| Manchester Orchestra – Girl Harbor Lyrics | 8 years ago |
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This song is about two people in a marriage that are there for the wrong reasons. The speaker begins with a criticism of his wife; "cause you always talk so loud and you never notice" and claims that he doesn't "mind the sound" but one wonders why he made the observation in the first place if that is really true. He then proceeds to a much more serious criticism about the way she has lived her life and "rearranged the pieces" in it. This first stanza shows some deep seeded resentments the speaker feels while trying to ignore that they aren't there. The chorus line " I don't want to believe but I wanna believe you" hints that the speaker doesn't want acknowledge the reality of his feelings or their incompatibility, but his marriage is borne from sympathy and perhaps pity; "but I wanna believe you" or he wishes that they were compatible. When he says "I don't mean what I say, but I say why I mean to" the speaker tells us that his words of love towards his wife are not genuine, but he says them because he must in order to continue the relationship. The next stanza "so your last name is mine" tells us that the marriage was initiated as a "matchless shrine to prove" that their love could continue ( and the word matchless reiterates his resentment). Despite being married it hasn't changed the speaker's feelings-- it has not made them a right fit. I believe the second chorus "you waste so much time" is both a reproach to his wife and a reproach to himself for continuing to be in an unfit marriage-- wasting time that is. At this point in the song we see a turn in which the speaker's words can equally apply to him; he and his wife are merely "desperate friends" rather than true lovers. Their marriage consists of trying to "reconcile the bends" (bends as in the way they have had to bend for one another-- the potentially unnecessary and unhealthy sacrifices they've made for their marriage). The speaker also "writes off" his own faults and would rather not acknowledge them. Both he and his wife are "too insecure to admit" that they should end the marriage and try to find a better fit for both of them, but they're always "the last in line to move" that is they hesitate. The title of the song is "Girl Harbor" because a harbor is a place where ships idyll and watch other ships pass by. This is the position of the speaker-- unable to move on from his marriage or unable to take a risk by departing from it, and watches other girls pass by. |
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