Song Analysis 3: In The Next Room - Neon Trees

This song is a perfect example of a woman being simultaneously empowered and objectified. The female character in this song is empowered by the way she seems to have control over the male vocalist. It is pretty clear that she makes him lose control. She occupies his mind and  and makes him act in ways contrary to what he feels he should. "I am usually better when I lie / There I go / Stuck inside a shell" indicates that the standard empowerment he feels over women has been diminished by this particular girl. She has broken him out of the way he has been taught to view women, and put him in a new shell - a shell which renders him powerless compared to her. In this sense, the female is portrayed as powerful. But at what cost...

The reason he loses control is not out of a new-found respect for her, but out of her sexual attraction. In the chorus when he sings "I lose control" it is important to note that he doesn't say "when I hear you move," but rather "when I hear your BODY move." He is clarifying that this dis-empowerment, this control she has over him is purely because of sexual attraction to her body. In this way she is turned into an object; nothing more than a body for him to want, to consume, to control. He even directly states "It's a sexual attraction."

The entire song is full of this sense of entitlement. He is a man and he wants this woman. Therefor he should have her. This wall, this room which contains him, is preventing him from receiving what all men in our society have been taught to feel entitled to.