Lyrics and Analysis to the Song "What Sarah Said" by Death Cab for Cutie

"What Sarah Said" by Death Cab For Cutie is one of the most emotionally charged songs I have ever heard. The song itself is not that amazing, the music is pretty, but it does not have that wow factor that immediately grabs you attention and sucks you in. I had it on my iPod and listened to it a few times, but had never really LISTENED the words. Then one night, I was thinking about my Grandad, who just passed away last year after being ill for three months, and that was when this song really hit home. I felt the feelings that the singer was feeling as the words passed through his lips. I could see the hospital room and smell the distinct smell hospitals seem to emanate. I was there, in the room. It transported me back in time to when I had spent so much time in a small hospital room, to the beeping of the machines, to a time when I was filled with the fear of losing someone I loved so dearly.

You really have to pay attention to the song to get what is going on because the lyrics don't spell everything out for you. The setting is in an Intensive Care Unit where there are "vending machines and year old magazines" and where someone he loves is dying. One of the lines that really tore at my heart was when he sang "It felt like a violent wind, that our memories depend on a faulty camera in our minds", summing up the horrible feeling of knowing that your memories will soon be all you have left of your dying loved one. He describes the scene in the hospital room perfectly, from the machines down to the television that is running, but no one is watching it.