'My Eyes' by The Lumineers is the fifth song in their very famous storyline, "The Ballad of Cleopatra", which contains songs from their album "Cleopatra" and follows the story of a taxi driver named Cleopatra (duh!).
This song and it’s literal meaning is about Jeremiah Fraites’ (co-founder of the band) brother and Wesley Schultz’s (lead singer of the band) friend who died of a drug overdose which led to the members of the band to get together and create music as a method of coping.
“Our bio reads that my brother passed away from a drug overdose and then, out of the ashes of that, came Wes. It’s true. Wes was friends with my older brother Joshua and he did die in 2001,” Fraites explained in an interview with The Sun.
Schultz, when asked to discuss the meaning behind the lyrics, said, “For me, it was imagining giving the devil a ride, and then all the things he could promise you, and how alluring that is, and the innocence that kind of gets a little bit lost.”
Schultz said, “there’s a certain level of growing up overnight that happens. As a band, it adds something that’s very elusive — it’s hopefulness, but there’s also some sorrow behind it, and there’s some depth that defines who you are.”
Coming back to Cleopatra’s story, her next customer is a 75-year-old woman and as she drops her off at an old age home, she thinks of how she too is going to end up someplace like here after giving up her job as a taxi driver.
What we learn next is that the passenger, the 75-year-old woman, is in fact the older self of Cleopatra, living in an elder care home with a male nurse as her only friend. The video then shows for the first time, the different phases of Cleopatra’s life, what she actually went through and not the alternate realities in her head.
Before the ballad ends, we see Cleopatra stepping out of her body for one last time, to do what she has been doing for the past 20:35 minutes and that is, leave. She cannot imagine staying there forever and knows that she has to keep moving even if there’s no place left to go to.
Cleopatra moves out of her room and as she walks through the hallway, she finds a man taking care of an older man (probably his father) in one of the room, suggesting that our protagonist’s son was not bothered enough to look after his mother and only took care of his father.
Once again, the video switches between the different ages of Cleopatra, as she walks down the aisle of the retirement home. She turns and looks back at the life she has lived, walks out, and disappears into the darkness.
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