Lyrics and Analysis to the Song "What Sarah Said" by Death Cab for Cutie

"What Sarah Said" by Death Cab For Cutie is one of the most emotionally charged songs I have ever heard. The song itself is not that amazing, the music is pretty, but it does not have that wow factor that immediately grabs you attention and sucks you in. I had it on my iPod and listened to it a few times, but had never really LISTENED the words. Then one night, I was thinking about my Grandad, who just passed away last year after being ill for three months, and that was when this song really hit home. I felt the feelings that the singer was feeling as the words passed through his lips. I could see the hospital room and smell the distinct smell hospitals seem to emanate. I was there, in the room. It transported me back in time to when I had spent so much time in a small hospital room, to the beeping of the machines, to a time when I was filled with the fear of losing someone I loved so dearly.

You really have to pay attention to the song to get what is going on because the lyrics don't spell everything out for you. The setting is in an Intensive Care Unit where there are "vending machines and year old magazines" and where someone he loves is dying. One of the lines that really tore at my heart was when he sang "It felt like a violent wind, that our memories depend on a faulty camera in our minds", summing up the horrible feeling of knowing that your memories will soon be all you have left of your dying loved one. He describes the scene in the hospital room perfectly, from the machines down to the television that is running, but no one is watching it.

The chorus seems to build up with emotion with each line he sings. He states that "there's no comfort in the waiting room. Just nervous pacers bracing for bad news." Then he tells of the nurse coming in, but he never describes what the nurse says. Instead, the singer is "thinking of what Sarah said; Love is watching someone die". This is the emotional climax of the song and, I'm not going to lie, I bawled my eyes out the first time I ever paid attention to the lyrics. I'd never thought about love that way, but I realized it was true. If you really love someone, you will stay at their side no matter what they're going through. "What Sarah Said" is one of those songs that makes you think, I know exactly what this guy was going through when he wrote it, and that is what makes it a good song.

Lyrics to "What Sarah Said" by Death Cab For Cutie
And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to father time
As I stared at my shoes in the ICU that reeked of piss and 409
And I rationed my breaths as I said to myself that I'd already taken too much today
As each descending peak on the LCD took you a little farther away from me
Away from me

Amongst the vending machines and year-old magazines in a place where we only say goodbye
It stung like a violent wind that our memories depend on a faulty camera in our minds
But I knew that you were a truth I would rather lose than to have never lain beside at all
And I looked around at all the eyes on the ground as the TV entertained itself

'Cause there's no comfort in the waiting room
Just nervous pacers bracing for bad news
And then the nurse comes round and everyone will lift their heads
But I'm thinking of what Sarah said that "Love is watching someone die"

So who's going to watch you die?..