(RecordPool) Song of the Day: The National - Exile Vilify

Another great song from The National that has a twisted meaning as they always have in their songs, the cool thing about Exile Vilify song is that it's composed and performed by The National exclusively for the video game called Portal 2 and it's released as a single, you can't find it in their albums. This song was created in 2011, the same day the video game Portal 2 was released.

I think that the lyrics can be explained in a lot of different ways, here is from my perspective.

Exile. It takes your mind... Again.
Exile. It takes your mind... Again.

As you can hear Matt singing exile, he is singing it exactly as anxiety which goes very well with the rest of the lines. Anxiety takes your mind, it slowly consumes you in a most awful ways.

You've got sucker's luck...
Have you given up?
Does it feel like a trial?
Does it trouble your mind the way you trouble mine?

The line "You've got sucker's luck" can also refer to anxiety, to be the one with anxiety in your friend circle, family, school etc. Have you given up or you are still fighting it even it's not feeling like a trail and it lasts forever. "Does it trouble your mind the way you trouble mine?" can mean a lot of things, my guess is that he is asking his ex about the trouble he went through after their break up, so he asks if she has the same troubled mind as he has it now.

Now, you're thinking too fast, you're like marbles on glass.

Thinking too fast can be a metaphor from "overthinking" thanks to the the power of anxiety you start to think about situation that are not even there and possibly never gonna happen in your life. Not sure about marbles on glass, but I think that he is referring as the fast rolling of the marbles on the glass surface which is the same as "thinking fast".

As you can see, the lyrics it's way different than most of the game songs out there, that's why I love The National so much, they sing metaphoric lyrics and they give you a space so you can explain the song in your own words, different than their original meaning of the song, pure art.