What does Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me mean?

Elton John: Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me Meaning

Album cover for Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me album cover

Song Released: 1974


Don't Let The Sun Go Down On Me Lyrics

I cant light no more of your darkness
All my pictures seem to fade to black and white
Im growing tired and time stands still before me
Frozen here on the ladder of my life

Its much too late to save myself from falling
I took a chance and...

  1. 1TOP RATED

    #1 top rated interpretation:
    anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Sep 8th 2012 !⃝

    I think this song is about trying to hold on to your first love when you are losing that person. Feeling changed by that person so much that you can't go back to life without them and feeling like if you could just get them to understand that, then it wouldn't be over. The "sun going down" would be that person actually leaving--"losing everything is like the sun going down on me." It feels like a really desperate plea to someone who is going to leave anyway.
    Not sure if that's actually it, but that's my interpretation.

  2. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Dec 25th 2020 !⃝

    This person is sad that his girl is breaking up with him. When he says ... “fragment of your life to wander free”, I think that’s the key to the “sun going down” (ie the break off) by the other “partner” in this song.

    The wandering free is not really for the partner, it is For himself. Thus... this song although beautiful in music, style and prose has to be interpreted as selfish, perhaps. Having feeling, even hurt over the ending of a relationship, but not willing to sacrifice the freedom to please self.

    Marriage is commitment and this person wants a fragment of his life to wander free which he is projecting on to the other person...which is actually a way to avoid personal responsibility.

    Beautiful song and lyrics but sadly, I think, pathetic sulking by a selfish person.

  3. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Oct 14th 2020 !⃝

    I think this song is about two people stuck in a karmic relationship, people that continued to make the same mistakes over and over different people same mistakes. It could be either or with the lyrics of I can't light no more of your darkness and then the lyrics of Frozen here on the ladder of my life. You can't go anywhere until you break that pattern, that Karma. Then sometimes we just think it's too late for us and then we take a chance can we change someone else's life and then it's a push and pull Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me I want my life to be different to. Again the push-and-pull don't discard me because you think I mean you harm. At some point doesn't each person feel that in these Rocky Relationships? Because we're mirroring one another Again mirroring with I search myself but it's always someone else I see. I searched myself but I see the same thing in someone else. Because that's what we do we see the things in someone else that need to be healed in our self. Elton John ; Bernie Taupin have written some of the most beautiful songs of my life. I grew up listening to these songs. And when I hear them now, I'm a kid and a grown-up with the same eyes staring thru space & time, realizing how connected it all is

  4. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Sep 12th 2020 !⃝

    It's just damn good song! I believe he did help friend & they turned there back on him.Elton John thank-you. Princess Diana loves you and you done a remarkable job keeping it together when she passed.

  5. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Jun 14th 2020 !⃝

    This song could apply to many life situations. Anything that destroys everything you live for or your future, your dreams and of course that would also destroy any chances of life with love. Just my thoughts.

  6. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    May 26th 2020 !⃝

    Elton john wrote this when he was having suicidal thoughts. google the meaning of the song Elton john's meaning

  7. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Apr 24th 2020 !⃝

    Song is about someone you care for and you hurt them over and over they still love you but you keep letting them hurt you and the person singing it sees it but realizes it’s to late and they know it

  8. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Mar 27th 2019 !⃝

    I believe the song is about two people in a relationship (probably written with a romantic relationship inspiring Bernie Taupin and Sir Elton John, but can translate to really any relationship that is based on emotions of true caring and concert for eachother, friends, Siblings, parent/child...)
    The person singing is basically saying to the other in the relationship "Listen, there was a time you had a big problem (could be anything) and I sacrificed a lot of myself to get you back up again. Now you are doing really well and don't need me any more, and suddenly our relationship doesn't mean what you once said it did. You used me! Losing this relationship hurts and I feel so sad and very very dark, like the sun went down and took all its light from .gov life. Losing you is like the sun going down on me"

  9. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Sep 29th 2017 !⃝

    I believe this song describes an exhausted spouse who just can't continue to please the other and tried to long

  10. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Jun 16th 2017 !⃝

    Although It's true that it might be about a gay couple. It relates to my life because it starts with two married friends deciding to end their troubled marriages. They decided to get into a relationship and after being divorced one decided to stay unmarried and the other wants to get married. Being stuck in a relationship where one is in love and the other doesn't want to be serious relationship after years into the relationship. The one not being serious wants to run out any chance he or she gets and starts to loose interest and the one person feels the distance between them and loosing hope.

  11. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Dec 29th 2016 !⃝

    I think its about an relationship and you should tell that person how you or that person how you feel about them.how you love and adore one another before the day gone .its a beautiful song I love it

  12. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Apr 21st 2016 !⃝

    I believe this song was a story of 2 people that met. The one who initiated the relationship was gay and the recipient was not, however, it ended up that they developed feelings for each other, and some amount of time into the relationship, they fell in love, but the one partner that wasn't gay in the beginning decided that he couldn't/wouldn't come out of the closet
    and therefore was going to end the relationship.

  13. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Dec 5th 2012 !⃝

    This song is about Elton and Bernie when they stayed in Chicago and had a pillow fight. Elton realized that Bernie was a pillow biter because he married Maxine and really didn't want to. The sun rose and they wanted to straighten out their life and not let the sun go down that day while in the angst of such a great pillow fight.

  14. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Sep 23rd 2012 !⃝

    The way I read it it sounds like telling somone close like a family member that you've come out and how that person wanted things to be one way they were and couldn't accept that the other person was not who they thought they were. So searching himself he sees himself different from how other people think he is.

  15. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Apr 17th 2011 !⃝

    The song is about Elton helping a close friend, but when Elton needed help, the friend would not be there for him.

  16. Renegade
    click a star to vote
    Jan 13th 2011 !⃝

    The locals who live "high" above Boulder, Colorado say that Elton was absolutely & completely smashed when he recorded that song at Caribou Studios (for the album Caribou) around Nederland, Colorado. So completely trashed from the booze, drugs & thin Rocky Mountain air that he could barely stand. If you listen to the song, you can kind of imagine that! Hey, it was the seventies! Sorry, don't know anything about the song meaning though.

‹ prev 12



More Elton John songs »


 


Latest Articles

 


Submit Your Interpretation

[ want a different song? ]




Just Posted

Taking Over Me anonymous
All The Good Girls Go To Hell anonymous
Wingriddenangel anonymous
I Spoke to The Devil in Miami anonymous
This Woman's Work anonymous
Action! Not Words anonymous
Everybody Loves Me, Baby anonymous
Fall in to Sleep anonymous
Lemon Boy anonymous
Drama Club anonymous
Gravity anonymous
Our First Time anonymous
Nymphetamine anonymous
Liquid Smooth anonymous
Teddy Bear anonymous

(We won't give out your email)