Coldplay - Paradise Lyrics Meaning
My interpretation is more straightforward than the other ones but here goes. In the first verse, 'when she was just a girl, she expected the world' shows that when the little girl was young, she saw life as being perfect. This could have been from her parents being kind and loving to her. She expected the world to be a fairytale where she would live in a grand castle and marry her Prince Charming. 'But it flew away from her reach' meaning that as she got older, her parents expected her to be mature and start working for herself, and she starts to struggle, with all her dreams falling apart. 'So she ran away in her sleep, and dreamed of para- para- paradise, every time she closed her eyes.' The little girl now despises her life, and so takes limbo in her dreams and thinks about her perfect life when she was younger. And now in the second verse, 'and the bullets catch in her teeth' might show that in her perfect world, she was invincible and that nothing could stop her. 'Life goes on, it gets so heavy.' The now teenage girl lives by herself and with her parents possibly deceased, has a lot of mortgage to pay off and gives her depression. 'The wheel breaks the butterfly,' might reference the Wheel of Forture where in Medieval times, and wheel was said to have been placed and goes through a cycle of happiness and sorrow. The wheel might have taken a full cycle back to sadness and depression and 'breaks the butterfly' with the butterfly being symbolic to the girl. She might have be gentle and shy, just like a butterfly. 'Every tear, a waterfall,' shows the girl crying every single day and feels hopeless. 'In the night, the stormy night, she closed her eyes, in the night, the stormy night, away she'd fly, and dreamed of para- para- paradise' Depicts that in the darkest part of her life, she takes refuge in her dreams once again and dreams about her castle, dreams of her Prince Charming and her fairytale life. And in the bridge, 'So lying underneath those stormy skies, she said oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh, I know the sun must set to rise.' Shows a change of heart and even though she is still lying in the middle of her problems, she realizes that for her dreams to rise, she has to first experience hardship. But in the final chrous, 'This could be para- para- paradise' it shows hesitation with the word 'could'. But I believe that she has decided to try her best and push through her problems and to see what is on the other side. She knows that for things to improve, she has to first do something. The song ends with, 'Oo-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo, oo-oo-oo' which might be her thinking of her next move in making her life into a real fairytale.
