"Devil in Jersey City"

Album Art by Bill Scoville.

## Music Video

Official Video on YouTube

**"Devil in Jersey City"** is a song by the American rock band Coheed and Cambria. It is the third track and only single on their 2002 album *The Second Stage Turbine Blade*.

## Lyrics

**[Intro]**

*(Hee-hee, Shabütie)*

**[Verse 1]**

New Jersey bound, when sound asleep

They'll find you at your most vulnerable

Poll position, speak up let out, when down the street

The corner boys fuck shit up

**[Pre-Chorus]**

Scream loud, scream sayonara

Sweet Josephine, will you follow me home?

Scream loud, scream sayonara

Sweet Josephine, will you fuck me back home?

**[Chorus]**

Let's fire it up, haha, now

Let's fire it up, haha, now

Sayonara!

**[Post-Chorus]**

Don't let them scare you

When you're down on the floor bleeding bastard *(help)*

You'll be getting home real soon

And I pray for you, high health

Don't let them scare you

When you're down on the floor bleeding bastard *(help)*

You'll be getting home real soon

**[Verse 2]**

Speak up, let out, caught in the crossfire

Compared to the step to the bone that might break

It's too late to find a better way out of this

With the finest regards that I lost in the cracks of this street

**[Pre-Chorus]**

Scream loud, scream sayonara

*(Wide open, now you're dead and gone)*

Sweet Josephine, will you follow me home?

Scream loud, scream sayonara

Sweet Josephine, will you fuck me back home?

**[Chorus]**

Let's fire it up, haha, now

Let's fire it up, haha, now

*(Sayonara!)*

**[Post-Chorus]**

Don't let them scare you

When you're down on the floor bleeding bastard *(help)*

You'll be getting home real soon

And I pray for you, high health

Don't let them scare you

When you're down on the floor bleeding bastard *(help)*

You'll be getting home real soon

**[Bridge]**

Don't let them scare you

**[Outro]**

*(Take me home)* When you run, they'll follow you

*(Take me home)* When you run, they'll follow you

*(Take me home)* When you run, they'll follow you

*(Take me home)*

## Music Video

The single for this song came out in 2003 and an official music video was released for the single. It was directed by Christian Winters. It features a surprisingly large number of references to *The Amory Wars* such as a large, hulking male with cuts on his left arm (an obvious representation of Coheed in his early design).

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An alternative video was made by the band through their record company, Equal Vision.

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## Story Context

"Hee-hee, Shabutie" is what Matthew and Maria say when Coheed enters their room before giving them the poison, which the last song depicted. This song is about what happens in the middle of that one: Josephine Kilgannon is out with her newly fiancé, Patrick McCormick. They are driving back from Jersey City and stop at an abandoned warehouse on the edge of the city, making out in Patrick's car. Josephine is a little uneasy about the remoteness of the location, but trusts Patrick. Unfortunately, things go to hell pretty quickly. The gang known as the Jersey City Devils breaks into the car, beat up Patrick, who tries to stand up to them (trying to allow for Josephine to flee), and rape Josephine before tearing off on their motorcycles. Angry and sad all at once, she demands Patrick take her home. The song is mostly told from her perspective.

The first verse paints our setting pretty well with "your most vulnerable poll position" referring to the couple caught unaware and thus vulnerable. The pre-chorus with "Sweet Josephine, will you follow me home?" depicts Josephine having a flashback to when Patrick proposed only just this morning and how happy she was, juxtaposed with the line "Sweet Josephine, will you fuck me back home?" which is a clever perversion of the line meant to convey something like, "Am I just a piece of meat now, only fit to be fucked?"

The chorus is what Josephine hears the gang saying ("Let's fire it up") and them laughing. But the pre-chorus is the exact opposite: Cambria, with her powers, can see what's happening to her, and is trying to reassure her. ("Don't let them scare you," "When you're down on the floor bleeding bastard," which is more of a threat to the gang, and "You'll be getting home real soon / And I'll pray for you high health.")

The second verse is how she is seeing Patrick in this moment: "Speak up, let out, caught in the crossfire" referring to him trying to stand up to them for her, but getting punished for getting in the way. This is backed up with "Compared to the step to the bone that might break." He's detained to not interfere in such a manner that if he did tried to struggle or fight back, they could do some serious harm to him. The last two lines are the worst of it: "It's too late to find a better way out of this / With the finest regards that I lost in the cracks of this street," meaning that they can't get away at this point, even if they wanted to. "Finest regards" being another way to say "dignity," the second line tells us Josephine has been violated.

The outro may be how Josephine ends up rationalizing it all: even if they had gotten away, they would have found them any way and perhaps it all would've happened regardless.

## Trivia

* "Shabütie" is what the band was called before they decided on Coheed and Cambria.
* The lyric booklet omits the curse words and sayonara.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Coheed and Cambria. Booklet. *The Second Stage Turbine Blade*, Equal Vision Records, 2002.
2. ↑ https://genius.com/Coheed-and-cambria-devil-in-jersey-city-lyrics
3. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bwELa13rBo
4. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmPSDI5F0nQ