The song “Interstate Love Song” was created by the rock band from America “Stone Temple Pilots” in September 1994. It was featured on their second studio album, Purple, and made it to the list of the best songs of the nineties. In 2003, “Interstate Love Song” was included on the Big Hits compilation STP Thank You.
The song is considered the biggest hit among the band’s tracks. On several charts, she stayed at number one for fifteen to seventeen weeks. “Interstate Love Song” is written in a grunge style with elements of alternative hard rock and sounds really in the spirit of the nineties.
At first, at the stage of writing, the song looked like an experiment, but the authors already felt its potential. “Interstate Love Song” is based on the true biography of the band’s lead singer, Scott Weiland, and talks about the complexities between him and his girlfriend.
It would seem that the author of the song said everything in the title – “Song of Distance and Love”, what else can be added here? But everything is not so simple. In the text behind each line one can guess an inescapable pain, one that makes you want to scream at the top of your voice. In short, this is a song about the pain caused by love and distrust. And besides that, it’s also a song about lies.
The lie is mentioned right away in the very first lines: “Waiting on a Sunday afternoon for what I read between the lines,” the hero of the song guesses that he has been betrayed, and even though the beloved did not directly report this, intuition insists on deception. Judging by “reading between the lines,” he received a letter that revealed to him the lie.
“Your lies feeling like a hand that lost its ring”, – it seems that it was not without betrayal, it’s not for nothing that the hero of the song mentions “the ring that disappeared from his hand”. There is nothing worse than uncertainty and conjecture, and the hero asks, asks the one who cannot or does not want to answer him: “So do you laugh or does it cry? Reply?”
He has already imagined the most terrible details and knows exactly what happened. Surely he knows this girl well and intimately, enough to recognize lies in an ordinary letter.
“Leaving on a southern train only yesterday you lied”, – the lie torments the hero so much that he cannot think of anything else. And he “leaves to the south”, apparently from himself, in order to drown out annoying thoughts about the same thing. He worries not only because of his girlfriend’s lies, but also because of his lies because he is silent about what he has learned. For some reason, the hero does not want to talk to her about it.
“Promises of what I seemed to be only watched the time go by”, – probably the girl promised to wait, but deceived. There are no direct references to this, but the situation is seen that way. Either deception is present on both sides, perhaps the hero himself made mistakes. Either way, the conflict is agonizing, almost unbearable.
“All of these things you said to me”, among other things, the song is clearly about communication problems on both sides. One is silent, the other does not say what he thinks, in response he receives another lie, he himself answers with even more lies, and now everything is entwined into a ball that cannot be unraveled, all that remains is to chop.
Probably, the distance exacerbates the misunderstanding between people, and perhaps the matter is in the characters and type of relationship. One way or another, the hero and his girlfriend are at a dead end, and both suffer.
The next line speaks directly about this: “Breathing is the hardest thing to do”, – the gravity is so strong that it does not allow breathing, crushes with a concrete slab, confuses and frightens.
“With all I’ve said and all that’s dead for you”, – it can be assumed that in the end the hero nevertheless said or wrote to the girl in response to the deception something terrible that he now wants to “digest” and, most likely, forget. Hence the flight in the “train to the south”, increasing torment and fear.
Probably, communication is still not instantaneous, some kind of development occurs between “Sunday afternoon” and “a trip to the south”. But this does not clarify the relationship, only confuses even more.
So, first of all, this is a song about lies that poison the relationship that has already begun to collapse. The heroes of the song are in different cities, perhaps even in different countries. They cannot communicate normally, they only lie to each other, while both feel a lie.
The situation is emotionally difficult and painful for both. Ahead is an unambiguous parting and all that the hero can do is to alleviate suffering by moving.
Problems are not indicated directly in the song, but even in this form they evoke sympathy and pity, you believe the pains of the heroes and let them through you. At the same time, the attractive beauty of these unhealthy relationships is felt, you want to watch the characters, you want to know how their lives developed further. The author managed to create a full-fledged, albeit painful, reality show with a couple of lines in the song, from which you can’t tear yourself away.
And so, the heroes exchange “dead words”, fencing them off from each other like a shield, and do everything to drown out mutual pain.
The song is short, but capacious and very painful.
