Tyrants Always Fall

Always

Apr 05, 2025

Welcome to new subscribers and regular readers! Thank you for joining me for today’s song, “Tyrants Always Fall” by The Nields (2017). If you’d like to hear the song before you read about it, I’ve included a YouTube video below the article.
Below, you’ll find my interpretation of the lyrics which are written in italics. For Japanese students, vocabulary words in bold are provided in Japanese below. TOEIC (PBT) 450+, Eiken 2, CEFR B1.

Mugshot of Martin Luther King Jr following his 1963 arrest in Birmingham (Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

(722 words)

The two main singers in this group are sisters, Nerissa and Katryna Nields, from Massachusetts. From what I could find, the song was written and released in 2017.

The lyrics begin with the singer recalling times in history when human beings were given numbers, for example, when Jews had numbers tattooed on their arms, or during the Civil Rights movement, when many freedom fighters were arrested and given a number so they could be identified in the justice system.

This is the truth of who I am
And it’s taken me my whole life
To celebrate
I won’t go back
You can give me a number

Slap on a label means to put a label on something quickly and not carefully. In most societies, group that are in the minority are often given labels. The labels could be given because of their religion, their political ideas, the color of their skin, their gender or for not following society’s gender rules.

Slap on a label
Tell me I won’t be welcome at your table

To “bow down” means to show weakness and to agree to the demands or follow the orders of someone. A tyrant is someone who has all the power and to laws can stop them. Many tyrants in history took power illegally. To give an example that might be easier to understand, imagine one student at school decides which games you can play, what to eat for lunch, and who might demand your lunch money. But no one has the power to stop him or her.
But I won’t bow down to the tyrants anymore
I know what to do, I’ve been here before
Tyrants always fall, always

This is the truth of where we’ve been
And it’s taken the world till now
To take an honest look around
There are lies on the TV, lies in the paper
Lies on my phone just grown from the vapor meaning made up or false.

But I won’t be fooled by the liars anymore
Here is the truth that we can’t ignore
There are more of us than there are of them
And tyrants always fall, always

The next verse recalls the millions of human beings that were captured or sold into slavery, put into the hold (bottoms of ships), and sent to North and South America.
We’re scattered and scared
In the ship’s dark hold

The song mentions a “common peril” or danger (the tyrant) and a “common goal” (to take power away from the tyrant).
But we have a common peril
And we have a common goal

When you are a child, your parents or other adults protect you. Sometimes, in families, there is one relative who looks at a child in a certain way that makes the child afraid. Here, there is an uncle that the child doesn’t trust. He is standing in the front of the boat. But there are no adults (grownups) to save us now. We have to stand up and take control.
The parents are dead
The leering uncle’s at the prow
There is no one left
We are the grownups now

There have been times when we have lost a battle or when people did not respect us (be dissed). However, we are strong and have learned from the past.
Think of all those times
We’ve been down and dissed
We are made of strong stuff
We are made for this
And tyrants always fall…

Lightning bolt (Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

We can’t expect something or someone to save the situation we are in. The song says that we have to stand together and be strong. After all, as the lyrics say, there are more of us than there are of them.
This is the truth we’ve always known
There isn’t a lightning bolt
To set things right, to bring us home
It’s gonna take all our courage
Take all our actions
Take every heart
In every single faction
And it’s gonna take time
Some of us won’t live that long
When one gets weak, it means it’s your turn to be strong

Tyrants always fall
There are more of us than there are of them

At the end of the video, there is a quote by Mahatma Gandhi:

Remember that all through history, there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Always.

What tyrants in history can you name?
Do you agree with what Gandhi said?

Vocabulary

be identified 特定される
justice system 司法制度
minority 少数派
bow down 屈服する
tyrant 暴君
be fooled by 騙される
be captured 捕らわれる
scatter 散らばる
hold 船倉に
peril 危険
to leer にらむ、視姦
prow　船首
dissed　侮辱される
faction　派閥
invincible　無敵