“Put Your Money On Me” by Arcade Fire

Upfront, the clear implication is that the singer is in a troubled relationship with the addressee. However, she is the woman he loves, even his wife as indicated in the second verse. As such, he is not compelled to let go despite her desire to leave. Indeed as illustrated once again in the second verse, he anticipates still being in love with her even after he passes away. And basically, he utterly refuses to accept the idea of them breaking up.

And that brings us to the title of the song, which serves as a metaphor pointing to him asking her to take him back. Yes, from her perspective doing so would be a risky proposition, as implied by the nature of the allegory. Thus a further implication is that he’s the one who screwed up their relationship. But either way, at the end of the day, what the singer is basically saying is that if she doesn’t take him back, he would rather be dead. So as crazy as it may sound, he is giving her an ultimatum akin to either love him or kill him.  And whereas again this can all be accepted as being allegorical, it shows just how much he cannot imagine living without her.

Facts about “Put Your Money on Me”

This is the fifth single from Arcade Fire’s fifth-studio album, “Everything Now”.  This project came out on 28 July 2017.

David Wilson produced the music video to this track, which combined “Put Your Money on Me” with “We Don’t Deserve Love”, the track that follows it on the album. And overall the project constitutes a short film, clocking in at 13-minutes long.

The members of Arcade Fire – Will Butler, Régine Chassagne, Jeremy Gara, Tim Kingsbury and Richard Parry – are credited as the writer of the song. However, the band’s frontman, Win Butler, is recognized as the primary author. His inspirations were ABBA, the 1994 soundtrack to the movie Blade Runner and Marvin Gaye’s 1982 classic “Sexual Healing”.  Moreover, he said putting together the song was a very speedy affair.

Arcade Fire produced this track along with three other musicians – S. Mackey, T. Bangalter and E. Heigle.