The Killers are a band that I actually like a lot. They are one of the classic examples though of a group that has great music, but often truly awful and pointless lyrics. I actually have a soft spot in my heart for one of their dumber songs "Human," even though the main chorus "Are we human or are we dancer?" makes absolutely no sense. The music to that is just so good that I think it actually, in a very rare instance of this, overwhelms the nonsensical lyrics.
But it doesn't for one of their first huge hits, All These Things That I've Done. Again, great melody and singing, but then we get to the main refrain, which is...
I've got soul but I'm not a soldier.
Honestly, this just makes me mad. What the hell does this even mean? Is it trying to be deep? Cause if it is, it's failing so miserably it's kinda painful to even think about. If it isn't and it's trying to be funny, well....it's also failing miserably. It certainly isn't sung like a joke in the song. But it's also a sing-along song (this refrain is repeated, believe it or not, ten friggin times in the song), and when you sing those lyrics, I don't know, I feel like something dies inside of me every time. This is just so vapid and annoying, because it feels like the band wants us to believe this, and to treat it as a rallying cry. Personally, if William Wallace had chanted this as a lead into battle, or if the dude from 300 had yelled it to me as a Spartan fighting Xerxes, I would have just stood there and said "Wha?" I probably would say that because I actually was a soldier in both cases, but I would also just get demoralized and run away. Sigh.
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