Top Rated Interpretation

August 9th, 2006 11:27AM  

Justin has answered this question in interviews. His answers now tend to be vague because he doesn't want to force an interpretation on anyone, but when the album was new he was much more specific. He wrote this song originally about his ex-girlfriend. It was written to be a "please move on" song to her. While he was working on the song he got the voice-mail from his mom that you hear at the beginning, and realized that he had a lot more people to apologize to than just his ex, so he re-interpreted it as an apology to everyone that he'd put through hard times, including both his ex and his mom especially. Then the video director came up with the "it's too late, mom is dead" interpretation, but if you watch the video, the last scene she's actually alive and they're drinking iced tea together, so a little hint of hope at the end.

Long story short, if you are getting different interpretations of this song, it's because it has multiple meanings layered on top of each other. It is first an apology to his ex, second an apology to others he hurt by his behavior, and third as story about losing his mother.