anonymous December 16th, 2005 12:45PM  
Y'all are useless if you can't see that this song is CLEARLY about wishing to be a pheonix. He wishes he could be a pheonix because he is at that point and it seems as if there is nothing else left with life and he wishes he could just burst into flames and rise from the ashes and start all over again. The verses explain why he feels like that and the hook is him imagining to burst.

anonymous January 3rd, 2006 05:08AM  
This song is about yearning for change. This person is in a bad situation or place in their life that they don't like, and decide to be "reborn", or change themselves. This song dwells on the idea of the phoenix, which rises from the ashes, stronger than it was before it combusted.

anonymous June 24th, 2006 09:54PM  
This song clearly refers to the phoenix, as the two above me have said. All it's saying is that Earth is too complicated, too judgemental, too hectic, and he wishes he could start over. Maybe it's not saying he would like to start over, but the world should start over, as a phoenix would (Noah's Ark-esque rebirth of the earth). It's saying that people need to get away from it all, or else it will pile up on you and you'll "burst into flames"

anonymous September 6th, 2006 04:38PM  
Maybe it's just me, but when I hear this song I always think of the buddhist monks that protested the war in vietnam(?) by setting themselves on fire.

CameronLowery March 14th, 2007 02:38PM  
This song is about how he can't take all of the bullshit that life has with it. He wishes everything would be simpler and that nothing would be twisted or complicated. He uses the spontaneous combustion as a metaphor for how he feels about life. He feels like if he takes all the shit much longer he will just "burst into flames", which is going crazy.

coleb99 December 5th, 2007 04:29PM  
This song is also kind of about fear like Drive. He talks about how the world is messing with him and how he would like to start over. Hence "So pardon me while I burst
into flames.
I've had enough of the world
and its people's mindless games.
So pardon me while I burn
and rise above the flame.
Pardon me, pardon me...
I'll never be the same!" he's saying the world is the flames and it has clogged his way of thinking. His way of looking at the world from a positive point of view. He's telling everyone (even himself and his negative way of thinking which is an entity in itself caused by the outside world) to pardon him while he rises above the flames and stops caring so much about the bullshit of the world because he knows that life is just a means to a new begginning and that the problems faced here really aren't problems at all, only situations to be dealt in the proper (positive) manner with when the time comes. Bottom line, the world is dragging his inner self down and turning him into a monster and he's trying to rise above it.

mmmmmmm January 23rd, 2008 09:06PM  
For me the chorus "Pardon me while I burst into flames" is either a reference to breaking down, like from anxiety; or dissolving the ego and moving beyond people's "mindless games". So either being very aware and anxious of one's own ego interacting with an equally empty culture or the dissolution of the ego into higher things. Seems to be ego-death announced from either a hate or a love perspective; depends whether you think he's saying "it's people's mindless games" in an angry way or a matter of fact way. I consider it a bit of both and interpret it depending on my mood at the time.

nalnakee May 1st, 2008 08:07PM  
Whoever said this song is about wishing to be a phoenix is a complete retard. One of the boys was in a bookshop one day and read in a magazine about a man who spontaneously combusted and was inspired to write a song about it. Im not sure if the song speaks from the point of view of the man in the magazine or what, but it is more than likely.

anonymous September 26th, 2008 11:10PM  
This song is pretty much about someone who is a misanthrope. He is just sick and tired of people and having deal with their stupidity, hypocrisy and all the other crap that goes with life. The going up in flames/exploding has a double meaning. 1) Taken literally going up in flames would be a pretty dramatic statement on how ticked of he is and 2) more metaphorically that he might just go off on someone and stop tolerating the world's crap.

anonymous February 10th, 2009 12:45AM  
I kinda thought this song was about how the world judges you when you are having problems in life, especially celebrites...Like the part about seeing the guy fried in the book, people always notice what's going on in your life but like to make judgements about it, so he's frustrated and saying "pardon me if I'm not doing so well right now."

Meplusyou23 February 11th, 2009 09:31PM  
Once in a live version of the song I heard Brandon say ths song is about transidence.(if I spelled that right). So basically imagine yourself going through life doing nothing and living just to live and your tired and fed up and BORED with life. You just want to escape you want to be free from your prison of a body you want to release every feeling you've ever had and you do by simply bursting into flame. Pardon me(:

anonymous October 31st, 2009 12:47AM  
I'm sorry, but a PHEONIX sounds completely useless as a explanation to such a song. "i've had enough of this world and it's people's mindless games". How can you hear that line and say its not because of the society we live in, he talks about exploding, he cant take it anymore society is upsidedown and people do things the other way around, he is tired of all this things and he wants to burst. Like actually burst, NOT BECOMING A STUUPIT PHEONIX.