Holocene lyrics by Bon Iver, 26 meanings. Holocene explained, official 2024 song lyrics | LyricsMode.com
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Bon Iver – Holocene lyrics

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Bon Iver – Holocene lyrics
"someway, baby, it's part of me, apart from me"
You're laying waste to Halloween
You fucked it friend, it's on it's head, it struck the street
You're in Milwaukee, off your feet

... and at once I knew I was not magnificent
Strayed above the highway aisle
(Jagged vacance, thick with ice)
I could see for miles, miles, miles

3rd and Lake it burnt away, the hallway
Was where we learned to celebrate
Automatic bought the years you'd talk for me
That night you played me 'Lip Parade'
Not the needle, nor the thread, the lost decree
Saying nothing, that's enough for me

... and at once I knew I was not magnificent
Hulled far from the highway aisle
(Jagged vacance, thick with ice)
I could see for miles, miles, miles

Christmas night, it clutched the light, the hallow bright
Above my brother, I and tangled spines
We smoked the screen to make it what it was to be
Now to know it my memory:

... and at once I knew I was not magnificent.
High above the highway aisle
(Jagged vacance, thick with ice)
I could see for miles, miles, miles
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Songwriters: Justin Deyarmond Edison Vernon
Holocene lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Corrected by lovingreatly

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Holocene meanings Post my meaning

  • U
    + 23
    Unregistered 2012-09-01 15:59:00
    Its a freaking car crash. Come on. They got in a car crash coming home from halloween(hence the highway aisle) and the rest of the verses are him remembering his life. The choruses are him slowly losing life, the first (strayed away from the highway aisle) is right after the crash. The second (hulled) is when someone pulls him away from the wreckage. The third (high above) is when he is gone. In each chorus he describes the highway saying: "jagged vacance, thick with ice", its dangerous. And when he's losing his life he realizes he wasnt important at all, but that one was pretty easy. Done. Youre welcome.
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  • U
    + 11
    Unregistered 2012-05-07 23:30:21
    When you realize, that you're a part of something bigger than yourself, your own problems appear no longer relevant. It does not matter where you failed in your personal life. All your problems vanish, when you look out into the vast space - and jagged vacance? - of mountains. There's only you, the nature - maybe mountains - and your memory. But there's no remorse, no guilt in you. In this moment of clarity you feel the peace of the nature.
    I love the melancholy of this song and the humility in "saying nothing, that's enough for me". I can't get enough of its mood. Thank you, bon iver!
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  • U
    + 11
    Unregistered 2012-01-29 17:56:15
    It seems to be a remembrance of a life.
    And then he realized that the world is much larger than simply one person. While he was separated from the "highway aisle" (the city), it gave him time to think and contemplate this. He could "see for miles, miles, miles" and understand the world around better and see that there was always something more.
    3rd and lake was a college house that burnt down, in what was his hometown. He sings that it was "where we learned to celebrate" â€" where many great memories were created. The burning of 3rd and lake reminded him of all the years that 'you' spent together, and how well 'you' knew each other.
    The depression seemed to dim all happiness, even the characteristic joy of the christmas holiday, for the artistâ€" and it made it hard to distinguish the bad things (tangled spines) from the good (brother) because everything was covered over by the same "screen" that was "smoked" with their refusal to recognize it for what it was.
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  • U
    + 8
    Unregistered 2012-04-07 02:43:03
    It's a juxtaposition of common and surprising transcendent moments that reveal to us how small we are. Yet this realization of our own loss of magnificence is somehow ennobling and beautiful. How does looking at a long jagged and iced street create such a feeling of wonder? Why does looking into the gran canyon make you feel more and not less alive? Because we are not the center of the universe. When we remember this, we actually feel more at home in this world. Great song.
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  • U
    + 5
    Unregistered 2011-12-07 19:06:02
    The melody of this song is absolutely beautiful and thoughtful! Listening to this song make me want to write or do something profound! I noticed the song is called holocene which according to google is the name geologist have given to the time period we live in now and over the past 10, 000 years (. If you believe the earth has been around for that long.) so basically holocene is the earth around you. So I think the writer took a good look at what made up the world around him (the people, the places, the memories- certian moments in his life) and found something truly greater than himself. And I think the music an lyrics, and even the video, inspire us to do the same.
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  • U
    + 4
    Unregistered 2012-08-11 15:52:43
    I think this song is either about seeing a friend or oneself change and go down the wrong path. The "miles, miles, miles" part makes me think that he can see where his destiny was headed. Maybe he didn't like where it was going. The part, "now to know it my memory", I think it could either mean he could not bear to remember his past or simply can't remember it possibly because of drug abuse. This song makes me sad but it's very meaningful.
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  • U
    + 4
    Unregistered 2012-04-30 00:41:02
    It's about coming into who you are and realizing that not people are not who we think they are but much deeper. It's also about dealing with mortality and growing up. We're not god and we're given a short time on this planet. Kids tend to think themselves invincible and that's not the case. We're much smaller then we think we are in the grand scheme of things. What are we compared to something as "magnificent" as a mountain?
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  • U
    + 3
    Unregistered 2012-02-27 21:38:21
    It's about spraining your ankle while trick or treating, then having to go to milwaukee for surgery. The references to thick ice stress the importance of good winter driving skills in wisconsin, vernon's home state. And, finally, the practice of building large fires and "smoking screens" (mostly before storm windows are taken off) is common in the eau claire area to deter bugs, especially june bugs. Lots of people remember after the smoke is gone, you can see for miles, miles, miles.
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  • U
    + 3
    Unregistered 2012-02-19 03:34:53
    To me, this song means that even though we think that we're important, we are a speck on a speck on a speck (human on earth in space). We may think that if we kill this planet, it will all end ("it burnt away, the hallway where we learned to celebrate") but really, that's just our corner of the universe. ("hulled far from the highway aisle") this song makes me think about how we ourselves are still discovering stuff on earth, and we've barely scraped the rest of it. Some could say, "we've gotten so far! To the moon, even! " but some could say, "we've only gotten to the moon. " ("and at once i knew i was not magnificent" "i could see for miles miles miles") this song means that we are tiny, insignificant. Yet, at the same time, important to each other. ("my brother, i, and tangled spines")
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  • U
    + 3
    Unregistered 2012-02-13 23:47:55
    Holocene also means the present; therefore my interpretation is that at the present, no matter what is ahead, we find moments to let us know how big the picture is. What was once said and done was the past and the future is "miles and miles" ahead. All you can do is live in the present and realize you are not that magnificent and there is more than you'll ever know.
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  • U
    + 3
    Unregistered 2012-02-07 01:07:36
    Per justin himself: yeah, yeah. Holocene. Holocene is a bar in portland, ore. , but it's also the name of a geologic era, an epoch if you will. It's a good example of how all the songs are all meant to come together as this idea that places are times and people are places and times are. People? [laughs. ] they can all be different and the same at the same time. Most of our lives feel like these epochs. That's kind of what that song's about. "once i knew i was not magnificent. " our lives feel like these epochs, but really we are dust in the wind. But I think there's a significance in that insignificance that I was trying to look at in that song.
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  • U
    + 2
    Unregistered 2021-04-12 23:19:31
    Pitchfork: There are so many specific things from your life on this new album-- like mentioning the house where Brad and Phil Cook lived in Wisconsin at Third and Lake on "Holocene"-- what are they all communicating together?

    JV: I'm not sure how any images on a record fit together, but they are coming from a specific place. "Holocene" is a good example. The whole second verse is about those years in Eau Claire but the first verse is this weird amalgamation of the darkness that came with those times. I set that verse in Milwaukee because it's a dark, beer-drunk place. Even though I didn't spend a lot of time there, it's a good metaphor for those darker times. And guess what adults do on Halloween in Milwaukee? They get blind drunk and try to forget about their childhoods. We were going through ideas for a video for "Holocene", and we thought it should be adults trick-or-treating where children are handing out their past dreams. Pretty dark.
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  • U
    + 2
    Unregistered 2021-04-12 23:18:56
    He discussed this in an interview.
    Pitchfork: There are so many specific things from your life on this new album-- like mentioning the house where Brad and Phil Cook lived in Wisconsin at Third and Lake on "Holocene"-- what are they all communicating together?

    JV: I'm not sure how any images on a record fit together, but they are coming from a specific place. "Holocene" is a good example. The whole second verse is about those years in Eau Claire but the first verse is this weird amalgamation of the darkness that came with those times. I set that verse in Milwaukee because it's a dark, beer-drunk place. Even though I didn't spend a lot of time there, it's a good metaphor for those darker times. And guess what adults do on Halloween in Milwaukee? They get blind drunk and try to forget about their childhoods. We were going through ideas for a video for "Holocene", and we thought it should be adults trick-or-treating where children are handing out their past dreams. Pretty dark.
    Add your reply
  • U
    + 2
    Unregistered 2012-06-01 06:18:19
    The song holocene performed by artist bon iver is expressing their feelings of many hard times through beautiful music. It shares memories and expresses the fact of imperfection and great mistakes made. This song is beautiful in the way it is written and performed. The true meaning of this song is to express and cause one to "dig deeper" into thought of what it really may be saying. One to unravel and find the pieces to the puzzle of this song. One of my favorites for sure.
    Add your reply
  • U
    + 2
    Unregistered 2012-05-28 19:28:49
    This song means that you are all self absorbed, self-loathers who try to pretend you aren't, and who think much too highly of themselves as to try to discern meaning of a song you had no part in creating because you have nothing better to do than to wish you could have created it. Instead, go create something you really know the meaning of. Yeah, this song probably has deep meaning about something, but take it as you see it and embrace it, don't try to "educate" the rest of the web world with your unbridled wisdom about a personal feeling that someone else created for you.
    Add your reply
  • U
    + 2
    Unregistered 2012-05-03 03:26:35
    It's about broken dreams. The dream of early youth, to find the love of your love only to find that it doesn't last. To find that you've hit rock bottom and off on your own. I could see miles, miles, miles means the emptiness that comes from the dissillution of this experience. This is referenced as halloween as a metaphor for autumn which comes with the fall and morphing of nature around us. When the beauty of color is lost and nothing is left but empty branches.
    The second part references winter or christmas. The cold and lost of innocence and youth. The reference to his brother stands for the family essence as in the end everyone can leave but your brother, tangled spines, will never leave your side. Together both stare out into the emptiness of what is left from life.
    Ee.
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  • U
    + 2
    Unregistered 2012-03-07 01:23:50
    Front man justin vernon explained the song title in an interview with mojo: "it's partly named after the (geological) era, but it's also the name of a bar in portland where i had a dark night of the soul. " he also stated that "the title is a metaphor for when you're not doing well. But it's also a song about redemption and realizing that you're worth something; that you're special and not special at the same time. "
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  • U
    + 2
    Unregistered 2012-02-16 21:56:46
    This song describes my life a lot. Even though I'm just a junior in high school and most people say you haven't had nothing happen to you. Well tell me what it's like to lose your best friend since preschool, your great-grandfather, I had the girl of my dreams play me for a fool, and I just recently had every friend I ever had or wanted s***w me over :(
    Add your reply
  • U
    + 2
    Unregistered 2012-02-13 16:48:10
    Holocene-how to write lyrics that sound incredibly clever but mean absolutely nothing and only stir confusion. Writing lyrics that place untimely, unjointed words and phrases together looks quite clever but in the end it's hollow and meaningless. You will read it, fend off the confusion and be right back to tangled up in blue before you know it. Where every letter of every word makes perfect sense and the author is not shouting from the hill tops "look how far away from you i am"
    Add your reply
  • U
    + 2
    Unregistered 2012-02-13 14:47:08
    The tiny corner of existence that is our lives seems insignificant but actually we are part and it is part of us, the magnificence that is existence itself. That which exists, that can be marveled at in the thinnest wing of a butterfly web or complexity of a galaxy, is a part and we are a part of what it is. I am not magnificent in the light of the wonder of existence but "someway, baby, it's part of me, apart from me"
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  • U
    + 2
    Unregistered 2012-01-07 01:49:09
    These are all moments in justin's lifetime. Holocene is a bar he frequented, and the epoch that is the era of time called holocene. The "smoke screen" he speaks of is about acting out the ritual of what christmas was playing along with it. This is all about how insignificant ones life is to everything else that is the world in a grand scheme, as well, amog other things. These are things justin was quoted saying.
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  • U
    + 2
    Unregistered 2011-12-31 02:31:39
    This seems like it has to do with his past, maybe growing up. The true meaning only he will know. But when he says, "we smoked the screen to make it what it was to be", to me it seems like he was not wanting to see something for what it really was. "and at once i knew i was not magnificent" sounds like the moment he went from childhood into adulthood. "and i could see for miles... ", meaning there was someplace further, better to go.
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  • U
    + 2
    Unregistered 2011-12-05 19:35:16
    This song is a profound dialogue with self, with soul and with god, about a crazy kinda wild time he had, and many others, where they smoked so much pot and flew very high and free and drunk, one december. This man is a man of god, but a rebel free spirit too, and so he's walked the thin line again and again, and burned candle at both ends. Yes, this is a song from the recuperation after burning the candle at both ends. By a wild and profound guy. Really special, lovely. I hope I have it close with me til the end of the world and beyond. Rr.
    Add your reply
  • U
    + 2
    Unregistered 2011-09-09 16:52:46
    To me, this is a song about discovering yourself outside of your own means. The video is of a little boy walking across the most magnificent sites of Iceland, skipping stones, and looking ever so small in comparisson.
    I think the chorus, "and at once I knew I was not magnificent" is an explaination of that feeling after you've climbed a mountain--a very, very big one--and realizing that you are very small in comparrison to this beauty. It's simultaneously the most overwhelming, awe-inspiring, and difficult emotions to understand, in my opinion. "I am so small, yet I want to matter, and I want to be beautiful just as this mountain is."
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  • U
    + 1
    Unregistered 2012-05-12 02:31:52
    This song has profound meaning about the relationship of man and woman. As a man he cannot live up to her expectations of the life that she was raised in: a life of privilege, self indulgence, narcissism and vanity. He is feeling inadequate because his manliness is miniscule and insignificant. He cannot live in her world of access and excess. His de minimus physical member does not service her adequately. She needs a bigger member. Much bigger.
    Gm.
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  • U
    0
    Unregistered 2012-06-19 23:17:34
    It's about ending an abusive relationship. He loved this person so much, but once he knew that feeling from within, he was not magnificent anymore despite the committed love with his soul. He had to leave and with that feeling world opened back up. Recollections of shared memories and experience of that person that was part of his struggle in life. He moved on with life, thinks back on this sadness, but made the decision to end the pain and be happy again.
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    • U
      + 23
      Unregistered
      Its a freaking car crash. Come on. They got in a car crash coming home from halloween(hence the... Read more →
    • U
      + 11
      Unregistered
      When you realize, that you're a part of something bigger than yourself, your own problems appear no... Read more →
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    [Intro][Verse][Pre-Chorus][Chorus][Hook][Bridge][Outro]