"Doe Eyes" is a song that I consider unlike any other that I'd written at the time. Lyrically, most of the songs on DWAEPS were built on wordy verses and the occasionally simplistic hook here and there, not unlike a series of poems with some acoustic guitar tracks behind them. I was more focused on telling a complete story with every track. With "Doe Eyes," I just sort of let go of the reigns and started writing the most natural sounding "radio" rock chorus that I could. Thankfully, I liked where it was going and just ran with it.
Explicitly, the verses mirror each other in that they both convey the internal conflict of realizing that the "right" thing to do in a relationship might also be considered the "worst," or most difficult, thing to do. And honestly, what's harder then letting go?
As a symbol, "doe eyes" are meant to represent the deceptively beautiful and innocent. This idea is reinforced in the bridge/ outro: "The secrets that we hide / Behind my back and your eyes" In the context of the song, doe eyes are symbolic of one's inability to "see" through his/her own idealized conceptions of a person they might love or otherwise have feelings for. The motif of sight is huge in this sense, as we are often more than willing to "see only what we want to see" in the people we love. The great tragedy here is that we almost always try and romanticize the people over whom we hurt the most.
OTHER NOTES:
I came up with the title while Snapchatting a girl. She always made these huge "doe eyes" in her selfies. The actual term "doe eyes" was just something that I'd heard in TV shows and other music.
The phrase "cashed out" in the opening verse was inspired by a trip I took to San Diego with a bunch of my best friends after high school. We went to a casino and the machines would print out these "cash out tickets" to claim however much money you had made/ lost. I vividly remember looking at my cash out ticket that had read "$0.02" and realizing it was time to stop. In the song, "cashed out" is a reference to understanding when it's time to stop something - or in this case, to let go.
The outro line "From your skin to his bones" is a reference to the chorus in the song "Slow" from DWAEPS: "Why don't, why don't you know? / Without your skin I'm just bones"
"Doe Eyes" is a song that I consider unlike any other that I'd written at the time. Lyrically, most of the songs on DWAEPS were built on wordy verses and the occasionally simplistic hook here and there, not unlike a series of poems with some acoustic guitar tracks behind them. I was more focused on telling a complete story with every track. With "Doe Eyes," I just sort of let go of the reigns and started writing the most natural sounding "radio" rock chorus that I could. Thankfully, I liked where it was going and just ran with it.
Explicitly, the verses mirror each other in that they both convey the internal conflict of realizing that the "right" thing to do in a relationship might also be considered the "worst," or most difficult, thing to do. And honestly, what's harder then letting go?
As a symbol, "doe eyes" are meant to represent the deceptively beautiful and innocent. This idea is reinforced in the bridge/ outro: "The secrets that we hide / Behind my back and your eyes" In the context of the song, doe eyes are symbolic of one's inability to "see" through his/her own idealized conceptions of a person they might love or otherwise have feelings for. The motif of sight is huge in this sense, as we are often more than willing to "see only what we want to see" in the people we love. The great tragedy here is that we almost always try and romanticize the people over whom we hurt the most.
OTHER NOTES: