Bauhaus / Go Away White / 2008
Too Much 21st Century
irritable, exhausted, sardonic
A late-career Bauhaus track that reads as a weary catalogue of modern overload, stacking comparative phrases and repeated complaints about excess until the words themselves start to feel exhausting. It's less a story than a mood of accumulation and fatigue, aimed at consumer culture, media saturation, and the compulsion toward self-improvement.
information overload consumerism and status anxiety technology fatigue self-improvement as trap modern malaise
Who's speaking
An unnamed voice addresses a generic 'you' or society at large, listing desires and complaints; the speaker seems both inside and outside the culture being described, more diagnostic than confessional, and not entirely reliable as a narrator since the list format flattens any personal stake.
What happens
The song doesn't develop a plot so much as build pressure through repetition. It opens with a wish for something better, then spirals into a list of comparative upgrades people supposedly want, before shifting into a second half that names specific modern excesses—information, technology, control—each tagged as unbearable. The final push circles back to the 'better' language, now hollowed out, ending on a flat, almost sarcastic affirmation.
How it's built
Built on two alternating structural devices: a comparative litany ('better X') and an excess litany ('too much X'). There's no conventional chorus-verse distinction; instead the song works by accumulation, returning to the same phrases with slight variation, which mimics the very overload it describes. The near-identical repeat of the opening list near the end functions as a false resolution—nothing has changed, it's just cycled back.
Section by section
Opening list
The song begins with a vague wish for improvement that quickly specifies into career, money, and romantic upgrades. The vagueness of the opening line lets the specifics that follow feel almost involuntary, like a checklist recited rather than genuinely wanted.
First 'too much' turn
The pivot from wanting more to being overwhelmed by too much marks the song's central irony: aspiration and saturation are treated as two sides of the same complaint. The request for a single religion amid excess reads as a plea for simplicity rather than genuine faith.
Escalation into modern excess
“too much computer”
This stretch names contemporary irritants directly, moving from abstract complaints to a concrete symbol of digital-age overload. The short, hammering lines push the song toward something closer to a rant than a lyric, which suits the theme of being unable to filter incoming noise.
Control passage
The doubling of the word for dominance, spoken almost as an aside, suggests the speaker feels controlled rather than in control—an anxiety about external forces (technological, social, institutional) shaping behavior.
Recapitulation and close
“a better human”
The list from the opening returns nearly verbatim, but the song then reaches for a larger, almost absurd aspiration toward an improved version of personhood itself. The flat delivery and the closing repetition of the excess complaint suggest this aspiration is exhausted before it's even finished, landing as resignation rather than hope.
Craft
- anaphora
- The repeated openings of phrases with the same word set up a rhythmic insistence that mirrors compulsive comparison and complaint, turning language into a kind of nervous tic.
- list/catalogue
- Both the 'better' and 'too much' sections function as inventories rather than sentences, refusing narrative causality and instead presenting modern life as an undifferentiated pile of demands and irritants.
- circular structure
- The return to the comparative list near the end, followed by an ironic closing image, suggests no progress has been made—the song ends where it began, only more depleted.
- irony
- The closing gesture toward a improved version of a person lands flatly rather than triumphantly, undercutting the whole idea of self-betterment the song has been listing.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the song as a critique of a culture defined by comparison and saturation—everyone measured against a hypothetical better version of themselves while simultaneously drowning in information, choice, and demands for control. The two litanies (wanting better, having too much) aren't contradictory but mutually reinforcing: constant comparison is itself a form of overload. An alternative reading could hear it as more personal—an aging artist's complaint about the pressures of relevance and self-marketing in a media-saturated environment—though the lyric stays general enough that this remains speculative.
Context
Go Away White was Bauhaus's reunion album, released in 2008 after decades apart, and by many accounts written and recorded quickly under some interpersonal strain, with the band splitting again around its release. I don't have confirmed details on this specific song's composition, so any biographical reading of it as commentary on the band's own late-2000s experience with media and pressure should be treated as speculative rather than established.
Listen for
- The mechanical repetition of the comparative phrases, which starts to feel less aspirational and more compulsive on repeat listens
- The shift in vocal tone between the 'better' sections and the 'too much' sections
- How the song avoids a traditional chorus, relying instead on list-like accumulation for its hook
- The flat, anticlimactic quality of the closing invocation of an improved human, which undercuts rather than resolves the tension
About Bauhaus
Bauhaus were an English rock band formed in Northampton in 1978. Known for their dark image and gloomy sound, Bauhaus are one of the pioneers of gothic rock, although they mixed many genres, including dub, glam rock, psychedelia, and funk.
1978 - 2008 / United Kingdom
Full biography and catalogue