AURORA’s “The Seed” Lyrics Meaning
First off it should be noted that the Norwegian singer-songwriter Aurora (AURORA) has devoted the entirety of the A Different Kind of Human (Step II) album, which this track is featured on, to pressing-environmental issues. As such, “The Seed” is based on a Native American proverb which admonishes people not to abuse nature in the name of profit. Succinctly put, as the chorus of the song points out, a person “cannot eat money” in place of ‘fallen trees’ and ‘poisoned rivers’.
Throughout the song Aurora compares herself to a seed. She finds herself fighting to reach for light “through the struggle”, “dirt and shadow”. She is also ‘unraveling herself’ in “slow motion”, which are all allusions to the processes and obstacles seeds go through when breaking forth from the ground. But in the bridge, we see that although she wants to be fed ‘sunlight and air’ just like a seed, she indeed sees herself as more, as a human. Based on this, she also recognizes “truth and… prayer” amongst her life’s essentials.
Moreover in the second verse she gives more indication of why she has decided to make a seed the point of focus for this song, “because just like the seed” we too ‘want to live’ and fight through adversities in the name of growth.
After all is said and done, the overall tone of the song is not inspiring but rather founded in Aurora’s anger. For instance, she envisions “killer whales… sleeping in a desert trail”, which is indicative of some sort of ecological crisis tantamount to the seas drying up. Also as aforementioned, the chorus of “The Seed” is based on a proverb alluding to the ultimate futility of destroying the environment. So accordingly, this track is her way of fighting back against what she perceives as an injustice, which is people carelessly abusing the Earth’s ecosystems.
What has AURORA said about this song?
According to her, “The Seed” is basically a “cry for Mother Earth”.
In another interview she had with NME, she referred to “The Seed” as an angry song about the environment. Here is an excerpt of what she said to NME about this song:
Facts about “The Seed”
- AURORA wrote “The Seed” with songwriters Nicolas Rebscher as well as Michelle Leonard.
- In addition to co-writing “The Seed”, AURORA also produced it. However, she didn’t produce it alone. She received assistance from music producers Askjell and MyRiot.
- 5th April, 2019 was the official release date of “The Seed”, which came out as the second single from the album A Different Kind of Human (Step II). This album is AURORA’s third studio album.
- “The Seed” came out as AURORA’s second single for the year 2019. Her first was “Animal”.
- This song’s chorus was inspired by the old adage which goes like this:
This is true, as a human we need to start taking care of nature since nature now is like in the edge of a cliff we need to start loving our nature since time has go fast, as an muslim, I really really need people like Aurora to take care of nature, and the meaning is true too, since in this generation people are now hoping for money, craving money, thirst of money, but until 1 day the last tree on the earth have died, sea water are already gone, animals are extinct, it’s end up to be MONEY IS NOTHING. I focusly understand why did Aurora having a rage and I feel it too, as a 11 years old girl, What the thing that I see when I’m growing up is just people cutting tree, people make kilang (in malay) and ruining nature, people think nature is useless until they reach hoping for nature so as a kid, I want to say, SORRY NATURE, I CANNOT DO ANYTHING SINCE PEOPLE DONT WANNA HEAR CHILDREN OPINIONS JUST BECAUSE WE ARE YOUNG.
Mia, you are an amazing intelligent writer, wise centuries beyond your years. Please continue to write furiously.