Take It Back

"Take It Back" is a song from Pink Floyd's 1994 album, The Division Bell. While most apparently a love song, it can also be interpreted to be about Mother Nature, and how man abuses the Earth. This latter interpretation gains some credibility from the video, which seems to have been made with the issue very much in mind. Additionally, the album was named The Division Bell by Douglas Adams in exchange for the band contributing a sizeable donation to Save The Rhino International.

Some comparisons have been drawn between the song and U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name" for its similar song structure and guitar riff, though these claims have not been acknowledged by either band.^{[original research?]}

The opening riff bears some similarities to Marillion's "The Realese" (a b-side from the "Seasons End" sessions). The band's lead singer Steve Hogarth hints on the band's official website: "I always thought this song bears an uncanny resemblance to a certain Pink Floyd single... See you in court!..."

Around the middle of the song, starting at around 03:04, between the main lyrics, can be heard children chanting lines from a nursery rhyme "Ring-O'-Roses": "...A pocket full of posies, atishoo, atishoo, we all fall down". (A strong allusion to the same nursery rhyme can be heard in Marillion's song "Forgotten Sons", from the first album, "Script for a Jester's Tear" (1983): "Ring-a-ring-o-roses, they all fall down...".)

[edit] Quotes

"It's got really nothing to do with my personal life, believe it or not. But I'm not going to tell you what it is about. You're gonna have to work that out for yourself. I had an idea for a song about a specific subject that came from a book I was reading, but I'm not going to tell you what the subject is or what the book is."
-David Gilmour [1]

"I’ve always wondered why in the lyrics to my favourite Division Bell song, ‘Take It Back’, there is a dash between the g and d in G-d.
Some people simply take offence at taking the Lord’s name in vain. It was publishing’s very subtle way of keeping people from complaining about the abuse of God’s good name - and perhaps also to keep people focused on trying to figure out who Publius was instead!"
-The DavidGilmour.com FAQ [2]