Interpretations:Everything Right Is Wrong Again

• Song
• Lyrics
• Interpretations
• Credits
• Guitar Tab
• Bass Tab
• Chronology

The Scene...or...so it seems to me.

Car with an attached trailer crashes. The survivor is apparently floating upstream. I imagine there is some personifying going on. Evidence for this is presented with the line:

"And nobody would stop to save her."

Or I could be wrong. As I've said before:

"I'm not very smart."

I'm a bit lost on the dingy weasel, although it intrigues me, as any dingy weasel should. I'll leave the rest to the muses. --The Panda 01:32, April 15, 2005

Interpretation 2

"The long, long trailer" is a reference to the 1954 Lucille Ball/Desi Arnaz I love Lucy motion picture The Long, Long Trailer. Taking a honeymoon roadtrip, a cumbersome trailer creates plenty of slapstick problems for Lucy and Ricki, including one scene where the motor trailer, Lucy inside, becomes unhinged from the car, their dishes falling from the shelves, and the car continues away, hence the lines:

Just like in the long long trailer
All the dishes got broken and the car kept driving
And nobody would stop to save her

The "her" in question is Lucy. --Texaspickle 22:12, April 17, 2005

cracks his knuckles

Let's try to give this one a thorough interpretation, hm? I believe it's about how accepted beliefs can change from time to time. "Again" means that at one point, whatever is being referred to was cool or accepted at one point, though it was radical or crazy at one point. However, now this trend has now fallen back to its former status. It's about how fads come and go.

In the second stanza, the narrator hopes that the fad is gone and doesn't want to be disturbed until it's gone. The weasel overcome with dinge, a dirty or shamed weasel, has felt the pain of being abused, but while time has past, he can't forget the pain of the past.

The song then moves into the fake ending, which represents the end of a trend (things become right). The next lines are describing the fads... from moves that aren't used seriously (say, for instance, disco) to the waltz becoming the popular dance. "Every five and dime spent gained and spent" is another way to say that people spend all of the money they make on these fads.

The fad then begins to fade. People are dying because of it and people are laughing in the face of death and pain where they should be screaming. The silent voice is the conscience of the people telling them that this isn't right. The last "and now this song is over now" means that the fad has ended and society has moved on. --Ecks 23:42, October 31, 2005

Interpretation 4

Just listening to this song with my now adult ears, the following couplet stood out to me:
Weasel overcome but not before the damage done
The healing doesn't stop the feeling

Wow, what a pop-culturally dense juxtaposition from the 60s through 70s. Weasel overcome resonates with "We shall overcome", the 60's civil rights spiritual; "the damage done" evokes the famous Neil Young junkie song The Needle and the Damage Done, very popular mid 70's. I'm not sure if the healing calls in Marvin Gaye's Sexual Healing (1972), but I feel like "stop the feeling" comes from that "ooga-ooga-ooga-chacka" Hooked on a Feeling song from the late 70's.

Bear with me here: Every thing right is wrong again: civil rights is right, and is followed by the wrong of inner cities decaying by drug use. Chart-topping soulful R&B is right, and is followed by the wrong, craptastic yet still chart-topping, scandinavian pop. --Keith 09:20, January 25, 2006

I agree with "Weasel overcome" = "We shall overcome"

and "Weasel and the damage done" = "The needle and the damage done"

"You're a weasel overcome with dinge" - dinge means grime or squalor. -- Thread Bomb (talk) 20:58, 8 March 2020 (EDT)

Interpretation 5

I think this song is mainly about a relationship falling apart...Almost every line shows how him and this girl are fighting all the time. "And now the song is over now" is just him saying the relationship is over, or should be.

"Wake me when it's over, touch my face, tell me every word has been erased"...Can't just about everyone relate to this line? It's so sweet and sad...I don't think the song is as analytical as some people are making it out to be.

"You're a weasel overcome with dinge"... Ouch! Them's fighting words, John.

"The healing doesn't stop the feeling"... They can try to patch things up but it really won't stop that gut feeling that maybe this relationship won't work out.

Sure there's lots of word play and obscure pop culture references and the typical TMBG conundrums...But I think the main essence of this song is that a relationship is ending. A lot of their songs are like this. --Jordan 00:05, March 7, 2006

Interpretation 6

It might be about a nasty hurricane-think about it. The title phrase might mean the local area is in a state of deep disarray where there was order: it's not just messed up, EVERYTHING is wrong, again an echo to the familiar phrase "the worst storm in so-and-so years". Weasel overcome with dinge means they're hiding in their homes-a dirty, upset weasel would flee to their burrow, as also seen in the "Wake me when it's over, touch my face.." part. The healing not stopping the feeling means despite all the restoration & support groups, the people are depressed. Also "the car kept driving" means that the wind's carrying large belongings like cars high in the air. The gained-and-spent line means after the storm, poverty strikes. The false move-waltz thing might signify how it complicates matters, and the false part might mean that most actions seem futile. I'm not saying it's the intended meaning-it just works, kinda like those crazy Pink Floyd syncs. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.183.22.228 (talk • contribs) 00:28, November 29, 2006

Interpretation 7

I'm only gonna comment on the title and line of the song, "Everything that's right is wrong again." Maybe it's just me, but it seems that the line is intended to be an inversion of the phrase "Everything that (was/is) wrong is right again." That just seems like the way the line SHOULD be, and when I thought about it possibly being intended that it sounds like that, I began applying it to certain life situations. Recently, there were things in my life going wrong that I righted, or so I thought. And I began to regret my decision and reversed it. Even though I was completely right in making the choice I did, I felt wrong, and altered my life for the worst after fixing it. Everything that WAS right was wrong again. And the inversion is significant because it felt right to me but in the long run it was wrong, and since it was wrong in the first place before I fixed it, it was wrong again. I know, it makes very little sense, and I'm having a lot of trouble conveying my meaning. Maybe some of you got it. --Penumbra 21:02, January 29, 2007

Interpretation 8

Kind of a stretch, but it might be about how pretty much everything in science will be considered false in the future as it has been happening for century. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.248.55.248 (talk • contribs) 16:57, February 9, 2007

Interpretation 9

Certainly some truly excellent and thoughtful exegesis here by y'all!

I believe Everything Right Is Wrong Again is every bit as self-consciously positioned (as the opening TMBG statement) as Number Three. In other words, shuffling the track order of either song would be as much a no no as not playing Apollo 18 on shuffle; the primacy of the song irrevocably colors its perceived meaning as a TMBG self-introduction/mission statement of sorts.

Here's a kōan for everyone: before John's opening declaration "Everything right is wrong again," is everything actually wrong? Are TMBG being descriptive, merely echoing what "the voice that makes the silent noise" told them (any time you think of a sound, that voice is speaking), or are TMBG themselves suddenly turning everything wrong again by the act of saying it aloud?

With "Wake me when it's over, touch my face / Tell me every word has been erased" they declare all that came before this moment a dream (presumably parallel to a history bad enough the narrator doesn't want to be awake, forced to acknowledge it), and then seek confirmation from an intimate other that the past was only a nightmare. As if being told "every word has been erased" would actually erase the past. Besides historical revisionism's applicability as a common emotional response after a breakup, or in alternating waves of generational hope and disenchantment, I also read it as TMBG disavowing/denying what came before them and wiping the slate clean: a new musical landscape.

The declaration that "the song is over now" halfway through drives home the fact that we have a laughably unreliably narrator. However, John is not only wrong about the song being over, he is the "wrong" that everything right has now been turned into. TMBG's style is to run counter to the rest of the musical trends, turning everything on it's head, like Saturnalia.

"Every movement false, every four is waltz again" A waltz is based on three beats and is generally regarded as more awkward than 4/4. (Then, 5 follows 4 of course) "Every five and dime's been gained and spent," returning to an impoverished state, although a five-and-dime is cheap to begin with..."Tell me that you like my float upstream" I do like it. Not swimming upstream mind you, but floating, effortlessly.

"Draw the line dividing laugh and scream" is perhaps one of the most tellingly characteristic lines about TMBG's output. Are TMBG funny? Dark? Wacky? Sad? Ambiguous? In situations where a straight delivery would likely come off sounding trite, they deliver much more effective pathos by wrapping the pain in humor/absurdity. Conversely, TMBG can also use sad/dark imagery to evoke a sense of happiness. Humans are complex. --kjell 03:59, April 25, 2009

Interpretation 10

So, I think this song is about movie sequels. I can't account for all the lyrics, and the fact that The Long Long Trailer isn't a movie trailer, but an actual movie. The title suggests the premise for most movie sequels just reopen the conflict that was resolved in the first title of the series. I'll try and finish this line of thought later. I got distracted. --Cheeseball701 04:44, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

Politics?

Okay, so this is probably not what the Johns had in mind when they wrote the song, but stay with me 'cause it kinda works. Oh, and this might tick you off if you're a conservative...

Everything right is wrong again

• First of all, we're talking about "Right" in the political sense, opposed to "Left" instead of "Wrong." This clarification puts a whole new spin on the title.

Just like in The Long, Long Trailer All the dishes got broken and the car kept driving And nobody would stop to save her

• ... just like in that movie...

Wake me when it's over, touch my face Tell me every word has been erased

• "I don't even want to know the details of the Reagan Revolution just wake me when it's over and tell me it never happened"

• Reagan fits the timeline of when the song was written and what it ment to be Right-wing at that time - I had this epiphany during the GWB years, but I imagine many Lefties felt this way about Reagan. I was a little young, at that time, to have political opinions: he had me sold with "Star Wars", because Lightsabers!

Don't you want to know the reason Why the cupboard's not appealing Don't you get the feeling that

• "the economy sucks because..."

Everything that's right is wrong again

• The philosophy is just wrong.

You're a weasel overcome with dinge Weasel overcome but not before the damage done

• "Weasel overcome with dinge" is a perfect description of a politician, no? (right or left, imho).

And now the song is over now And now the song is over now And now the song is over now The song is over now

• Yay, it's been 4 years we get to vote against him now! It's all over! ...isn't it?

Everything right is wrong again

• ARGGGHHH!! The distorted voice represents how much worse this 2nd term is...

Every movement false, every four is waltz again

• Waltzes have a 3 beat - play one with a 4 beat and the dancers all fall down. Metaphor for a chaotic situation.

Every five and dime's been gained and spent

• Economy's really in the can now.

Tell me that you like my float upstream

• Most people seem to support this movement, but I hope you approve of my rebellion.

Draw the line dividing laugh and scream

• Don't know if I should laugh or scream.

You know everything that I know so I know You've heard the voice that makes the silent noise That says that...

• "I know that you know what I'm talking about here"

So that's my take, even if the Johns had no idea they were writing a leftist roar, it's always what I think about when I hear this one. ChaosS (talk) 17:57, 10 September 2013 (EDT)