NASA Is on Your Side Lyrics
I awake in the future, I have turned to stone with fear
Laid on petrified trees
In a high school massacre, I'm fossilised and clear
The teenage terrorists freeze
We began dismantling the stadia and schools
Singing, "Save our simian souls"
Polished up warm bullets hanging static in the air
Droplets glittering home
[Chorus]
NASA knows how the pheromones
Cascade down the walls
You can't help the way you feel
You're the crudest oil, let your vision boil
Yeah, they're gonna dig a coal-face out of you
Isambard, I'm all steel
[Verse 2]
Chasing homeless cheerleaders through the sewers lit
By burning polythene bags
Pushing flame scorched limos to the oil rig tonight
For the promenade dance
[Verse 3]
Fill your locker with an arsenal
Hieroglyphic every particle
Mother all about the coal
And the lava and the gas that we are
Lovers on the landfill, digging me up
To fuel rockets and risk (Save us)
Look across now, honey, the horizon
I can see a shuttle birth, is it a boy? Or a girl? Or a gun?
I know it's ludicrous to be lost
There's never been a time like this
Everyone is gonna end up there
You're overcome
But NASA is on your side
And it's happening, the sky is shattering
And they're gonna make a Death Star out of you
But NASA is on your side
Yeah, NASA is on your side
Yeah, NASA is on your side
[Bridge]
NASA is on your side
NASA is on your side
[Chorus]
And everyone is gonna end up there
You're overcome
But NASA is on your side
Yeah, NASA is on your side
Yeah, NASA is on your side
[Outro]
There were children climbing over fridges in the rush
To see the death of the sun
And we laughed all night when they said, "Treasure in the sky"
And we had nothing but fun
About
NASA Is On Your Side signals the approaching end of the album with two other jarring finalities. The song delivers split-screen imagery, juxtaposing teens coming to grips with their reality in the face of a school shooting, and the species facing cataclysm at its own hands. As the tempo increases and the song becomes more frantic, the images blur and bleed together.
I don’t know if [NASA Is On Your Side] was particularly from anyone’s point of view – it was more just stepping in and out of a school shooting and thinking about teenagers and how you’re never like that again in your life. They’re extremely unpredictable and extremely emotional, and all those things you forget about when you’re not a teenager any more, and it’s an extremely extreme part of someone’s life. There’s a sort of danger to it, and a sort of beauty to it; it’s a very strange thing to go through and I was kinda juxtaposing the end of time, where fossil fuels have run out, and I was thinking about using these teenagers as the fuel! I had this idea that eventually, when our bodies are broken down, or whatever, we’ll kind of be used like a fuel. It was about jumping in at a teenager’s level and looking at their day to day, and looking at wider, environmental problems in the same song, sort of playing them off each other – sort of jumping into a school shooting, and then jumping back into space.
- Jonathan Higgs, in an interview with Outline Online
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
- 1.MY KZ, UR BF
- 3.Schoolin’
- 5.Final Form
- 7.Two for Nero
- 10.NASA Is on Your Side
- 12.Weights