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Song Analysis #12: Van Susans – Glow

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Title: ‘Glow’
Where to find it: ‘We Could Be Scenery’ EP (2011, Beatnik Geek)
Performed by: Van Susans
Words by: Olly Andrews and Eddie Dullaway

First, the words:

Verse 1
She makes me feel like I’m glowing like starlight
My insides can set fire and burn from the outside
And I wouldn’t stop her for all she did to me
She leaves me burnt and me still craving her

How could you do this to me?
I have been nothing but good to you
Maybe I should play the bad ass
Maybe I should have played you too?

But I could never bring myself to do that
And I don’t even know where I’d start
And you said all the things I wanted to hear
After tearing me apart

Chorus
And all the times that we had, and all the pictures that I took
I’ll take a flame to it all, without another look
You left me burnt, but I have learnt from you
You left me burnt, but I have learnt from you

Verse 2
Sometime I wish I were a little taller
So you would love me a little bit more
Maybe then this would all be over
And I wouldn’t be walking out that door

And everything we had
Yeah, everything we ever had
You took a flame to all of our plans
And I don’t expect you to understand

Chorus
All the times that we had, and all the pictures that I took
I’ll take a flame to it all, without another look
You left me burnt, but I have learnt from you
You left me burnt, but I have learnt from you

Instrumental bridge, then lyric bridge, then followed by shorter instrumental bridge
She made me feel like I’m glowing like starlight
Now all she can do is to watch me burn

Chorus
All the times that we had, and all the pictures that I took
I’ll take a flame to it all, without another look
You left me burnt, but I have learnt from you
You left me burnt, but I have learnt from you

Extended outro
‘cause she made me feel
Like starlight, like starlight
And ‘cause she made me feel
Like starlight, like starlight

Now, the analysis:

Van Susans came to my attention in late 2010, during a particularly dark period in my life. Their manager David sent me an advance copy of their debut EP ‘We Could Be Scenery’ and like everything else I receive, I queued it up with a jaundiced eye and a cynical brow. From just five songs, I could tell this band of six just “had” it. Initially, it was single ‘Bones’ that caught my ear first, with its lyrics of a young man’s bombast and invincibility , later inevitably felled by what I thought then was heartbreak. Now I think about it more as possibly being about life’s trials and tribulations and it might not be a love song at all. Funny how that the longer you sit with a song very special to you, as time goes on it can reveal more than originally meets the eye, like a flower bud that blooms and unfurls its petals to you, each second looks different than it did in the previous…

But today’s piece is about the final track on the EP, ‘Glow’. One of the lasting pieces of imagery I have from history in my schooldays was when we were being taught about colonial India and the caste system. It’s rather interesting to me that India, having been a British colony, independently developed a detrimental class system from its masters. It’s been impressed on me by quite a few of my friends, mostly from the Midlands and the North, that there is a massive class divide in the UK. (In America, while class and wealth is of course an issue, I personally find that the race divide is much wider in comparison.) Going back to colonial India, having self-immolation as a method of nonviolence by an Indian protesting his British masters described to a young me by a teacher was an image that became burned, no pun intended, into my mind forever.

The other thing I recall about self-immolation was of the old (and possibly still continuing?) Indian tradition of wives, regardless of class, throwing themselves on the funeral pyre of their dead husbands. Because according to Indian culture, one of the many patriarchal societies in Asia, a wife’s life was worth nothing if her husband was dead. So fire and death have always been connected in my mind. It’s gotten so bad that I often have nightmares of being burnt, being on fire or even my whole bedroom up in flames, and I am jolted awake. One time I even leapt from my bed, hitting the sill of my window with my back and falling on my bass. I woke up in tears, seeing that my guitar stand had broken my fall and it itself was broken, though luckily my bass sustained no injuries. Freud and Jung would probably have a field day with my dreams…

‘Glow’ utilises the imagery of fire not one, not four different ways! The first way, and the most obvious, is the literal use taking a flame “to it all”, to destroy what had come before. The song’s protagonist uses “I’ll take a flame to it all” in the chorus, but also alludes to his lover “And everything we had / Yeah, everything we ever had / You took a flame to all of our plans / And I don’t expect you to understand”. Part of the previous first half of the verse “Maybe then this would all be over / And I wouldn’t be walking out that door” indicates conflict, so it’s not readily apparent who is at fault. Interesting dichotomy. But all will be revealed in all due time…

This first way is very powerful to me. When I heard the song, I equated it to my desire then to physically destroy every last piece of evidence of a man who had previously been so important in my life. I had spent so much time and effort writing about him and photographing him that I thought the only way to get him out of my mind was this physical destruction, that it was a means to an end. In my mind, I relished standing in my back garden with a match and lighting “all the pictures that I took” in “all the times that we had” together, watching them turn into ash in the air. Last Christmas I went through a drawer full of items related to him and threw everything out except what legitimately could be considered pieces to my work portfolio as a music journalist and editor; I’m glad I hadn’t burned everything to bits because regardless of how I felt about him personally, the work I’d done, all the hours I’d spent to help promote him was a reflection not on how badly he treated me but instead of the great pride I’d taken in doing what I did best: write.

The second way is in the second half of the chorus: “You left me burnt, but I have learnt from you”. It’s almost like our protagonist is thanking his lover: yes, you hurt me, but I’ve learned from the experience. It’s not all bad. It was hard for me to see this through my tears but I have come to appreciate this line for what it truly means: we all go through heartbreak but like Kelly Clarkson said famously, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”.

Hopefully this doesn’t confuse too much, but I’m going to go back to the start of the song for the third way Olly Andrews and Eddie Dullaway use fire imagery in ‘Glow’ and examine it line by line. Don’t worry, I’ll come back to the end of the song in a minute when describing the fourth way, and you’ll see how neatly the end of song will bring you full circle. The first line of the first verse: “She makes me feel like I’m glowing like starlight”. What is this? It seems obvious to me. It’s when you’ve fallen in love with someone and he/she has put you on a pedestal, that’s you’re perfect and wonderful. Then the next line: “My insides can set fire and burn from the outside”. I’m on the fence about this line. On one hand, in line two, while he’s in love, he’s feeling so wonderful about himself that nothing can touch him. Someone could set him on fire and he wouldn’t notice. On the other hand, there is simultaneous burning from the inside AND the outside. I read this as his insides are burning because he’s in love, he’s full of desire and hope from his lover. But he also appears to be burning from the outside because of what his lover is doing to him: “And I wouldn’t stop her for all she did to me / She leaves me burnt and me still craving her”. She’s done something to him – hurt him somehow – and he’s left burnt, but like a junkie, he wants to have her back in his life again. As badly as the ones that we love can hurt us, if we’re still in love with that person, it doesn’t matter. We want that person come round again for us.

The next group of lines truly hit home for me: “How could you do this to me? / I have been nothing but good to you / Maybe I should play the bad ass / Maybe I should have played you too?” Okay, now we know what’s wrong. He was in love, he treated her like a princess, yet she played him. He’s asking himself, wow, maybe if I’d played you too, I wouldn’t be feeling so rotten right now. But he admits he’s too good of a person to do the same thing to her: “But I could never bring myself to do that / And I don’t even know where I’d start”. Adding further insult to injury, “And you said all the things I wanted to hear / After tearing me apart”. THIS. This happened to me. If you think heartbreak can’t get any worse, try having a carrot being dangled in front of our face by the very person you used to love, to have that person suddenly be nice to you after he/she has broken your heart, giving you entirely false hope that one day all will be well and you’ll be back together. I don’t know why people think it’s ok to act this way. If you’ve broken up with someone, if you’ve hurt someone, walk away. The person you hurt does not need to see you anymore. Don’t open up the old wounds and give them the impression that one day in the future you MIGHT have a future with that person. It’s cruel.

The fourth way, as I promised, finishes the song with the repeated “‘cause she made me feel / Like starlight, like starlight”. Oh my god. The way Olly Andrews sings this is nothing short of a miracle. As in the first line of the song, our protagonist recalls feeling the burning feeling of love in his whole body, as if he is a star emanating starlight. On a simpler level, he’s explaining how he felt like a star in her presence. But at the end of the song, the sentiment has changed. As much as you’d like to believe and pretend putting up a brave front, if you have a broken heart, even as much as you hate that other person for hurting you, there is always going to be a little piece of you that wants things to go back to the way they were.

You want that feeling of being in love again, of being the apple of someone’s eye, to feel that burning deep within, whether it be pride or just the self-esteem that yes, someone is in love with me and thinks I’m great. The delivery here is plaintive, as if Andrews’ whole heart and soul is crying out to the universe, his voice extending as if reaching to the heavens. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I queued this track up in my car and how many red lights I ran because I was blinded by my own tears while singing along to the end of this song, thinking that the more times I sang the song and the louder I sang, the words and my voice would reach the man I loved and he would realise he’d made a mistake.

If you were wondering what happened to that guy who hurt me, he’s gone. Out of my life. He’s never going to ever be part of my life again. I saw him a couple of weeks ago and he was a complete jerk to me. Sometimes I wish he’d been a jerk to me the first time we met, so I would have seen his true colours straight away and I never would have spent years of my life in such a state of hopeless disarray. But life is never that simple and like they say, love is blind. And I’m okay now. I can listen to ‘Glow’ now with a smile and say to myself, yes, I’ve learned from my mistakes and I’ve learned from the way he treated me, I know what not to put up with. And now I can go forward and love someone else with no regrets.

Lastly, the song, two versions of the song, one performed live on a local to Bromley radio station in February 2011, and the other the original from the EP.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2rqeYTKLrU

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/18398967″ params=”” width=” 100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Song Analysis #11: Skeeter Davis – The End of the World

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Title: ‘The End of the World’
Where to find it: ‘Skeeter Davis Sings The End of the World’ (1963, RCA)
Performed by: Skeeter Davis
Words by: Arthur Kent and Sylvia Dee

This is truly a blast from the past and probably not going to happen often, as it’s only really newer songs’ lyrics that I take the time to really dig through. But it would have been my father’s birthday this Saturday, so I thought it would be appropriate to examine his favourite song of all time. I was very young when he told me this was his favourite and at the time, being young, I didn’t understand the heart-wrenching nature of the song. All I heard – and couldn’t get past – was Skeeter Davis’ country twang, still a kind of sound that bothers me to this day. It’s this part sentimentally adorable, part grating annoyance.

No, it wasn’t until the song appeared in probably the saddest scene in the Winona Ryder film Girl, Interrupted that the lyrics knocked me in the stomach. SPOILER ALERT: Brittany Murphy’s character Daisy Randone commits suicide when she finds she can’t cope being a victim of sexual abuse. It’s doubly sad that in real life, Murphy herself died in what looks to me as suicide. While a broken heart is nothing to kill yourself over, I admit crying far too many tears during a breakup over this song. Ironically, it’s what the protagonist admits, but may not accept yet at this time – that the world still goes on even after a relationship has ended. And as much as I’m groaning saying this, because I heard it too many times as I suffered post-breakup, yes. It does just take time. Sometime TOO MUCH time.

First, the words:

Verse 1
Why does the sun go on shining
Why does the sea rush to shore
Don’t they know it’s the end of the world
Cause you don’t love me anymore

Verse 2
Why do the birds go on singing
Why do the stars glow above
Don’t they know it’s the end of the world
It ended when I lost your love

Bridge
I wake up in the morning and I wonder
Why everything’s the same as it was
I can’t understand no I can’t understand
How life goes on the way it does

Verse 3
Why does my heart go on beating
Why do these eyes of mine cry
Don’t they know it’s the end of the world
It ended when you said goodbye

“Verse” 4
(Why does my heart go on beating
Why do these eyes of mine cry?)
Don’t they know it’s the end of the world
It ended when you said goodbye

Now, the analysis:

As most songs from the ’60s were, the structure of this song is pretty simple. I almost hesitated to mark where the verses were, because they’re not really verses in my eyes, because the song is so simple. But it’s the simplicity that makes this song such a timeless classic.

As sure as the sun rises and sets every day, nature always goes on without stopping, regardless what happens in the human world. The two absolute worst things of the natural world while I was still in the throes of a post-breakup situation: watching the sun rise in the morning and shine on everything in its path, and seeing the moon at night high above in the sky. Why? These are two constant things in all of our lives, regardless of where in the world you are. Both are things that us as humans are cognisant of almost every day. I think it would hurt me more that the sun was shining, people were happy around me, etc. while I was in severe emotional pain. And that’s what happens in a breakup: we are so focused on this acute pain we are feeling, things go on around us and we can’t even appreciate the little things in life like that fact that we have a sun. (And trust me, I have had it ingrained in my brain by my friends from England that seeing sun for the majority of the year in Washington DC is something that I have taken for granted!)

The first two verses discuss nature. And I won’t go into the scientific reasons why the sea keeps rushing to shore with the tides – that’s for a boffin blog. But what is more important is how the physical manifestations – the worry of a heart to stop beating, and actual crying – take over in verses 3 and 4. I see this as a shift from what is observed outside your life to what is happening now in your life. Not necessarily acceptance of the situation but acceptance that it’s real and she’s not staring out a window, completely disconnected from reality. There is also a spoken word bit, a device that isn’t used far enough in modern days. And it works brilliantly. (Don’t believe me? Go watch The Heartbreaks‘ ‘I Didn’t Think It Would Hurt to Think of You’; the band admittedly take cues from the girl groups of the same era from whence Ms. Davis came from.)

I also really admire the bridge. The protagonist wonders how it’s possible that she awakes in the morning, and nothing has changed, things are exactly as broken as when she went to bed the night before. I find it a very elegant way lyrically of saying she’s in a deep depression and trying to pass the time by sleeping. If you’re not awake, you can’t hurt, right? But trying to sleep it off only gets you so far. I know. I’ve tried. it doesn’t do anything. Nothing changes until you come to accept the situation for what it is. And the passage of time.

I never got to ask my father before he died why this was his favourite song. Did a woman hurt him, leading him to hold this song close to his heart? I’ll never know, of course, but for sure, it is a song that will always be part of my musical history.

Lastly, the song, performed live by Ms. Davis live on the Bobby Lord Show in August 1965.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgcy-V6YIuI

Song Analysis #10: Pete and the Pirates – Half Moon Street

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I know. It’s Friday. But I was just thinking about someone last night, someone from my not too distant past, someone who caused me a great deal of emotional anguish. I only recently pulled myself out of a severe depression that, while it had been steadily getting better as time went on, didn’t really go into remission until I stepped into the sunlight at SXSW last month, saw loads of friends, and realised I didn’t need him anymore in my life. The chapter’s closed now. But there was a time, not so long ago, when just seeing a picture of him or hearing his voice somewhere reminded me of how much I loved him and I hated myself so much, all I wanted to do was to crawl in a hole and die if I couldn’t be with him.

I fell in love with this song by Pete and the Pirates in early 2011 upon hearing it on Lammo’s radio show. But it wasn’t until November of that year when I finally nabbed the album ‘One Thousand Pictures’ physically, on sale in a London HMV. Totally last minute, I saw a gig listing that the band would be playing in Islington at the Buffalo Bar, at a special birthday night of the venue, and I decided I should go along and see them. I managed to get one of the last tickets in, and it was probably one of the best ways I’ve ever spent £10. While I’m not happy the poster I got from the show got wrecked in my checked suitcase (I’m an idiot, I should have put it safe in a folder in my hand luggage…it’s probably worth something now that they don’t exist anymore), I am so glad that I got to see them before they split.

Three of their members have now gone on to form Teleman, but it’s this song that will always live in my heart. I can’t even begin to count how many tears I shed listening to it. And why? Read the lyrics first, and I’ll explain…

Title: ‘Half Moon Street’
Where to find it: ‘One Thousand Pictures’ (2011)
Performed by: Pete and the Pirates (RIP)
Words by: presumably Tommy Sanders

First, the words:

Come and meet me tomorrow
Come with all your silver and your gold
Egyptian night lady
You don’t seem like you do what you’ve been told
And why won’t you speak now
Tying string between tin cans and pulling them tight
Well I’m only asking
Did the cat get your tongue when you slept last night
From here to my window
There are cracks in the walls that I can’t mend
I’ll meet you on Half Moon Street
With someone else’s money that we can spend

My thoughts are tearing each other apart
In the back of the car
Conversation’s probably gone too far
You keep me guessing
Tongue tied and messy
Don’t make me feel stupid
I’ll do that on my own

Put the key in and just start believing
That you’re going to hell if you have fun this evening
Come to me telling me all kinds of secrets
Promises promised I think I can keep it

I’ve seen photos of you
I know we’ve got nothing in common now
Just our shared love of drinking
But you won’t take a life and that’s not me
I’ll meet you on Half Moon Street
I’ll be watching your mouth move when you talk
And all of those noises
Well they really mean nothing to me at all

My thoughts are tearing each other apart
In the back of the car
Conversation’s probably gone too far
You keep me guessing
Tongue tied and messy
Don’t make me feel stupid
I’ll do that on my own

Put the key in and just start believing
That you’re going to hell if you have fun this evening
Come to me telling me all me kinds of secrets
Promises promised I think I can keep it

Come and meet me tomorrow
Come with all your silver and your gold
And all of your money
It really means nothing to me at all
I’ll meet you on Half Moon Street
I’ll be watching your mouth move when you talk
And oh it’s just noises
They really mean nothing to me at all.

My thoughts are tearing each other apart
In the back of the car
Conversation’s probably gone too far
You keep me guessing
Tongue tied and messy
Don’t make me feel stupid
I’ll do that on my own

Put the key in and just start believing
That you’re going to hell if you have fun this evening
Come to me telling me all kinds of secrets
Promises promised I think I can keep it

Now, the analysis:

Not exactly of course, but this song mirrored one of my own relationships. There was a man that I trusted to the ends of the earth, and I had gone for months thinking he felt the same way about me. Well, as you can probably predict, things didn’t end well. Even after I found out that what I wanted wasn’t what he wanted, he still would come to me and confide in me (“Come to me telling me all me kinds of secrets / Promises promised I think I can keep it”) and in a way, even though maybe he didn’t mean to, he kept stringing me along, making me think that I meant more to him in his life than he actually was really willing to commit to. I kept thinking, “one day he’ll realise that it’s me, not that other woman…I’m the one he’s meant to be with”. Let me tell you, that’s a hopeless romantic talking. You don’t get anywhere with hopeless romanticism…

We had a conversation one night in a confined space in a bar (“My thoughts are tearing each other apart / In the back of the car / Conversation’s probably gone too far / You keep me guessing / Tongue tied and messy”) where he sat so close to me, I thought I might die. I hated the fact that we were sitting like this and I wanted him so badly to kiss me, to do something to show me he loved me. He talked to me in the same way he talked to me the day we first met. I was crying inside; it reminded me of why I had fallen in love with him in the first place. When I went home that night, alone and so sad, I was more confused about what was going on between us than I had been when I had first stepped into that bar.

I finally broke things off with him earlier this year; I had waited over 2 years for his promise of “let’s still be friends” to really come true; I had still cared for him as a friend, even if he didn’t treat me as well in return, and I had just really hoped that one day he would come around. When I learned some things about him entirely accidentally from one of our mutual friends, I removed him from all my social networks, never to talk to him again. We never spoke of it, but I think it was assumed by both of us that what went on was to be kept private. At first I thought this way because I was too embarrassed by what had happened, and it was one of those “what would the neighbors say?” kind of cases. But then later, more recently, I came to the mature decision that I had nothing to be ashamed of (you like who you like, right?), and if he couldn’t care enough to be my friend, then it wasn’t worth my time or effort to try and keep this “friendship” (notice I put that in quotes?) alive.

In that way, this song ‘Half Moon Street’ has a similar premise. You can tell the protagonist is hanging on to a relationship that doesn’t exist the way he wants to anymore. He’s asking this woman to come down to this place so they can spend time together, but he acknowledges, “I’ll meet you on Half Moon Street / I’ll be watching your mouth move when you talk / and all of those noises / well they really mean nothing to me at all” – their lives are so different now, even if they were in the same space and she was talking to him, they don’t mean anything anymore to each other. “Come and meet me tomorrow / Come with all your silver and your gold”, she has all this money, and he has none; they’re in entirely different stations of life.

The lines that hurt me so badly and touched me so strongly are “don’t make me feel stupid / I’ll do that on my own”. Anyone who has been in a relationship, thinking everything’s wine and roses, only to find out your lover has cheated or deceived you, feels like a fool. I recall standing alone in the middle of a street in Manchester, on a very late night, feeling cold, and what was I doing? Crying, thinking about this song, thinking about how messed up I was inside, feeling how stupid I was that I’d not been able to protect my heart.

Not as cutting but equally painful are “I’ve seen photos of you / I know we’ve got nothing in common now”: someone once dear no longer is a part of your life. I used to be quite fatalistic, coming up the lyric “I don’t mean anything to him anymore” one night when I was back home, riding down an escalator to the Metro and feeling that same coldness. For professional reasons, I still see photos of this man. This man who for months haunted my dreams because I loved him so much and it killed me that even though I would have given anything to be with him – I had planned on giving up everything that I knew to make a new life with him – he just didn’t love me enough and in that way. “From here to my window / There are cracks in the walls that I can’t mend”: sometimes, relationships are irreparably broken. You can’t fix them. And when you come across a situation like that, like every single good-meaning friend told me, “you just need time to heal”. And leave it be. For me, the time I needed was nearly 2 and a half years. But I’m still alive.

Note: apparently there are two films with ‘Half Moon Street’ in the title and I haven’t bothered to see if the songs have anything to do with the lyrics. Of course, it’s a possibility for me, there is no other explanation as to why it struck a chord so deeply with me besides personal experience.

Lastly, the promo video for the song. I think it’s a waste visually of an almost perfect song; why couldn’t it have a better storyline?