everybodyisjesus January 3rd, 2007 12:05AM  
This song is about a cure to "all the sorrow in the world." He begins off by saying "let me take you to the herding ground/where all good men are trampled down/to settle a bet that cannot be won/between a prideful father and his son," suggesting that competition between men is the root cause of all conflicts. He later states the symptomatic causes. "when all soldiers lay their weapons down/or when all kings and all queens relinquish their crowns/or when the only true messiah saves us from ourselves/it's easy to imagine there will be sorrow...no more." In the first part he is attacking war, in the next he isn't just saying that kings and queens shouldn't exist, but all unfair authority, in the next he says that religion shouldn't exist, and in the final section he is saying that if all these things were true, then there would be no sorrow.

anonymous October 31st, 2007 03:37AM  
"Kings and Queens relinquish their crowns" isn't just referring to authority. It's referring to every individual person and suggesting that individual pride and arrogance are the cause of all the world's sorrow thereby suggesting that change must start at a personal, individual level. Only when we let go of our egos and let go of our pride can we begin working towards a better future. It also relates back to We're Only Gonna Die From Our Own Arrogance.

anonymous October 18th, 2008 11:46AM  
This song is sarcastic in a sense. In the opening: Father can you hear me, how have I let you down, I curse the day that I was born and all the sorrow of this world. It is like a conflict with god the father. And later: let me take you to the herding grounds where all good men are trampled down, just to settle a bet that could not be won, between the pride for father and his son. I may be off on this, and it doesn't matter because you can pull anything out of a song every time you hear it, but life is hard, life is a bitch sometimes, and there is sorrow in this world and that sucks... curse this world, kinda a negative statement. You could look at the line about pride kind of like god thinks man can deal with it to spite the devil, or on, the other hand to support a conflict or falling out between god and man. The jist though, I think it is a hopeful song but negative in a sense. They aren't saying there will ever be sorrow no more. The true misiah will never come, people can't agree on religion. All soldiers will never but down their guns and so on. There will always be sorrow, it's life, but make the best of it. It ties into that suffering is a part of life buddhist thing. I should have articulated this more... It is early.

johnnyarson April 1st, 2009 05:51PM  
Bad Religion has a habit of taking some songs directly from the bible (perhaps not word for word as in this case, but more or less). "Skyscraper" was taken out of the story of the tower of babel and this song, "Sorrow", was taken almost directly from the book of Job. God and the devil make a bet regarding Job, a devoutly religious man. The devil suspects that Job is only an upright and moral man because he lives a good life with a great family and lots of possessions and that, in essence, there are material rewards linked with living out one's life in accordance with the word of God. To prove his point God strips Job of all his possessions, kills his entire family and his servants just to show that Job will continue to live according to God's word. Job Chapter 3, Verse 1: After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. 2 And Job said: 3 "Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night which said, 'A man-child is conceived.' That said, I think this is another Bad Religion song that, like "Suffer", states sorrow (or, to put it differently, suffering) is an unavoidable part of life.