d float away / And never come back’ working with this, I definitely believe this position of floating above others was a point of stress for our narrator as they felt they’d never be able to get away from this situation and could never come back from it, perhaps even choking them and being disorienting, causing them to need to be grounded. They then go on to say they’re like a racehorse on the track that needs to be sent to the glue factory, essentially saying they’re past their prime and needs to be killed and turned into something that can be useful again (old horses used to literally be made into glue. This is also referencing that). 

The spoken word continues, with the narrator once again shifting focus from themself to the world/politics and their disillusionment with those things, saying, “But I've got enough miles on my card / To fly the boys home on my own”, where pete, once again verified on genius, said, “the idea that in some capacity that the i could fly the boys in iraq & afghanistan home on my miles if the gov wouldnt fly them back :(“

To end the spoken word section, and the song analysis as a whole, it ends with, “But you know me, I like being all alone / And keeping you all alone / And the charts are boring, and the kids are snoring / And my ego's in a sling / You say you're not listening and I said I'm wishing / And I said…I said!” with our narrator essentially saying that find comfort in loneliness and being alone, and finds satisfaction in making others feel his loneliness as well (I want to keep you as lonely as me so you can get addicted to this vibes, showing this is a sentiment shared in fob songs previously). The line about charts is a bit of a stand out, as being one of the most obvious ones about fame and pop culture, continuing to show the narrator is just generally sharing their displeasure with things of the world, here stating a fact that the charts, the popular songs perhaps made with less heart, with the kids in mind less, are boring and causing ‘the kids’ to snore, to lose interest in music and art and fall out of touch with it, causing the narrator’s ego to hurt because well… i keep saying ‘narrator’ because that’s just how i do these things but this is about pete, and it is no question that kids falling out of love with music would be detrimental to his ego- sorry to get out of my analyzing persona here but it’s the only way i could think to put this part lmao. Anyways! The song ends with the narrator being not listened to, and them then trying to scream how they’re feeling and what they’re saying to be seen and heard like they want to be.

This song is a very very complex, interesting one, detailing all of the troubles and complaints and gripes of a person struggling with mental illness and perhaps even losing their grip on reality some, or at least on the reality they want to be in. it’s a depressing thing to want to be a different person, only to realize you don’t like who you ended up changing into, or realize that no matter how much you change you can never go back to when you were truly happy. And turning to unhealthy coping mechanisms like drugs don’t help either, especially when it feels like the world around you is dashing your spirits and hope constantly as well. Where is there to escape when even your escape is riddled with problems? As the title of this analysis says, and as i stated earlier as well, everything truly can feel like fourteen carats but have no clarity.