It may help to remember (especially if US English is not your first language) that “to check out” is an old slang expression for “to die”. Thus you see at the end, when the narrator tries to escape, he’s told he can “check out” but “never leave”. People aren’t actually happy, the pleasures are bitterly disappointing, and the idea that you control your life is a total illusion. The fame appears to offer everything– wealth, respect, and any bodily pleasure you want, but you soon find that these things are hollow. Once you are famous in this country, you stay famous at least to some degree, even if you don’t want to be anymore and even (or maybe especially) if you die. The song is about fame and the culture of fame In the US. “It’s basically a song about the dark underbelly of the American dream and about excess in America, which is something we knew a lot about,”
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January 2023
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