What does The Logical Song mean?

Supertramp: The Logical Song Meaning

Album cover for The Logical Song album cover

Song Released: 1979


The Logical Song Lyrics

When I was young
It seemed that life was so wonderful
A miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical
And all the birds in the trees
Well they'd be singing so happily
Joyfully, oh playfully watching me

But then they sent me away
To teach me how...

  1. 1TOP RATED

    #1 top rated interpretation:
    anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Sep 29th 2012 !⃝

    I think, the meaning of the song is depending on growing up and all the sorrow and worries which are getting along with this. The childhood was beautiful and innocent, but then you learn, that the world isn't like that just a painful and straight place

  2. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    May 20th 2021 !⃝

    This song written by a profoundly sensitive songwriter, is the realization of hypocrisy in those around you, family as a microcosm or the world on a greater scale. A perceptive, intelligent and perhaps idealistic young person's realization that the world is full of hypocrites not people like himself and how painful that is to process. It is an excruciating shock to come to this realization and the song illustrates this process exquisitely. I really love the writer.

  3. TheGenius234
    click a star to vote
    Nov 30th 2016 !⃝

    The song is about growing up and chosing your own identity, much like the song "Goodbye Stranger". This is about a kid who loved life and lived it in a manner that was centered around God. As expected by his atheistic parents, who later "sent me away" to teach him that God is a child story to be a good person, instead of an all powerful existant being. Sensible, Logical, Responsible Practical. All words which mean to be realistic, thus calling God unrealistic or a fantasy. This causes him to see the dependable, clinical, intellectual, cynical world that is also very "logical" or atheistic, thus the name the "Logical Song". He warns much like the politically correct world we have to not say anything that could be offensive, or "I said now watch what you say!". If you do so you will be a radical, liberal, finatical, person considered a criminal. So this atheistic world invites him to sign up to become more "logical" so the people can feel he is acceptable, respectable, and presentable. In his mind the last word "Vegetable" is to show they can have no hope without God, a person who has no faith or is mentally dead. Thereby denying their request to deny a belief in God. The chorus "There are times when all the world is asleep. The questions run to deep for such a simple man. Wont you please, please tell me what we've learned? I know it sounds absurd, but please tell me who I am." means that the world is asleep in the faith life, and he is caught in a tug of war, thus the questions are too deep. He asks God what he has learned and who he is. All people need to answer this question, no one can tell you who you are by your beliefs or your anything. I personally believe in God but I'm not some priest saying if you dont believe you are wrong. I am simply stating what the song has to say in its moral lesson, as most Supertramp songs have. In this case the people are telling him that he is a atheist, not a person who believes in God. They want to destroy his beliefs for hope, in favor of a more "logical" world. Believe or dont believe what I have to say, but it is the truth.

  4. kooljohn176
    click a star to vote
    May 6th 2016 !⃝

    A educational and ''Logical Song'' about the simple upbringing of the young man that enjoyed life naturally, being in his nature as one with God that was taken out of his natural nature state of upbringing that altered his state of mind. Now thrown out and living in a complicated world wondering and asking God who is he now being away from the many answers he knew when young, and now that he's older asking questions about who he is by the world school educational system that is telling him ''who he was, who he should be and who he should become'' by the EVILUTION he has been thaught and evolved from. Now the scholar's mind is like being in between this tug of war game that both sides are pulling the soul that tried and still tries to develop in the Spirit of God, but now it's held back and redirected by altered beliefs, all the while trying to hold on to it's true identity from where it came from and who he truly is. Now if you're fortunate enough to get the answer of who you are that stayed true to your beliefs, hope you may hear the words of the voice telling YOU ARE, YOU ARE! then you may finally realize I'AM, I'AM! but only after dropping that false ego that wanted you to become somebody that you were never ment to be in the public school that was teaching you how to commit crimes in the new century.

  5. anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Aug 6th 2014 !⃝

    I think it's about how influences around us shape us as we grow up.Right or wrong.


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