Skin abuse could also be a reference to the song The Plains/Bitter Dancer, aside from what it represents here – “washed off the chalk from your weathered skin”

Other than the narrator cheating, I think this line could also mean that she is taking everything from the narrator and leaving him.

I don’t think this part is that optimistic. I think that there’s an incongruity between his dark emotional state and his surroundings. Between the obvious pain the vocal performance, the “no matter what I do,” the “terrible sunlight,” and the “diffuse like skin abused,” the sun feels like an oppressive presence. The apples, which he thinks will bring him fulfillment in Helplessness Blues, are literally cold comfort. To me, this part says that the things that should make him happy are instead twisting around to hammer home his loneliness and unhappiness.

He isn’t happy. In the bridge, he calls the sunlight terrible. “Every day passing complete,” sounds like he counting the days as they crawl by. Also, the apple shouldn’t be cold since it’s summer, so he’s probably reflecting on his loneliness.

As g1c points toward, there’s a theme in this song that becomes clear with the forceful emphasis on repetition of a theme:

If he had an orchard, he’d work ‘til he’s sore.
Apples, fruit, music and artists and the endless competition of names…

Whatever they make, the band has established themselves.

Apples are a reference to the orchard from the 6th, title track.

This song talks about the French in the French War. They had coats that went up to their neck “Swallowed in their coats”. When people went to beheadings they wore red scarves to show their loyalty to France “with scarves of red tied round their throats”. Last Michal is the one being beheaded because he was not loyal to France “And, Micheal, you would fall and turn the white snow red as strawberries in the summertime.”

There is no horse, either mentioned, or implied, and this annotation is not consistent with any of the three themes in the song. If the “pack” is literally a pack of children from a memory, Michael is just one of the children; how he falls is irrelevant. What matters is the significance of his fall and bleeding out in the context of the memory. If the “following pack” is a metaphor for following his childhood friends into a bad life, Michael represents a victim of that life.

The scarves symbolize the martyrs of a communist state. The children either wear them to pay tribute to the fallen, or to protect their own heads. Michael, an apostate to the cause, falls behind the pack, and as a result loses his head. Because Michael is either not as loyal as his comrades, or because is rebelled, he lost his head.

Michael appears to be clumsy. Many times, feelings of embarrassment are coupled with flushing of the face and neck. Hence the term: when someone turns beet-red.

In this case, Michael “would” typically fall in the snow and get embarrassed. Referencing “strawberries in the summertime”, as opposed to beets, offers more of a ripe, youthful imagery. This is a strong contrast to the Winter theme throughout the duration of the song – which is a season that often symbolizes older age. Though the pack is getting older, Michael is still as clumsy as he was when they were small children. Some things just never change.

He turns around and watched his friend Michael fall from the tree, or on this case jump, and bleeding from his neck would fall down and turn the snow under him as red as summertime strawberries

im loving the fun fact

To start I completely agree and lean towards to annotation that Genius has provided, and I find it fascinating. When first listening to these lyrics I was thinking that maybe it was an expression of sarcasm by Kendrick saying that he prays that he can fit into the stereotypes that Black Men are often held to. Big dicks, “fucking” the world over, etc.

Another interesting observation is that 72 hours is the equivalent to three days. 3 is the first of 4 spiritually perfect numerals in Christian ideology. God manifested himself in 3 forms (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), Jesus rose after 3 days, etc. It is considered a numeral that represents completeness.

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This leads me to believe that given Kendrick’s Christian background that he is expressing desires to gain power and respect, but to “Fuck” the way the world is now, but in a way that isn’t necessarily negative. He desires to “fuck” the current system to bring completeness to a system that will be much more liberating and life-giving.

I feel like this was like a fox hunt, like I was following the pack, (of foxes?) swallowed in their coats (fur coats), with scarves of red tied ‘round their throats, to keep their little heads from falling in the snow, (decapitated?), and Michael you would fall, and turn the white snow red as strawberries in the summertime (Michael died?)

Based on the music video, it is about much more than that. It is about life and death, youth and old age, flowers and mushrooms. It is a story of the balance between it all and the fragility of existence, told by a man looking back on his past through the present.

I somehow really doubt both of these definitions. This song is about two hunters following a pack of wolves into the forest in the snow. They are wearing the wolf skins as coats. The ‘scarves of red’ on the wolves is blood, as some have fed. Obviously michael, his hunter friend, is attacked at the end and ‘turning the white snow red as strawberries’ is blood on the snow.

Could maybe be a reference to Mercury telling his girlfriend he was gay, and leaving her.

In the Bible and the Torah