Dave Matthews Band, Ants Marching – A Deeper Look At The Lyrics

Ants Marching is undoubtedly one of the Dave Matthews Band’s most iconic songs. Spinning violins, thunderous saxophones, arpeggio guitars, wacky percussions, and cool bass lines. This song was his second single (after What Would You Say) on his 1994 hit album Under The Table and Dreaming. It was released in 1995 and only reached number 18 on the Modern Rock Tracks charts.

But besides musicianship, what makes this song deeper than your average Pop / Rock tune? Let’s take a closer look …

Wakes up in the morning

Are your teeth biting to eat and are you rolling?

As humans, we are the most adaptable species on the planet. However, on the other hand, we also have the greatest tendency towards repetitive redundancy than any other species. DMB addresses this last problem in these previous lines by discussing the monotony we place ourselves in by repeating the same patterns every day. We wake up, brush our teeth, eat, and then go about our days, changing nothing. Even though we are creative and rational people and wonder what everyone is thinking, how often are we brave enough to ask that person sitting in front of us on the subway what is he thinking? Or lean over to that person sitting next to us on the bus with the blackberry phone and ask their opinion on whether or not they prefer the Blackberry to the iPhone, just out of innocent curiosity. But even worse. How often is it that if someone actually starts a conversation, we are immediately annoyed that they broke our routine? We immediately get defensive, giving little or no information to the courteous stranger.

These next lines are my favorites in the song …

People in all directions

No words were exchanged

No time to trade

Here, DMB uses the metaphor of the running ants to explain the behavior of modern society. Which means that we go from one place to another without ever wondering why. We continue this behavior until one day we realize that our whole life has passed by. I suppose you could say that, in many ways, Ants Marching’s lyrics try to fit in with the stereotypical monotony of life. We think about taking risks but we don’t. We dream of a better life but we settle. We toyed with the idea of ​​plan A, but we work to come up with a plan B in case plan A doesn’t work out, so we’ll never really live our own lives. I think the Dave Matthews Band is brilliant to be able to describe so much depth in such a short time.