Coldplay: Yellow Meaning

Song Released: 2000

Yellow Lyrics

Look at the stars,
Look how they shine for you,
And everything you do,
Yeah, they were all yellow.
I came along,
I wrote a song for you,
And all the things you do,
And it was called yellow.
So then I took my turn,
Oh what a thing to have...

1. Kimba

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   Sep 21st 2010 !⃝

   I think its a father tslking about the love for his Daughter. I drew a line for you wot a thing to do, To me represents that the father has done a few things in his life he may regret. Maybe these were things that were his own mistakes but had a effect on those around him. but no matter what mistakes he made his love for his daughter was always there. i could be completely off the path here but thats how I see It . :))
2. anonymous

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   Jul 17th 2010 !⃝

   I believe it is a love song that deals with the stages of a relationship, which ultimately fails.
   
   to begin, it is a man courting/dating another. at the point when the lyrics, "you know I love you so" are uttered, the camera distances itself from the singer. it creates a gap between the man and his love. the man then runs to bridge the gap, and continue to plead his love. it plateaus, and the man realizes that it's not going to get better. he bleeds himself dry.
3. wally

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   Jun 17th 2010 !⃝

   When I heard this song I thought of the disease that some babies develop at birth called icterus or jaundice. The babies turn yellow because of high levels of bilirubin. The song says "your skin and bones, turn into something beautiful, you know.... Infants who develop icterus get their normal skin colour in about 8 days and are normal babies. Also, the way he speaks of the things he'd do for him shows the feelings of a loving parent/person who cares a lot for someone else.
4. anonymous

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   Jun 16th 2010 !⃝

   youre right, this song proposes as romantic sort of realationship. But, the real reason why the speaker keeps on repeating the word yellow is not because of what the color represents, but because it is yellow he feels she is everytime he looks at her. He feels as if she is his sunshine and when he's around her "and it was yellow"
5. anonymous

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   Mar 26th 2010 !⃝

   I've heard this song so many times, but not until recently have I been able to put a subjective spin on it.. I guess it's redundant to say you empathize with your own interpretation, but the one-sidedness and intensity of the author's feelings leads me to believe that "yellow" is representing cowardice on the other end.. He's head over heels in love with a woman, who refuses to take the risks he's been willing to take and has taken. "Oh, what a thing to've done" expresses his torment and regret for THIS person being the one he's chosen to do anything for.. and despite it all, his feelings for her won't go away. Saying "You know" before "Ilove you so" and "for you I'd bleed myself dry" isn't a positive statement, but frustration that she's aware of how trapped he is in this relationship as well.
6. anonymous

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   Mar 22nd 2010 !⃝

   Yellow could mean Asians, not the south east Asians. I mean the other Asians. Stars and sun reminds him about the Asian girl maybe.
7. joe123456

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   Feb 20th 2010 !⃝

   this song is so wonderful, and like all wonderful things it can't fully understood through just words. one would have to feel the emotions to understand it. im going to attempt to simplify what it means to me, because it can different meanings for different people. this song has two main points. 1 is that he thinks this girl is beautiful and wonderful and basically perfect, so wonderful that the stars shine for her. she is divine. the other point is how the guy would anything for her, because he loves her so, like "swimming across" something because she was all "yellow" (scared) or "drawing a line"(setting boundaries for himself, or change for the better for her.) the color yellow itself is a key to this song. for me, the color red reminds me of the girl i love, but this song is extremely personal to chris martin. im guessing the he associates this color yellow with the girl he loves, and when he sees it, he thinks of her and feels an indescribable feeling of pure joy. so he describes everything in this song as "yellow". he is happy to do things for her, when he looks up and sees the stars, he feels joy. when he "takes his turn" im guessing it means when he takes his turn to be her boyfriend because she was taken before, and when he finally gets his chance, this opportunity was all "yellow", or a golden opportunity. he feels elated because of her.
8. anonymous

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   Jan 23rd 2010 !⃝

   I think it's a very simple song.We don't have to interpret it into something complex. All I could I make out of this song is that the singer is nostalgic about his lover, notice the song is about the past. He is singing his first love, maybe. You remember all the best things, when you start thinking about your past love. Friends believe me, the singer is singing about his first love. It's definitely it. Yellow is a joyous color. Here yellow means the joy and fun he got from her.
9. danceprometheus

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   Dec 19th 2009 !⃝

   It's seems pretty obvious what this song is about, though it is a rather base thing to make such a beautiful song about: drugs.
10. dill

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    Dec 3rd 2009 !⃝

    I believe that a person, perhap a woman of love interest. The lyric to the song to me describe the woman to be self centered. There stars are shining for you is similar to the phrase the sun revolves around you, and being an only child i was told this numerous times by my mother. Even though the love interest may be self centered, many of us know even though our mothers may not approve, we just can't avoid these types of women; married or not. It is evident that the relationship between the love interest and the lyric writer is ugly when he says turn into something beautiful, which at the point its at right now is not. The significance of the word yellow came to me when i drew a line, i drew a line for you .... and it was all yellow, was said. Because the lyric writer didn't have a healthy relationship with the woman he wanted to get away from her, and insult her. In the cleverest way possible to get this across he says he is going to draw a yellow line on her, which would be peeing on her, because pee pee is usually yellow and in a line.
11. anonymous

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    Nov 20th 2009 !⃝

    I can tell you that I heard in an interview Chris Martin said the song name was always going to be a colour and that the suprising inspiration for the song was he happened to catch a glance of the yellow pages (phone book) and he thought that fitted best with everything else.. he even joked if it had been the thompsons phone book the song might well be known as 'blue' today..
    
    As for the song meaning I personally think it's about a girl he thinks the world of and is deeply in love with and all the things his feelings make him do for her and feel about her.
    
    Also I think that the "was all yellow" is basically meaning 'it's all because I love you' I think what "yellow" represents are all the reasons he loves her and he is summing it up in a colour and thats why everything he describes doing for her he ends it with "yellow" as in a way of saying "I do it all for the reasons I love you"
    
    e.g "I drew a line for you, what a thing to do and it was all yellow" rough translation of the meaning being " I put an end to it even though it was tough because of all the reasons I love you"
    
    Thats my view anyway
12. anonymous

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    Oct 18th 2009 !⃝

    This is deff a love song. "You skin an bones turn into something beautiful" isn't necessarily saying that she is dying, it's just saying how pretty she turned out. And when he says "...So then I took my turn and all the things I've done..." it just means he is putting her before himself.
13. anonymous

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    Sep 23rd 2009 !⃝

    Yellow is a color of happiness and joy
14. EmmaBee

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    Sep 4th 2009 !⃝

    I've never taken any literal symbolism to this: like the "bones and skin" resembles disease or yellow for joy. To me it's always just seemed like a man admitting all the things he loves about a woman. He speaks how the world does all this for her because she's so beautiful. Ex: how the stars SHINE for her. Then he admits taking "his turn" (meaning out of all the things in the world) and it turned out like the rest of it. Now seeing her in the light, yellow, he's realized every bit of her is beautiful and he loves her. He tells her that she is so good and so beautiful inside and out that even the WORLD does things for her and he can't help it. He repeats "oh what a thing to do" like why the HELL would you ever do that?...unless you loved someone. It's his way of saying I'm so in love with you and you don't see that everything in the world "shines"/does things to exemplify that and because you're so special, so important i'd "bleed myself dry" aka die to keep you alive because I love you and all the good you do.
15. It_Girl69

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    Aug 7th 2009 !⃝

    I saw Chris Martin on 60 minutes a few months ago and when asked what "Yellow" meant he replied that he didn't know. He thinks you can iterpret it into what it may mean to you.

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