[Verse 1]
Bottle up and explode over and over
Put it away and check out for the day
In for a round of overexposure
The thing mother nature provides
Bottle up and explode, seeing stars surrounding you
[Verse 2]
You look at him like you've never known him
But I know for a fact that you have
Thinking that you were about to come over
But I'm tired now of waiting for you
You never show
Bottle up and go, if you're gonna hide, it's up to you
I'm coming through
[Outro]
Bottle up and go
I can make it outside
I'll get through
Who was it insider her head that made her cry
It’s clear that the girl is emotionally distancing herself from Elliott, to make the split easier for herself, despite the pain its clearly causing him.
The troublemaker is probably a reference to his own mind. By putting the thoughts his brain haunts him with on the back burner, he can escape from mental and emotional torture.
In certain live versions of the song, Elliott replaces the verse with “Crying for you”
Now that he has his mental issues put away temporarily, he can “check out for the day” with his drug of choice: the overexposure that has been provided by Mother Nature.
By not being tortured by his own thoughts and experiencing a high, the narrator can now get up and continue living life semi-normally.
In cartoons, stars spinning around someone’s head are indicative of a dizzied or stupored state, which could be drunkenness.
Smith combines colors commonly seen on beer bottle labels (Budweiser, Bud Light, and Miller Lite of this era) with imagery of a celebration like the Fourth of July with rockets (sometimes launched from a bottle) that shoot into the sky and explode into explosive sparks of red, white, and blue.
This could also refer to the flag of the USA.
