Dead Boy's Poem by Nightwish

Album: Wishmaster (2000)

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This song is about a young boy who is misunderstood. He never has had anyone close or anyone at all to talk to, so his music is what he lives for and is where he puts his feelings. His music gives him the push to keep on living and he puts everything into it. He tries to improve his life but whatever he does, he can never get back to the way he used to be. He says that people shouldn't ask for a better world because the world has already been made and been done.
In the talking part of the song, he is telling people not to remember him but to remember the music that was his life. He wants a mother's lap to sit on, he just wants to be loved. He cares about the world but he feels like he is just a waste of space because he has nothing and no one to love him he is just like an ocean - abused - and is just a very lonely boy and it is just his "bitter farewell." >>>
Suggestion credit:
kyle - canberra, Australia, for above 2

Comments: 4

Dave from Greer, ScAlso the line in "Last Ride of the Day";

"Wake up, Dead Boy"

It's capitalized in the booklet, which means its showing reference to this song IMO
Dave from Greer, ScMy personal theory is that he wrote this song when he was rejected by Tarja.

He wrote "Gethsemane" on Oceanborn about loneliness (with a note in the album booklet next to that song that says "Wishes for you June 98") but besides that, it was mostly fantasy and folk tales

There was "Away" on the Over the Hills EP, but the next album was all songs about loneliness, hatred, envy, even suicide. Even the ones that sounded happy were about an "ungrateful object of desire," particularly "Slaying the Dreamer."

I suppose it could have been anyone though.

There was the note in the Century Child lyrics book next to "Ever Dream" that read something like "I had two dreams of you, one is now reality, the other will for ever dream remain." My theory is that the one dream was playing music with her, the other was marrying her. She got married at the end of 2002, a few months after Century Child came out. He probably wrote the album when she got engaged or started dating Cabuli. Then there's what Cabuli said in that interview after Tarja was dismissed.

If you watch the clip of that song from their "End of An Era", Tuomas is clearly distressed, and has to cover his face for the first parts of the song. Obviously he knew he was going to dismiss her at the end of the tour, so he knew it would be the last time he'd ever play that song with her.

On the "Once" album there was:

"Wish I Had an Angel" with the lyrics "I wish I had your angel, your Virgin Mary undone" as well as the other suggestive lyrics in that song, but that's the line that's most obvious.

"Nemo" was about loneliness. Nemo is Latin for "nobody"

"Dead Gardens" is a song about giving up.

"Romanticide" is obviously about another ungrateful object of desire, probably the same one.

"Higher Than Hope" could be about that as well, but I doubt it because of the "your death saved me" part.

Half of "Dark Passion Play" was clearly about Tarja, or Tuomas' experience with her. "Poet and the Pendulum" was about him.

"Bye Bye Beautiful," "For the Heart I Once Had" and "Master Passion Greed" are about Tarja. He accused her of greed and putting commercial interests ahead of the band, but that, combined with his complete abandonment of the "Original Nightwish Sound" makes me think he just couldn't stand to hear a classically trained soprano voice like Tarja's for the two albums with Annette. Could Tuomas be accusing Tarja of that because she married a wealthy businessman instead of him?

"Amaranth" and most likely "Cadence of Her Last Breath" are about his soul mate that he hasn't met yet.

The entire "Imaginaerum" album was clearly a fictionalized account of what he thinks of himself.

My theory is that "Slow, Love, Slow" was about Annette but I don't have any evidence for that one.

"Song of Myself" is, well, a song about himself, and I believe the lines

"All that great heart lying still
In silent suffering
smiling like a clown until the show has come to an end
What is left for encore is the same old Dead Boy's song
Sung in silence"

Are in reference to this song, telling us that he still hasn't let Tarja go. I also think she's the "Model Doll" referred to in the spoken part of the song.

There's that picture in the Imaginaerum Special Edition of Annette dressed up in such a way that she looked EXACTLY like an older version of Tarja's picture taken for the Oceanborn liner notes.

The "Endless Forms Most Beautiful" album had "Yours Is An Empty Hope" which appears to be about his enduring love for Tarja.

So that's my useless theory.
Nicole from Fuquay Varinia, NcThis is a beautiful song but sad in the same time.
Ashley from Moncton, CanadaThis is such a sad song. But beautiful.

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