anonymous August 5th, 2007 11:24PM  
The lyrics and the mood of the guitar playing, especially on the unplugged version, indicate total depression. As we all know, Layne Staley's demise was based on depression and drug addiction, so it was right up his alley. I felt the depressing and sorrowful guitar as soon as I heard Nutshell for the first time. It was an immediate give-away.

And yet I fight
This battle all alone
No one to cry to
No place to call home

Expressing the feelings of being at the bottom of your world.

If I can't be my own
I'd feel better dead

Once again, it's just complete depression. It's a song about being depression, feeling like there's no getting up again.

shakeninja October 3rd, 2007 04:51AM  
When he says "we chase misprinted lies" he is referring to the ideas and values people measure their lives by. The strive for wealth and fame and the "american dream". also biblical principles are very likely being attacked as well because "misprinted" could be a reference to the bible so often being misinterpreted and meanings twisted. "we face the path of time" is telling people that in the end all we can do is exist against our inevitable demise. maybe he is saying not to place importance on the things that will be gone in a hundred years after we die. The next lines are his cries of desperate loneliness and isolation. He very likely felt that no one around him understood him and that there was no place to go that anyone ever would. "my gift of self is raped" and "my privacy is raked". His feelings that he lives in a world that expects and demands him to conform to its standards of normality and never question its values and beliefs. and of course his response is simple. He will be his own person or die.

anonymous May 24th, 2008 09:24PM  
I pride myself on being a very big Alice In Chains fan, but I think this is one of their songs that can be read in several ways, but to me the key interpretation is this;

Its a song partially about privacy as before mentioned, we can't deny 'my privacy is raked', but it's about overbearing pressure from a multiplex of sources.

I'm assuming this song was written by Layne Staley, as Jerry wrote quite a lot of songs for AIC.

'If I can't be my own
I'd feel better dead'

Further pressure from people close to be perhaps a better person, or kick the habit.

Thats my view on it anyway.
LPUer WROKKR Dan.

anonymous February 28th, 2009 12:15AM  
we chace misprinted lies is what layne maybe was saying the public does in regards to him. This was mabe a man that felt to much. Fight the battle all alone(there is alot this man kept to himself he lived inside his own mind which is why people thought he was a recluse. I also gave my interpertation of would on this site. Is would about layne????????

BobNWeev January 12th, 2010 03:38AM  
"We chase misprinted lies" refer to the crap the media, Hollywood, and the music industry program our minds with. We follow stars, politicians, and other media to our demise. It literally rapes our sense of self and we don't realize it because it's accepted as the "way of the world." He is talking about how we are all mind-conrtolled slaves that chase the almighty dollar for the hope of attaining something that we will never have because we are not part of the 1 percent group of individuals that control 90 percent of the world's wealth. To hell with meaningless "laws" that are merely statutes intended to make our lives more dificult. I'm with Alice in Chains on this. This song is the way of the world in a "Nutshell." "If I can't be my own, I'd feel better dead." So come kill me Illuminati bitches :) Like you do everyone else that exposes your crap. Make it look like an accident and have the media call it an "overdose" or something.