Diplomat’s Son Lyrics
It's not right, but it's now or never
And if I wait, could I ever forgive myself?
On a night when the moon glows yellow in the riptide
With the light from the TVs buzzing in the house
[Pre-Chorus: Ezra Koenig]
'Cause I'm gonna cut it where I can
And then I'm gonna duck out behind them
If I ever had a chance, it's now then
But I never had the feeling I could offer that to you
To offer it to you would be cruel
When all I want to do is use, use you
[Chorus: Ezra Koenig]
He was a diplomat's son, it was '81
He was a diplomat's son, it was '81
Oh-oh, oh-oh
[Verse 2: Ezra Koenig]
Dressed in white with my car keys hidden in the kitchen
I could sleep wherever I lay my head
And the sight of your two shoes sitting in the bathtub
Let me know that I shouldn't give up just yet
[Pre-Chorus: Ezra Koenig]
'Cause I'm gonna take it from Simon
And then I'm gonna duck out behind them
If I ever had a chance, it's now then
But I never had the feeling I could offer that to you
To offer it to you would be cruel
When all I want to do is use, use you
He was a diplomat's son, it was '81
He was a diplomat's son, it was '81
Oh-oh, oh-oh
[Bridge: Rostam Batmanglij]
I know, you'll say I'm not doing it right
But this is how I want it
I can't go back to how I felt before
There's–
[Verse 3: Ezra Koenig]
That night I smoked a joint with my best friend
We found ourselves in bed, when I woke up, he was gone
[Chorus: Ezra Koenig]
He was a diplomat's son, it was '81
He was a diplomat's son, it was '81
[Instrumental Break]
[Outro: Ezra Koenig]
Looking out at the ice cold water all around me
I can't feel any traces of that other place
In the dark, when the wind comes racing off the river
There's a car, all black with diplomatic plates
About
Either a Whit Stillman-esque coming out / gay love story or a parable about Clash frontman Joe Strummer; really, it’s both of these things. Music critic Simon Reynolds called it “everywhere/everywhen pop” in his 2011 book Retromania.
Rostam had this to say about it in a Reddit AMA:
Ezra sent me a short story called Diplomat’s Son when we were in college. The last paragraph read:
“I wondered, watching him bleeding on the rugby field beneath my mud-covered boot, if he was looking at me through the proscenium of a Turkish taxicab’s rumbling windshield or, perhaps, the small port window of the rickety boat which had taken him down the Ganges.”
Years later I started working on a song on my own, this was between our first and our second albums, I knew I wanted two distinct parts with two really distinct grooves but both Jamaican in feel.
I started to take the idea of the “Diplomat’s Son” and put it in a different context. I started to look at it as more of a love story than a story about competitive students. I had a vocal melody and lyrics for the chorus: “He was a diplomat’s son, It was ‘81”.
Then Ezra and I got in the studio and started working on fleshing out the song: writing a verse, and prechorus together. More sections after that. Figuring out some vocals for the bridge as well.
We added CT on drums, Baio on Bass… and the rest is history.
Q&A
Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning
The sample is of M.I.A. singing an onomatopoeia of drumming on the side of a boat:
We drum on it
Like jun cha cha ju gu ju gu cha!
Jun cha cha ju gu ju gu cha!