Further dwellings on
Cheater: It’s about cheating in the sense of violating rules for one’s own gain, and more specifically mostly about how such behavior negatively effects the protagonist. I’m gonna be real honest here and admit that I’ve always thought it was about a cheating woman. As you can imagine, there’s no wonder then that some of the lyrics wouldn’t make sense to me!
In light of the finding of the handwritten lyrics for the bridge (post #59), a correct reading would seem to be as follows:
I hurt my backbone, baby
I start to givin’ up
Life is an aggravator
The bills are pilin’ up
I broke my radiator
No time to fix it now
No place to lay my body
I really want to shout
Some thoughts on these bridge lyrics:
I hurt my backbone, baby
I start to givin’ up
Something is hurt, and it’s looking bad. ‘Backbone’ stands for the core, the courage, the guts. (The ’baby’ is probably thrown in there without much thought, though I guess you could argue that he’s telling his loved one about all this stuff.)
Life is an aggravator
The bills are pilin’ up
These are very strong words, when you think about it. (And it’s also peculiar how Michael first writes it ‘agrivator’, then later ‘agravator’; again, see the handwritten lyrics in post #59). Perceiving life this way is at least partially attributed to the actions of the cheater.
The second line exemplifies
how life is aggravating, or, in other words, how the cheater’s doings effects the protagonist.
I broke my radiator
No time to fix it now
More examples of how life is aggravating.
The (broken) radiator could also play into an analogy of (lack of) warmth, but I’d say that’s a bit far-fetched. Though I
do think ‘radiator’ is oddly specific. Maybe I’m missing something.
No place to lay my body
I really want to shout
One could be tempted to interpret the second to last line as having to do with a burial, but it must rather be about just having no place to sleep. I assume it builds upon the line with the piling bills, i.e., if you let them pile high enough you’ll soon have no place to stay.
’I really want to shout’ is self-explanatory in that it’s just an exclamation of frustration.
Will try to work through the verses later. I find these lyrics highly interesting.
Edit: pilling → piling (I blame Michael!); it’s also worth noting the grammar in “I start to givin’ up”, which of course would be more correct as “I start to give up”. This, however, I choose to preserve in the lyrics that I’ve presented in this post.