Reception Radio: Pompeii, by Bastille

Eh, eheu, eheu, eh, eheu, eheu...

Aug 24, 2024

Happy Pompeii Day! On this day in the year 79 CE, Mount Vesuvius erupted, destroying the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum and creating one of the world’s great archaeological sites.

There’s scholarly debate as to whether this actually happened on August 24th: you can read all about it in this Getty article. Regardless of academic consensus, I’ve been commemorating Pompeii Day every August since I was a kid, and I’m in the mood to keep celebrating. Why not join me in playing some thematically appropriate music?

You’ve probably heard Pompeii, by British pop rock band Bastille, many times before. If you were a young person in 2013, like I was, you may have heard it to the point of exhaustion. I remember this song being inescapable in the early 2010s. Normally I hate it when this sort of pop tune gets overplayed, but I never got tired of this one. Maybe it’s because the lyrics spoke to my theatre-loving, melodramatic teenage self. Pompeii’s title is quite literal. Bastille’s frontman Dan Smith talks in this interview about how he was inspired by the victims of Vesuvius, and imagined the lyrics as a conversation between two people in their final moments. However, there’s no direct mention of anything Roman or volcanic, apart from the Latin word “eheu” (which means something like “alas” or “woe” or “or no!”) that gets chanted throughout the song. Without context and with a different title, Pompeii could be about a more modern disaster, or a fictional apocalyptic event, or some sort of personal crisis. I listened to this song on repeat while dealing with the perils of turning 18: make of that what you will!

As always, here are the lyrics to Pompeii.

Eh, eheu, eheu

I was left to my own devices
Many days fell away with nothing to show

And the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love
Grey clouds roll over the hills bringing darkness from above

But if you close your eyes
Does it almost feel like nothing changed at all?
And if you close your eyes
Does it almost feel like you've been here before?
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?
How am I gonna be an optimist about this?

We were caught up and lost in all of our vices
In your pose as the dust settled around us

And the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love
Grey clouds roll over the hills bringing darkness from above

Eheu, eheu
Eh, eheu, eheu

Oh, where do we begin?
The rubble or our sins?
Oh, oh, where do we begin?
The rubble or our sins?

And the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love
Grey clouds roll over the hills bringing darkness from above

Eh, eheu, eheu

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