Hey, Hey - Intellectual

Similar to the previous annotation. However, this time the final line is “are you really what you dream.” This is him recognizing that she has hopes for what they will become if they get back together, just like he does- and he wants to make sure her dreams of their relationship line up with what the reality will be before he takes her back, as he inevitably must if she wants to (he is still in love with her).

They saw each other in public for the first time since they broke up and the singer was nervous and was putting off talking to her, but he didn’t want her to know that he was nervous so he was trying to play it cooll

He is saying that his partner might think the trouble they are having doesn’t affect him or that it’s not a big deal for him, i.e. the perception is that he is having an easy time of it while his partner is not.

He is moving slowly down the path to recovery from a failed relationship, going down the familiar path of bitterness and sadness.

He is wasting his time thinking about getting her back, what he could have done differently, why the relationship failed, instead of moving on. The hourglass motif implies he is in a cycle of thinking this way: you just turn an hourglass upside down and it does the exact same thing as before. He is stuck inside his own head, in his own internal struggle about her.

Two interpretations:
One, it has been a long time since he has gotten himself across to her, i.e. spoken with her and told her how he feels. Two, “across” is actually “a cross,” and he is making an allusion to himself being akin Jesus- it has been a long time since he has sacrificed for anyone, and maybe the last person he sacrificed anything for was her. If this is the case, he was and is bitter about they way they ended the first time, and that caused him to stop being kind, or sacrificing for other people.

Here we have a hypothetical. He is asking himself what would happen if he “fell back” into his previous relationship.

He is imploring her to make sure her motives for wanting him back are pure, i.e. he wants her to make sure she means what she’s saying about still wanting to be with him, and would rather she questions herself to make sure she is still the person who wants to be with him before he “falls back.”

This also implies that he is also still in love with her and, therefore, will “fall back” if she wants him to- he is asking her to do this so he avoids being hurt again.

The song ends in the exact same way as it began, simply with “hey hey hey” etc., showing that he has, unfortunately, not changed. He is no closer to deciding what he should do with her.

However, his conclusion upon asking what would happen if he went back to her or took her back is “you (her) don’t seem like you care,” suggesting that he thinks deep down it will result in another breakup.

This is his initial reaction to the prospect of getting back together with her. He has trained himself, since the breakup to not want to “fall back.” However, he still has feelings for her, even though he suspects she doesn’t care enough about him, as is evidenced by the next few lines, and this creates an internal struggle for him.

After him debating in his head, in the previous stanza, whether he will accept her back, his analysis of her psyche (you don’t seem like you care) has convinced him that even if she wants to be with him now, he knows in her eyes he will end up just holder her back.

There is no definite conclusion to his internal debate; we are left unsure if he regresses to his old relationship, or recognizes that it would be bad for him to “fall back.” The song simply ends with him almost deliriously repeating “fall… back… you… don’t…” leading us to conclude that he himself is confused and doesn’t know what will happen. In my view, “fall… back…” represents his urge to be with her, but the “you… don’t…” represents him reminding himself that she doesn’t care, and that getting back with her can only lead to disaster.

Many of us will go through this very same debate in our lives: whether to give a relationship another shot, even against our better judgment. It is left ambiguous at the end of the song, because for each of us the outcome will be different.

To me, this is him seeing her in public, while they are broken up, and being ignored by her, a far cry from when they were together.

In my opinion, either the most rational lines in the song, or the lines that most suggest he will “fall back.” If you go with interpretation No. 1 of the line before, it is rational: he considers, even for a brief moment, that there may be a reason he hasn’t spoken to her, or expressed how he feels, because (as he oft repeats) “you don’t seem like you care.” If you go with interpretation No. 2, these lines suggest that he believes she is the one- there may be a reason he has not sacrificed anything for someone else, someone new- because he still loves her and believes, against all evidence and odds, that she is the one for him.

When he says “even if I caught you I’d throw you back” it lends credence to interpretation No. 1, but it could be possible that this is just him trying to deny his true feelings about her under a cloak of anger and lack of emotion.

Despite his humiliation and sadness and being cut out of her life, he can’t hide or get away from his pain.

Even though his partner believes he isn’t suffering from the trouble they are having, there are many things she doesn’t know about his own struggles (maybe with their relationship, maybe his own personal issues), and worse yet, there are many issues that she knows he is having but doesn’t care about, or even has blinded herself to him having, perhaps because she is naive, or perhaps because she is so consumed by her own issues that she refuses to see them.