"Grenade" Does Make Sense

"Grenade," by Bruno Mars. It seems everyone has an opinion on this song, which topped the billboards and made quite a few girls swoon. It also triggered many parodies for seeming inconsistent. However, the song makes perfect sense if approached from the right perspective.

The most mocked lyrics, arguably, are in the chorus:

“I’d catch a grenade for you

I’d throw my hand on a blade for you

I’d jump in front of a train for you”

These lines have widely been viewed as psychotic, deranged, and unlikely to ever happen. However, upon hearing them for the first time, I did not encounter this confusion because I took them in a very symbolic manner. Basically, Mars is declaring his love for a woman; fact which most people accept with no difficulty. Many, though, question the circumstances in which Mars would actually need to catch a grenade for anyone. The way I saw it was this: he is saying that if he would ever be confronted with the choice between his own life and his love for this girl, he would chose the girl. If someone -- a criminal -- threatened to kill Mars if he didn’t renounce his love, he would give up his life, like he says, “Yes I would die for you baby”. In this day and age, such a circumstance does not seem so very unlikely, what with ransoms, hostages, and plain muggers lurking about. I think many people took this statement quite literally, as if Mars would just decide to cut off his hand because he loves this woman in such an unhealthy manner. They also seemed to have limited his would-be sacrifices to grenades, blades, and trains; when in fact, it seems to engulf all natures of sacrifices made in the name of love -- leading to the ultimate sacrifice of one’s life. From this perspective, it seems pretty romantic that Mars would stick with his girl no matter what.

Another aspect of the song which makes Mars sound crazy -- and which frankly, I didn’t understand either before seeing the music video -- is the fact that his girlfriend does not seem to feel the same way about him. Why would he die for someone who tossed everything he had in the trash? Why would he catch a grenade for someone who wouldn’t do the same? Well, in the music video, after Mars suffers difficulties to bring the piano to his lover (sacrifice, through heat and ridicule), he finds her with another man. At this point, everything made sense. This song is a break-up song. The moment he realizes the love of his life is cheating on him, he is still madly in love with her -- he can’t help it -- but he realizes that she doesn’t feel the same way; she’s deceiving him. “You said you loved me you’re a liar” kind of says it all. He realizes the relationship that made him so happy could not have been reciprocal, because she wouldn’t have cheated if she were happy with him. I find Mars’ approach very original. Instead of bringing in the standard break-up lines, where “me” rhymes with “be” and “you” rhymes with “too,” he brought an edge, that unfortunately, was lost on many people. This song focuses on the despair of still being in love with the person who just broke his heart.