What does Warning mean?

Incubus: Warning Meaning

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Album cover for Warning album cover

Song Released: 2001


Warning Lyrics

Bat your eyes girl, be otherworldly,
count your blessings, seduce a stranger.
What's so wrong with being happy?
Kudos to those who see through sickness.

When she woke in the morning
she knew that her life had passed her by.
And she called...

  1. 1TOP RATED

    #1 top rated interpretation:
    anonymous
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    May 10th 2007 !⃝

    I can understand the idea of it being about a girl losing someone and "letting life pass her by" but I kept thinking it of as the girl being mother earth for some reason... I don't know why.
    i think its the line "when will we learn when will we change, just in time to see it all fall down" suggests to me about.. pollution and crap, and we as humanity won't do anything about it until its too late.
    Backed up by the next line " those left standing will make millions writing book on the way it should have been" because that's what people do.. They criticise.

    I'm probably way off the mark here... but its just what I think.
    oh one more, "here we are like frogs oblivious" there's a theory that if you put a frog in a hot pot of water, it will jump out, but if you put the frog in the water first then heat it up to a boil,. The frog will sit there until it ...boils to death I guess. This also suggests us human just waiting for the earth to go boom or the sun to burn up or whatever will happen.. all concluded of course by the title.."warning"

  2. anonymous
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    Nov 12th 2018 !⃝

    It's about the death of Jesus and that awful Satan guy taking over.
    The devil is real.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
  3. anonymous
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    Dec 20th 2012 !⃝

    Jesus! No, girls that lost the perfect guy, holy, no!

    The girl is just a representation, what the hell.

    The lyrics are way deeper than that. This is somehow what Brandon's talking about. How shallow people can be.

    Live life because you never know? Come on.
    It's Incubus.

    He talks about how people are so detached from the right path, we forget about love, true love, not boy girl one, we hate, we destroy mother Earth, we say we are not like that and we keep looking for profit and for cheap gratifications...

    He says this is the path of self-destruction, so comes the warning.

    Some interpretations here make me sad.

  4. anonymous
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    Dec 13th 2011 !⃝

    read "The Story of B," and My Ishmael by David Quinn....the song will make more sense.

  5. anonymous
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    May 27th 2011 !⃝

    wow okay.
    the song has two meanings. it's a double song if you will. but both give the same meaning. okay bear with me here;

    "Bat your eyes girl, be otherworldly,
    count your blessings, seduce a stranger.
    What's so wrong with being happy?
    Kudos to those who see through sickness.

    When she woke in the morning
    she knew that her life had passed her by.
    And she called out a warning,
    "Don't ever let life pass you by." "

    in this part he's talking about a slut. A girl who tries to hard to find happiness from guy to guy. Now I'm guessing he actually had sex with this girl because he says kudos to those who see through sickness; or see through girls like that. and in the morning when he was getting dressed, she woke up and said "don't ever let life pass you by." because she knew she probably wasn't going to see him again.

    this goes into inspiration for the rest of the song.

    "I suggest we learn to love ourselves before it's made illegal.
    When will we learn? When will we change?
    Just in time to see it all fall down.
    Those left standing... will make millions...
    writing books on the way it should have been."

    so many people just zoom life by. fill their time with 9-5 jobs and take everything for granted. A lot of people live miserable lives because they just want to make money. He's saying, well whens something going to change about that? when the world ends. "those left standing will make millions writing books on the way it should have been."

    literally speaking, the survivors will make a lot of money rebuilding the world and it will all start all over again.

    "Floating in this cosmic jacuzzi
    we are like frogs oblivious to the water starting to boil.
    No one flinches, we all float face down."

    this ones easy; we're all in denial of how it will end. When really we can only blame ourselves for the end of the human race.

    this is how I interpret the lyrics I hope you enjoy.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
  6. anonymous
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    May 11th 2011 !⃝

    No one even mentioned the rapture. Seems to me there showing everyone gone at the end to say , this is a warning.

  7. anonymous
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    Aug 14th 2009 !⃝

    Incubus as a music group is intelectual music. And this song might me one of the most influential songs they've wrote. Its not a matter of love, but a matter of enviroment, Incubus won EMA's not because of a love song but because of what they are trying to do with the world. The theory of the world ending according to the mayan calendar. It talks about not letting life pass you by, which refers to not letting this things pass you by, because at some point the earth with lose the ozone cape and poles with melt, and we will probably die. They say "when will we learn when will we change, just in time to see it all come down", i think this quote is the best one, refering to us now and in the future because there are so little cases o people wanting to do something and really doing it, and people will know and understand how incorrect they are in the 11th hour because it is when they will suffer. And so the song goes on not speaking about a boy and a girl, but about something real and people should see it because this is the reality we are living.

  8. anonymous
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    May 5th 2009 !⃝

    It's about live life because you never know when it might end.

  9. Nathalie
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    Apr 17th 2009 !⃝

    this song is about the theory that the world will end in 2012.
    i don't think it has anything to do with relationships, it's just about life in general. Quite a few incubus songs are about this supposed end in 2012 and although no one knows what will happen, it's about living the best life you can just in case.
    "those left standing" at the end of the world "will make millions writing books on the way it should have been". SO all of us would have wasted our lives and we would just end up being an example to those lucky enough to live, of how not to live your life.
    "we are like frogs oblivious" we are oblivious to real life and what we are destroying and wasting.
    so that's my interpretation of it really. Plus the video illustrates these points, like at the end when nobody is around anymore.

  10. anonymous
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    Jan 22nd 2009 !⃝

    Ok, this song has a deep root in the Mayan long count calender, the video makes references to 1024, December 20 at 10:24 is when the mayans believed the world will in

  11. anonymous
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    Jun 16th 2007 !⃝

    The person above me might be right considering how Incubus feels about the environment and things of that sort.

  12. anonymous
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    Jan 26th 2007 !⃝

    This is one of my favorite songs, and probably my favorite Incubus song, and it has a lot of meaning behind it. They are talking about a woman who has finally realized that she has lost the perfect guy, and that he had passed her by now, because she had took him for granted. And she is letting people know not to make the same mistakes that she made. Thats what this songs means to me.

  13. Toolio
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    Sep 8th 2006 !⃝

    Most of us take advantage of what we've got, we don't stop to smell the roses.

  14. mightymuffin5042
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    Jun 19th 2006 !⃝

    Don't let life pass you by. Whew, that was difficult.


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