What does Dog Days Are Over mean?

Florence + the Machine: Dog Days Are Over Meaning

Album cover for Dog Days Are Over album cover

Song Released: 2008


Covered By: Glee Cast


Get "Dog Days Are Over" on MP3: Get MP3 from iTunes

Dog Days Are Over Lyrics

Happiness / hit her / like a train on a tra-ck
Coming towards her / stuck still / no turning ba-ck
She hid around corners / and she hid under beds /
She killed it with kisses and from it she fl-ed /
With e-very bubble she sank with a drink...

  1. anonymous
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    Apr 26th 2012 !⃝

    It seems as if she is in a race of sorts; the dog days are over, meaning the "dog days" or "hard times" are over but there is no rest, for now the horses are coming. Just as she is about to win the dog race, she realizes that the bigger race is just ahead...the horses. Especially the part where the song pauses as if to say, "on your mark, get set....go!" She is running this "race" for the sake of those she loves while leaving her true love behind. More of a song about survival at the cost of selfish love. IMHO.

  2. anonymous
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    Apr 26th 2012 !⃝

    I think this song is about someone's life, or everyones life in general. People only have one life, so why not make the best of it? Instead of trying to love someone just because you think you love them but deep deep inside, where your too afraid to look, there's happiness wich will only come out if you break free (from the relationship). It talks about how

  3. Ruby88
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    Apr 17th 2012 !⃝

    I this song is about vampires and many agree with as she says "an killed it with kisses" meaning bites to the neck. And telling us to run fast for our mums and dads ect...and to run out into the night away from whatever is coming. Happiness hit her like a train on a track is a metaphor meaning she got hit by a train because she got so deeply in love with this person happiness took her over and pulled her into a train. This person is discribing their life telling everyone to be carefull because the phrase "dog days" is sunny days in summer and if they are over then it gets darker not just atmosphere but people too. "coming towards her stuck no turning back" like she has no where to go and scared. Its telling us to leave our love and come back for it because we need to run away or its bad. I think this song over all means that florance and the machine are vampire lovers

  4. anonymous
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    Mar 23rd 2012 !⃝

    She's been hurt again by the man she loves so much. Seems she really need a new fresh relationship from someone who can gives her life, love and lust forever.

    Maybe, the best thing for her is to ended up everything with the guy she adored.

  5. anonymous
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    Mar 23rd 2012 !⃝

    The song is about the the fall of empire and the reclimaton of a countries independence

  6. anonymous
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    Mar 23rd 2012 !⃝

    It's about the the fall of empire and the reclimaton of a countries independence.

  7. anonymous
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    Mar 23rd 2012 !⃝

    The song to me, is about a woman, in a loveless marriage, who has fallen into an illicit, passionate, affair, with a younger man, she is willing to sacrifice everything but he's not interested and before friends and family discover the truth, a choice has to be made...

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
  8. anonymous
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    Mar 23rd 2012 !⃝

    The song to me, is about a woman in a loveless marriage who has fallen into an illicit, passionate, affair, with a younger man, she is willing to sacrifice everything but he's not interested and before family and friends find out...a choice has to be made.

  9. lisahroberts
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    Mar 16th 2012 !⃝

    I thought this was about the Apocalypse. The horses are coming ....as in the four horsemen.

  10. anonymous
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    Mar 15th 2012 !⃝

    This song almost perfectly fits the short story, "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin written in 1894. Read.

    The Story of an Hour
    Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.

    It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

    She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.

    There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.

    She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.

    There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.

    She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.

    She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.

    There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.

    Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will—as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been.

    When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.

    She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial.

    She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.

    There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.

    And yet she had loved him—sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

    "Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.

    Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg, open the door—you will make yourself ill. What are you doing Louise? For heaven's sake open the door."

    "Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.

    Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.

    She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.

    Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.

    But Richards was too late.

    When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease—of joy that kills.

    http://www.pbs.org/katechopin/library/storyofanhour.html

  11. anonymous
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    Mar 14th 2012 !⃝

    It's about a girl running away from love :(

  12. anonymous
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    Mar 8th 2012 !⃝

    This song is about depression; "happiness hit her like a train on a track" the girl is hit with happiness as she is about to die. "Stuck still, no turning back" suggests that she has made the decision and has to die. "She hid around corners, and hid under beds" she was scared by the constant terror of depression, never knowing when it was going to hit her and so suppressed/hid from it. This is my interpretation of the song.

  13. anonymous
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    Feb 25th 2012 !⃝

    Ethnic cleansing (rwanda).

  14. anonymous
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    Jan 5th 2012 !⃝

    i think it is about a woman who falls in love with another woman (presumably the singer) and the other woman is uncomfortable with this so she's running from it and hiding it from people in her life... and it makes sense too because the lead singer is gay...

  15. anonymous
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    Jan 4th 2012 !⃝

    I believe this song is just about surviving every day life. She savors the quick and small moments of happiness but when she is unhappy she runs away from sadness and tries to capture the feeling again. She is hiding from unhappiness and covering up her own feelings with kisses. The chorus is saying that the hard days may be over, but you must still fight everyday battles to stay happy.




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