2

In the lyrics of "It's my life" by No Doubt, there is:

If I could buy my reasoning, I'd pay to lose

Can someone explain what this means?

Update

Does it means: my feelings tell me to go left, my reasoning to go right, if I could pay to keep my reasoning quite and go left, I would do it, but my reasoning is stronger, so I still feel I should go right?

Improve this question
4
  • 1
    Sadly, interpretation of lyrics or poetry is off-topic. There's too much room for opinion/disagreement, and really, we'll never know exactly what the author meant. Try Yahoo Answers.
    – Mitch
    May 22, 2012 at 16:40
  • Sorry, English is not my mother tongue. I thought it was an expression really meaning something in English, not poetry.
    – Jérôme Verstrynge
    May 22, 2012 at 19:17
  • Well, song lyrics -are- poetry (though not often recognized as such). That is, the lyrics are created with an emphasis on being artful rather than in attempt to transfer information.
    – Mitch
    May 22, 2012 at 19:44
  • The song was written by Mark Hollis (who sadly died earlier this year 2019) of Talk Talk, who released the original, which I think is more atmospheric than No Doubt's decent version. Looking at the first line of the lyrics, "Funny how I find myself in love with you", it seems he is still in love, but the partner is not. So perhaps he would pay to lose that emotion, lose the reasoning leading to that outcome.
    – MikeW
    Jun 27, 2019 at 10:18

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
0

For the speculative fun if it (despite this being off topic for english.SE) I'd say it means the speaker feels that, if his reasoning ability were for sale, he'd buy it and be getting a raw deal because it's so poor. Though, like all lyric and poetry, this line cannot be interpreted in a vacuum. It has to be taken in light of the rest of piece and whatever source material/reference it draws upon.

Improve this answer

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.