Sleep

demolitionjo:

When Mikey left the Paramour due to depression, Gerard had alot of really terrible nightmares, which inspired this song. He would wake up, and talk about the nightmares into a hand-held recorder thing. Some of the recordings were used in the intro and outro of "Sleep", eg "feels like somebody was gripping my throat"

Wow.. i find that amazing i really dont know why lol
This song is soo good it actually helpps me sleep because i alwayz have nightmares and when i listen to it i just think 'Fuck It'
Sleep Kidda :p
I just thought it meant that patient was slowly nd uncomfotably dying and they were jsut saying Forget The world and Just Sleep because its what you need.And he was like a saviuour and everything for ebing so brave throughout his life and now all he needed to do was sleep.
Shows What I Know :s xx

xmissmychemx:

actually, i think it sounds more like frank, the way he says "um" and the general tone, his accent, its a lot deeper than gerard, cos gerard has more a new york twang.

do you know for sure it was mikey that left?

i love the song though, something about it is so...like, getting at you if you know what i mean...i think its one of the harshest songs on the album

xx

It was def. Mikey.

And just for the record... I used to have night terrors... right after my Dad died. They were horrible... I'd see it over and over and I couldn't wake up. My family told me that my eyes would open, while I slept, and I'd start screaming and screaming... they just had to wait for me to stop.... was nothing they could do.. I wouldn't wake...

Sleep is about Gerard having night terrors when Mikey was depressed. They used Gerard's quotes at the beginning of the song, if you listen.

No no no no no you guys have it all wrong.I read this in AP Magazine so this came right from My Chem's Mouth...this also goes for the song Famous Last Words:
During the band's last victory lap of America,Mikey started to become increasingly insular and withdrawn. The band member that was always lightening up a mood whenever things got hairy was in the throes of anxiety,which soon developed into full-blown depression. On the road,he purposely limited his universe to playing the shows and heading back to the privacy of his bunk on the band's coach immediately afterward.
"Some of the best shows of our career just flew right by me," Mikey admits. "Some of them I'd been waiting for all my life.I had gotten everything I ever wanted,but there was a point where I was just...'What the fuck?' For so long,I was so pissed off at myself-the littlest things would set me off.I'd keep my mouth shut and stand in the back. Some people would mistake [my behavior] for shyness or arrogance. It was just terrible anxiety."
The moment the band arrived at the Paramour and dropped their luggage on the floor,Mikey was at an emotional low. His existing condition, coupled with the vibe of the mansion and the amount of pressure the band memebers were putting on each other to make MCR v.3.0 the best batch of songs yet, made the bassist think he had two options in life-to quit the band or,worse yet, to quit the human race.
"I remember sitting in the main room thinking, 'I'm not going to make it through this," he says. "I was either offing myself or leaving the band-one or the other was going to happen." After staying for one month and enduring a series of hyperventilating attacks and nervous breakdowns, Mikey left Paramour to stay with the band's attorney, Stacy Fass. When he wasn't seeing specialists for his condition,he would come down and work on music,but never stay the night.
With Mikey gone,the rest were creatively paralyzed.Gerard stopped showering and changing clothes,choosing instead to pace the halls of the house. He was averaging less than three hours of sleep a night,and his dreams were full-on night terrors, filled with images of flames and things burning. He would describe these dreams into a portable recorder to try to gain some kind of insight. <b>(THESE SOUNDBITES WERE LATER USED ON THE SONG "SLEEP"</b> One of the notes he wrote in his troubled state was the line, "We are all just a black parade." He thought about it and realized that the Black Parade were MCR.He shared his idea with the others, and the band began piecing together the story.
But the real breaking point came one night while walking the halls, when he heard Toro in the library, playing songs from Ozzy Osbourne Bark At The Boon album on his guitar. The band traveled cross-country to refine their songs, but ended up being spent spent before they started.
"It upset the shit out of me," Gerard remembers. "He wants to play our songs, but he's playing Ozzy.He was playing the songs a lot faster. They sounded angrier and I knew it was coming soley out of frustration. I went down and had a talk with him. I picked up a guitar and started strumming it. I began to play something something heavy, and asked Ray to play it while I sang some words." The track became "Famous Last Words," the album's sonic beacon of optimism.
The next day when Mikey came to practice,the rest of the band played the song for him. Although he wasn't out of the woods,the experience rejuvenated everyone's spirits significantly. Realizing what needed to be done, the band left the Paramour several weeks earlier than planned,to move into the Oakwood apartment complex near the studio. By the time the band completed recording Mikey had snapped back into his old self. After everything he has been through,he couldn't care less about how the record does in the marketplace.
"What happened to me was art imitating life," he says with the most conviction he has spoken with all evening, "Seriously,if it wasn't for the band, I would not be here talking. You can't fake what I went through. Forget about the record,the touring history or SoundScan numbers. The real success for me was being able to <i>get through</i>


That's all remember this also goes for Famous Last Words.
Thanks!<3 Saigh

I wanna know what the AP magazine is? And, no offense but I AGREE WITH EVERYONES INTERPRETATIONS but why is everyone repeating the same thing except a few of you its all the same thing in your own words!!??

He's sleeping and he can't wake up .............. LOL idk

K, if you went to one of the concerts in Detroit they started wit a small part with "Sleep". It was different, like with violins, like a trailer song, and I realized it beared remarkable resemblance to Toto and Eno's Soundtrack for Dune. So if you go to youtube, you can hear it (i forgot the tag though, i was in a hurry) but i just it just sounded so cool!

K, enough. here's the youtube video of the Dune thing (forget about the video, just listen to the music) it's insanely close. If you find the vid of MCR playing live in detroit tell me!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYKzIMyXzpU

..

i agree with all of you like why judge a song if you dont know what it realy meens o well i still enjoy hearing your thoughts though.

The very first time I heard this song I right away thought of the patient...I know it's really about Gerard and those night terrors and all that, but what came to mind was this man in a hospital bed, with these terrible dreams of his past and what's in store for him after death. Terrible, terrible dreams. I also though about him reflecting; telling his lover soon after being diagnosed not to cry for him and to move on, and to remember what horrible things he's done with his life that deserve no sympathy. At the end he's dying and he realizes he doesn't really want to (WAKE UP!!)

But that's just me...Probably very very wrong...

Ummm... a little off topic, but have they ever played the song live?

yes they have

And I had read that Gerard wrote this song along with the band because they were all extremely stressed about making the album when they stayed at The Paramore. Gerard had said that most of the time he couldnt sleep and he would sit alone for hours having "Panic Attacks". His feelings are expressed throughout the whole song, including the begginning.

I absolutely love this song! It's a great song to listen to when you're feeling down and stuff. I think it's so cool to learn about the backgrounds of the song and how it all came together.

I agree with some of the members interpretation of this song on how it related to the whole Black Parade story. The song comes after 'Cancer' and 'Mama' and before 'Teenagers' and 'Disenchanted.' This song comes after the fact that the patient realizes he doesn't want to die. In the beginning of the song, he doesn't care that he's dying. But by the time he reaches 'Cancer' he doesn't want to die. But, after fighting and struggling, he's ready to just give up.
'Sleep' is about the patient giving up on even trying anymore. He doesn't see the point. He had just wasted his life and his loved ones shouldn't be that sad over his death. He had done nothing to deserve their tears. On all his flashbacks of his life he had seen nothing that told him he deserves their sympathy. That's why the lyrics, "And through it all, how could you cry for me? 'Cause I don't feel bad about it."
Sleep is just a metaphor for dead.

He said "unapologetic apathy" in the song. I was just wonderin what that meant.

Isnt it something like u dont care about something?

lil help?

I'm pretty sure it's about Gerard's experience with nightmares and stuff. When he was staying at a (haunted) mansion he had nightmares of his loved ones dying in fires and stuff. During that time his brother Mikey was in therapy and couldn't stay with them at the mansion. I'm not 100% sure tho =/

a haunted mansion?
sounds dodgy...

This song is just filler in the album, a little like "Interlude" In Three Cheers.
It was inspired by the bands stay in the haunted Paramour Mansion, and their awful nightmares and trouble sleeping (which affected all the band, but particularly a depressed Mikey and workaholic Gerard).
Its been said before that during their stay, Mikey would often go into Gerards bed, after leaving his haunted "Blue Room" I think this song just recounts their nightimes together, and Gerard has drawn inspiration from them craving sleep to write this song.
It could be viewd in the context of a lullaby to himself, or Mikey, to

"Shut your eyes, kiss me goddbye, and sleep"

Of course, in the context of the Patient Story, it could describe the patient finally giving up that hold, that want he has on life, and resting.

i heard that gerard was sleeping and he had bad dreams 2 or somthing like that

yeah i think it's pretty obviously about night terrors