Category Archives: Girl Power

Give your best, then surrender / Song Analysis #66: Sarah McLachlan – Sweet Surrender

COVID, Essay, Girl Power, Song Analysis, , , , , , , ,

The song I’m going to be writing about today is one that has been stuck in my consciousness for over half of my life.  I’ve thought about it a lot and have wanted to write about it here on Music in Notes for a long time.  I previously felt blocked with it the explanation for the song by the songwriter herself left me disappointed, as I had imagined it had far more evocative source material.  Some uncomfortable thoughts have come up for me in the last few days, bringing the song back into focus for me, so it seems the right time to share this.  Interestingly, I see on YouTube that the song has also found new fans during this pandemic, due to its underlying message.

The way that I have been doing these lyric interpretations this summer has been different than in the past.  Instead of setting myself a deadline and going with the first song that comes into my head and sounds like a good idea, I am now actively meditating on what thoughts about my life cross my ever-expanding mind and seeing what songs connect with those thoughts.  After my father died, a series of crises caused me to go into a spiritual direction, one that moved along at a leisurely pace.  That is, until last autumn, when I was involved in a traumatic accident, after which I noticed things started to speed up rapidly.  But for now, let’s go on to the lyrics and the analysis…

Title: ‘Sweet Surrender’
Where to find it: ‘Surfacing’ and ‘Sweet Surrender’ single (1997, Arista)
Performed by: Sarah McLachlan
Words: Sarah McLachlan

Intro
It doesn’t mean much
It doesn’t mean anything at all
The life I’ve left behind me
Is a cold room

Verse 1
I’ve crossed the last line
From where I can’t return
Where every step I took in faith betrayed me
And led me from my home

Chorus
Sweet surrender
Is all that I have to give

Verse 2
Take me in
No questions asked
You strip away the ugliness
That surrounds me
(Who are you?)

Verse 3
Are you an angel?
Am I already that gone?
I only hope that I won’t disappoint you
When I’m down here on my knees
(Who are you?)

Chorus X 2
Sweet surrender
Is all that I have to give
(who are you?)

Sweet surrender
Is all that I have to give

Bridge
And I don’t understand
How the touch of your hand
I would be the one to fall
I miss the little things
I miss everything about you

Intro repeated (stripped back)
Doesn’t mean much
It doesn’t mean anything at all
The life I left behind me
Is a cold room
(who are you?)

Chorus X 2
Sweet surrender
Is all that I have to give
(Who are you?)

Sweet surrender
Is all that I have to give

I would have known about Sarah McLachlan just by listening to top 40 radio in 1997.  However, it seems her songs were constantly being thrown in my face by a childhood friend who went to college with me and who was, in my opinion, obsessed with the songwriter.  I eventually bought her album ‘Surfacing’ not because of my friend, but for my attachment to its second single, ‘Sweet Surrender’, one of my favorite songs of all time.

Sarah McLachlan herself has said that the inspiration to ‘Sweet Surrender’ was the love story in the film Leaving Las Vegas.  I’ve never seen the film (the synopsis alone is triggering to this empath’s heart) and all you need to know right now is that the story is about two lost souls who find unexpected solace in each other.  In this Rolling Stone article from last year, McLachlan also says the song was also drawn from “one hideous breakup”, which is at least more interesting and more personal than “I took it from a movie I watched.”

When I first heard the song on the radio in 1997, as you do with music when you’re young and impressionable, I took the song very personally, as if I was the female character in it, dramatically crying over a lost love.  Sonically, it begins with an interesting guitar sound put through some kind of effects, resulting in what I’d describe as an otherworldly alarm.  It definitely ranks up there as best song starts, along with the feedback that begins the Beatles’ ‘I Feel Fine’.  The alarm sound stretches around the bends as the song continues.

The first two lines of the song “It doesn’t mean much / it doesn’t mean anything at all” fit my mood at the time, as a freshman in college.  I didn’t know what I was doing or how I should be feeling about my young life.  I was moving forward with my education but even that movement was on autopilot, as I wondered when I allowed my mind to wander if I was making a big mistake, but I didn’t see any other way out but through.

The intro and verse 1 of the sign speak of a point of no return that has been passed.  The female protagonist has taken a leap of faith, and there is no turning back now.  The words “The life I’ve left behind me / Is a cold room” makes you feel like it’s not a place that she would want to return to, even if she had the chance.  She also shares with us the hardship of walking away from everything she once knew, including the place she considered her home: “Where every step I took in faith betrayed me”.  Human beings do not like change.  It is hard as hell to walk away from what is known and comfortable, even if you know intellectually that staying in that same place and with the same people is toxic.

The song’s chorus is simple: “Sweet surrender / Is all I have to give.”  It’s a suggestion that the woman has reached the end of her rope, or at least is stuck at a crossroads where there is literally nothing else she can do but completely give in and surrender.  The simplicity allows for the song to be interpreted any number of ways, ranging from the completely secular to varying degrees of the spiritual and religious.

In verse 2, she is given sanctuary during this tough time in her life, but it is unclear by whom.  If you interpret this song as being without God’s or divine intervention, then the source of the song being from the Leaving Las Vegas storyline fits.  The film’s two lead characters begin as unsympathetic antiheroes: one is a drunk who wants to drink himself to death, and the other is a prostitute.  They become friends and eventually lovers despite their shortcomings, for lack of a better description.  “You strip away the ugliness / That surrounds me” sounds like all the self-doubt and low self-esteem and self-worth issues have been wiped away by a new partner and through unconditional love.  To make this interpretation easier for me, from this point forward, I’m going to assume the angel is male.

In verse 3, the woman wonders aloud if this man who came to her aid, “Are you an angel? / Am I already that gone?”  This lends well to the interpretations involving divine intervention, though I wish to point out that we could be dealing with an earth angel, a human being with angelic, caring qualities.  Something really bad has happened to this woman.  Has she lost her life?  Or has she lost her way in life?  McLachlan sings, “I only hope that I won’t disappoint you,” indicating shame and remorse for her past actions.  She’s “down here on my knees,” putting herself in a vulnerable position.  Whether she’s willing to make herself vulnerable because she feels safe with this person or because she doesn’t feel she has any choice is debatable.  This is an intriguing ambiguity, a potential mixed message of pain vs. sexual ecstasy in the chorus of the Morrissey song ‘Jack the Ripper’ (see item #5 on this list by the Guardian).

In the bridge, it seems to me that the angel (whether divine or human) providing the woman her much needed sanctuary when she needed it has somehow left her.  She doesn’t understand how this all happened: “And I don’t understand / How the touch of your hand / I would be the one to fall / I miss the little things / I miss everything about you.”  I remember when I heard this song in 1997, wondering if it was the angel leaving her that caused her to lose all faith in life.  If yes, then the song was purposely written out of order with respect to the order of events, providing an achingly, melancholily gorgeous loop of what has transpired.  Providing the flashback in verse 2, where we learn of the unconditional love, makes sense to me because what it does is make the listener understand that the woman loved and lost and is now heartbroken.

The song ends with a plaintive refrain of the chorus again, that there is no resolution for this woman.  Yet.  Does her sweet surrender mean she will be reunited with her angel, that she will feel his beautiful unconditional love once again?  Or is she forever damned to a life without him?  What I would hope for our protagonist and anyone else struggling during the pandemic is this: give your best, because that’s all you can do and all that you can control.  Do that, surrender, and allow the divine to handle the rest.

Finding a voice in silence / Song Analysis #63: ‘Til Tuesday – Voices Carry

COVID, Essay, Girl Power, Song Analysis, , , , , , , , , ,

You can Google and find the two most common explanations for the origin of ‘Til Tuesday’s ‘Voices Carry’ (here and here).  I’ve had a few musicians tell me that a song’s meaning should never be revealed, never quite as sweetly eloquently as “magicians should never reveal their secrets, should they?”  I would agree with that and also add that how you read a song’s lyrics and how they make you feel are influenced by your own experiences.

Two years after my father died, I took myself to see a therapist for the first time.  I knew his death hit me hard.  I read books on grief, but I often felt numb inside and didn’t know what to do.  Intellectually, I knew his death was affecting my daily life, I felt I didn’t have anyone I could turn to, and I wanted to take the appropriate action to help myself.  Therapy was at least worth a shot. 

I had a very clear idea in my head when I started therapy that I did not want to play the blame game.  Further, I was doing this for me.  I knew I was going to get flak about it from my mother.  There is a huge stigma in Chinese and Asian cultures around getting help for mental health.  It’s considered an admission of weakness if you have to go for help outside of yourself for your problems and worse, your family will lose face if the word gets out about it.  This concern about showing weakness also offers a good explanation to why there are far fewer divorces among Asian couples compared to their Causasian counterparts.

It would be some years later that I recognized this as akin to the British stiff upper lip.  I first saw in my first serious boyfriend and then again and again in friends and many of the men I’d meet and become friends with through my travels for There Goes the Fear.  My friends in Delphic and Everything Everything got involved early on in supporting the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM).  After absorbing the stark statistic that suicide is the biggest killer of men under the age of 45 in Britain, I felt a moral obligation to do something and started writing for CALM.

Today’s song is one I’ve sat with many a time because I felt Aimee Mann’s emotionally brutal lyrics spoke to me, but for much of my life, I never really understood why.  I remember having a conversation with my second therapist about the definition of trauma.  I had always assumed that trauma meant physical trauma, like sexual abuse or a soldier’s PTSD following an injury in the field.  I hadn’t considered mental trauma.  It took another 4 years and a painful falling out with a friend’s mother for me to come to terms with what I must have known subconsciously.  I was a child victim of emotional abandonment.  Like the clouds above me had parted, I then understood why today’s song left a lasting impact on me.  It was as if my parents had placed imaginary tape over my mouth when I was a child.  I did not feel safe telling them how I truly felt about anything outside of school or grades.  They didn’t seem to care about anything else.  

Many years later, when I met parents of bands and musicians who I helped promote through TGTF, I saw how proud they were of their children and their artistic efforts.  I would smile at them, but a part of me would die inside as I contemplated that as a child or even a young woman, I never got any of that support.  Therapy got me to the point where I was able to force myself out of my comfort zone and into the world, putting myself in social situations that were required for the Editor-in-Chief of an influential music website.  I did these things for me. TGTF helped me come out of my shell.  I finally had a voice.  My own voice.  A voice that I know made a difference.

I also wanted to feature this song here on Music in Notes because there has been a dramatic rise in domestic abuse during the COVID-19 pandemic due to the lockdowns because the abused are now having to shelter in place with their abuser.  If you or someone you know need help, the National Domestic Violence Hotline is a good resource to start with.  Just having to type this paragraph is making me tearful.  Please, please reach out and get help if you need it.  You may not feel this, but you have a voice.  There is someone out there who will listen.

Title: ‘Voices Carry’
Where to find it: ‘Voices Carry’ single and album (1985, Epic)
Performed by: ‘Til Tuesday
Words by: Aimee Mann

Verse 1
In the dark, I’d like to read his mind
But I’m frightened of the things I might find
Oh there must be something he’s thinking of
To tear him away, ay, ay
When I tell him that I’m falling in love
Why does he say

Chorus
Hush hush
Keep it down now
Voices carry
Hush hush
Keep it down now
Voices carry

Verse 2
I try so hard not to get upset
Because I know all the trouble I’ll get
Oh he tells me tears are something to hide
And something to fear
And I try so hard to keep it inside
So no one can hear

Chorus
Hush hush
Keep it down now
Voices carry
Hush hush
Keep it down now
Voices carry

Bridge
He wants me
But only part of the time
He wants me
If he can keep me in line

Chorus
Hush hush
Keep it down now
Voices carry
Hush hush
Keep it down now
Voices carry

Outro
He said shut up, he said shut up
Oh God, can’t you keep it down
Voices carry
Voices carry
I wish he would let me talk

Song Analysis #59: Dido – Hunter

Girl Power, Song Analysis, , , , , , ,

As I have been working on my memoir and revisiting old memories, I have been reminded of times in my life when I felt like I was butting my head against the patriarchy. I am not completely at ease with “being a woman”. I doubt any free-thinking woman is. I can count and recall pivotal times in my life where I’ve thought it would have been so much easier to have been born a boy. Based on societal norms and templates, some major choices a girl confronts as she grows from a child, to a young woman, and into an adult woman greatly differ than those presented to a boy.

At this year’s SXSW, I sat in on a session starring Shirley Manson and found her thoughts on how young girls are raised to think about themselves very powerful. I, like probably every woman on the planet, has contemplated at least once (and probably at length many more times) that her primary purpose on this earth was as a decorative object and how unfair that is. Being assertive does not come naturally to young girls unless, perhaps, you have a mother or other female role model showing you that you are allowed to assert yourself. The term “weaker sex” compounds the problem, perpetuating the myth.

I rediscovered this song by Dido a few days ago, and I was reminded of how much I had loved it when it was released. As I described in the previous Music in Notes post “The Voice (no, not the tv show)”, I experience a bizarre, connective feeling when I sing or listen to certain songs. This is one of them.

Title: ‘Hunter’
Where to find it: ‘No Angel’ (1999, Arista [US], BMG [UK]); single (2001, BMG)
Performed by: Dido
Words by: could be Dido herself, her producer brother Rollo, or the two of them together

Verse 1
With one light on, in one room
I know you’re up when I get home
With one small step upon the stair
I know your look when I get there

Chorus
If you were a king, up there on your throne,
Would you be wise enough to let me go?
For this queen you think you own
Wants to be a hunter again
I want to see the world alone again
To take a chance on life again
So let me go

Verse 2
The unread book and painful look
The TV’s on, the sound is down
One long pause, then you begin
“Oh look what the cat’s brought in”

Chorus
If you were a king, up there on your throne
Would you be wise enough to let me go?
For this queen you think you own
Wants to be a hunter again
I want to see the world alone again
To take a chance on life again
So let me go
Let me leave

Bridge
For the crown you’ve placed upon my head feels too heavy now
And I don’t know what to say to you, but I’ll smile anyhow
And all the time I’m thinking, thinking

Modified chorus and outro
I want to be a hunter again
I want to see the world alone again
To take a chance on life again
So let me go
I want to be a hunter again
I want to see the world alone again
To take a chance on life again
So let me go
Let me leave
Let me go

In verse 1 of ‘Hunter’, Dido paints a very clear picture of herself (or a female protagonist) returning home to a disapproving partner. To make things easier for me in this analysis, I’m going to assume it’s Dido herself. She describes the partner still “up when I get home”, meaning she’s been out late, or later than her partner would have liked, and probably somewhere he did not want her to go. Him coming along with her that night doesn’t seem to have been an option.

For women who had strict fathers, there’s a whiff of that late-night paternal disapproval we can relate to. A father watching the clock angrily when we came in far later than curfew, the shuffling of his feet on his way to bed, the clear displeasure in his body language that we had shirked the house rules but nevertheless, at least our dads were comforted with the fact that we got home safe. Even if you discount the conveyance of this paternal feeling, Dido wants you to know that the man is in a position of power over her. She compares him to “a king, up there on your throne” and begs him to “let her go” and let her “be a hunter again” in the chorus. She believes she is a pawn to be “own”[ed], the lesser queen ‘half’ to him in the relationship.

Dido’s name comes from an ancient Greek queen. I started thinking about the Greek mythology I read in 6th grade and Artemis, sister to Apollo and the famed goddess of the hunt. (There is a separate rabbit hole you can go down if you want to read about the legend of her chastity.) Using the huntress child of Zeus as a analogy here is perfect, as Dido has lost the ability to ‘hunt’, to live life the way she wants to, presumably the way she was living before she entered into the relationship. We don’t have any further background on what their relationship is like. Are they married? Is he abusive? How long have they been unhappy together? We just don’t know. All we are afforded is this late night snapshot where she has returned to their home, he isn’t happy with her, and she says she wants her freedom and to make choices for herself again.

The lyrics in the bridge, though short, are tantalizing in their imagery. Dido sings, “for the crown you’ve placed upon my head feels too heavy now”, repeating the idea of their relationship being of king and subservient queen. It feels to me that he chose her, that he had more say in their relationship than she did. He put the figurative crown on her head and anointed her his queen. I’m imagining a couple who got together when they were stupidly young, the guy took the reins, and they both had this idea that they would have an idyllic life together.

The problem with that thinking is that life is and becomes messy. Life is also rarely linear. We go through experiences and get changed by them. Even for couples who go through a shared experience, each partner comes out the other side changed and in different ways. What worked for you and passed for love when you were a teenager isn’t the same for when you are in your twenties, trying to make your way in the world, nor is it the same after having children and reaching mid-life or later. She’s “thinking” about how things could be different if she was free. She doesn’t “know what to say to you, but I’ll smile anyhow”, pretending to him that they are fine, all the while plotting her escape.

The minor key of the song envelopes the song in a sinister fog. When I first heard ‘Hunter’, I was sure that Dido had been mistreated and was desperately trying to leave her abusive partner. Having been through a few relationships and breakups since, I have changed my position, thinking this is less likely and that the song is simply about how two people who once loved each other inevitably grew apart. She has changed so much that she feels she has to seek her independence and find herself again. She needs this.

I find when I sing this song, which was true before and still now, I am extremely sympathetic to Dido’s character. I can tap into the emotion in the outro, of how badly she wants to leave, how she has reached a breaking point in this relationship. I also want to point out where in the chorus the notes physically soar and just at the right place lyrically: “to take a chance on life again”. If you want to be even more specific, this happens right on the words “a chance”. Incredible. If you don’t believe me, scroll to 48 seconds in the stream below and prepare to be amazed. Overall, a beautifully delivered, powerful song.