Does anyone knows?

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I'm not getting this. Is this a lyric from a U2 song? If so I don't recognise it. Please explain.
 
it's from Mercy, right?

I think Nero was some particularly nasty conqueror (Roman?) who had violins playing when he was going around burning things down, doing whatever conquerors do, etc. that's what I think I remember reading somewhere anyway. hopefully someone has a better explanation. :D
 
Nero's Fire in Rome
When people think of Nero they often conjure up the anachronistic image of Nero playing a violin while the city of Rome burned. There were no violins at the time, but there was a fire, which started by the Circus Maximus on the night of July 18 (or 19) in A.D. 64.

http://ancienthistory.about.com/b/a/099120.htm

so I guess there weren't actually violins, but it's sort of a legend or something...
 
Yes, it's a reference to the emperor Nero and the famous story of how he played violin while Rome burned, suggestive of his cruelty and indifference to others' suffering.

It's part of that whole sequence of lines that place a positive against a negative to indicate how bad the "narrator" of the song is compared to the other, much better person, eg:

I know I’m weed killer, honey, and you’re sugar
If you’re the prosecution I get away with murder

We’re binary code, a one and a zero
You wanted violins and you got Nero

You wanted violins (love, romance) and you got a villain.

I think it's very clever.
 
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