All My Friends Take It Slow Analysis

When you sit in a doctor 's office, you’ll never know who the people sitting next to you really are or what they have done. Maybe that kid that sat next to you in class won’t show up one day because he was tired of being bullied and took his life. Or maybe the cashier that gave you your coffee with a smile and a “good day” actually goes home extremely depressed because that person cannot support a life in today’s society with a minimum wage job to pay the bills. It seems crazy to think about, but how many murderers have you walked past? How many people have you walked by that have cheated? How many have been abused or abuse others? The answer is simple: you don 't know. It can be hard to tell who these people are; before you judge them or get …show more content…
In fact, the first line of the tune reads, “All my friends are heathens, take it slow.” From the start, we can understand that something feels wrong about the way he describes his friends. The part where he sings “take it slow” gives us the idea that these people do not mix well with others they don’t know or understand. You might ask, “Who are these friends?” To my analyzation, I interpret his friends as anyone who has been emotionally and mentally damaged; something we can’t directly see when we meet them. For example, the rest of the chorus says, “Wait for them to ask you who you know. Please don’t make any sudden moves. You don’t know the half of the abuse.” Tyler’s friends seem almost like a wild animal from the way they are described by using words such as “wait for them” and “don’t make any sudden moves.” I really like the detail of the “sudden moves” because it gives the listener the same sense of mystery and danger that one would feel by approaching a vicious dog. Like most songs, the chorus states the mood of the piece and I believe Tyler pushes to get across the concept that the people you walk by aren’t always what they seem; you don 't know what those people have been through. We can frequently find this in today’s society. For instance, let’s imagine that a boy gets violently bullied at school only to come home to his abusive father. However, no one who bullied him at school knew that he was abused at home and didn’t realize that they were slowly pushing him to the brink of lashing out. Sadly, this seems to be a common theme throughout our world and Tyler wrote this to bring that idea to his music by putting himself in the “heathen’s”