Handlebars

      Handlebars by The Flobots, isn't one of my favorite songs, but is one song that I know which has a shockingly deep meaning. The song is about two friends growing up and going down different paths of life. One decides to go into corporate and the other chooses a more innocent and free nature life. The friend who chooses corporate, soon begins to become corrupted with power and eventually becomes president. Whereas, the other friend who remains true to himself begins a rebellion against the other. Handlebars is a song about the nature of ambition and the drive for power, what a difference a small choice can make, and about two friends who started out the same and then took separate paths. 

      A basic human need is the need to feel powerful and capable. When the friends we young, they rode their bikes with no handlebars, resembling power over the bike. As they grew older and wiser, one needed more power over bigger things because he became to obsessed with it. His driving emotion from his intellect doesn't change as he grows older and remains unsophisticated. Near the end of the song, the corporate friend begins ordering his army to kill everyone who is in the rebellion. He realizes that it is getting out of his control and then the army kills his friend. Due to his friend's death, he realizes that one can't completely control an army and he then comes to his senses and is horrified of the things he has done. The corporate world is corrupting what was once a more innocent and overall free world. Every choice we make has an effect on our future, like the butterfly effect.

Handlebars Song by The Flobots