On October 17, 2004, My Chemical Romance retired the song “Drowning Lessons” from their setlist. They haven’t played this song live in 20 years and it’s unlikely they ever will again. That’s because, according to a popular fan theory, the song is haunted.
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My Chemical Romance has played “Drowning Lessons” a grand total of 16 times during their impressive decades-long career. It is the fourth song on their debut album from 2002, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love, and they usually played it during the main set closers while on tour in 2004. However, whenever the band played “Drowning Lessons,” more often than not something would go wrong.
In a Q&A on Reddit in 2014, Gerard Way answered various fan questions. One of them was about “Drowning Lessons” and why the band stopped playing it in 2004.
When asked “what bad things happened when you played [“Drowning Lessons”] live,” Way answered, “Just various stuff would go wrong, everything from starting the song at different times, to amps and drums breaking.” He also added, “It was also too personal for me to want to sing it live.”
The Lore of My Chemical Romance’s “Drowning Lessons” and How it Fits Into “Demolition Lovers”
While Gerard Way has never officially shared the reason why “Drowning Lessons” was so personal for him, the themes are heavy enough to make his aversion to it understandable. Allegedly, the song is about a man who either kills his lover or sees her killed, and must relive the day over and over again. It ties into the lore of “Demolition Lovers,” the last track on the album.
If we think about “Demolition Lovers” as an extension of “Drowning Lessons,” we can trace the lore deeper even into the 2004 album Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. The man is tasked with killing 1,000 souls to be reunited with his lover, a theme that is touched on in “Drowning Lessons” with the lyric 1,000 bodies piled up.
Generally, though, this song is commonly thought to be about Gerard Way’s willingness to die for the people he loves. On the inlay of the CD, there’s a note from Way that reads “To K: I’m sorry I wrote all those songs about killing you, I hope the last track makes up for it.” The final song on the album is about the two lovers dying in a hail of bullets. While they lay in a pool of blood, they kiss for the final time. And in this pool of blood / I’ll meet your eyes / I mean this / Forever!
Featured Image by Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
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