First I’ll let you a link to the YouTube video if you’re not familiar. It’s here.
I’m keeping myself from posting the lyrics and trying to do a line-by-line interpretation, but I’ll do some quoting which I’ll separate for clarity.
And now I’ll press play and start. Thanks to TayZonday [site still under development, redirects to his YouTube account] for this song. People may criticize it for the repetition of the title lyric, but I think that it’s such a broad concept and its perpetual inclusion between the content lyrics just drives down what it’s really about.
Okay. Chocolate Rain is very much like the so-called American Dream. It’s this drive of nations and men toward wealth and power despite the consequences. Now here’s some of the lyric to back that up:
Some stay dry and others feel the pain
[…]
Build a tent and say the world is dry
[…]
Zoom the camera out and see the lie
[…]
Seldom mentioned on the radio
[…]
Its the fear your leaders call control
[…]
Worse than swearing worse than calling names
[…]
Say it publicly and you’re insane
[…]
Dirty secrets of economy
[…]
Turns that body into GDP
[…]
The bell curve blames the baby’s DNA
[…]
But test scores are how much the parents make
[…]
Which part do you think you’re ‘livin in?
[…]
More than ‘marchin more than passing law
[…]
Remake how we got to where we are.
Those are hopefully in order. Those were some of the major lines that brought me to the conclusion of ‘what is Chocolate Rain?’
It’s especially apparent in lines like Build a tent and say the world is dry. The implication being that most people focus mostly on themselves and if they are okay the world is okay. That’s a fair accusation, I think.
The chocolate rain that falls and we try to catch it is the other big clue here. Imagine you are in a field with 1,000 people and chocolate rain, or maybe a little more effective for my case, $100 bill rain, begins to fall. Look at the parade scene in the first Batman movie. People would start trampling each other for the value that is all around, even if, maybe especially if, there’s enough for everyone.
And that seems to be the nut of this song as far as I can tell. People I know and the internet I normally come across doesn’t especially discuss the meaning behind songs or works that much so I’d be interested in hearing your take on what this song means.
Thanks,
Adam