| Twenty One Pilots – Pet Cheetah Lyrics | 6 years ago |
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I really enjoy Twenty Pilots music. I've always been impressed by Tyler's ability to write compelling songs which give us a glimpse of his struggles with the creative process of being a musician and artist. And Pet Cheetah is another example. The infectious baseline is one of the subjects of the song. " I'll take this beat I should delete to exercise " and as part of that exercise the author seems to make a primitive, meaningless association of that beat to the phrase "Pet Cheetah". You can hear in the closing of the song, how the beat and the phrase seem to be mentally inextricable even though the syllabic meter is at times incongruent. The phrase "pet cheetah" is unshakable. Confronted with writers block (along with the "pressure" to produce something) the author chooses "a beat I should delete to exercise", meaning a songwriting exercise which he has no expectation of ultimately publishing. But he has an internal struggle with the need to produce something, and the song shifts diametrically in an effort to combat the pressure. "No, I move slow I want to stop time I'll sit here 'til I find the problem" The author is challenging that pressure to produce. "Why should I brute force my way into producing art when there's clearly something troubling me?" "The problem" as it turns out is that this expectation to quickly produce, while not the author's original invention, is a self-nurtured (I've raised him, bathed him, named him, trained him) expectation. I've got a pet cheetah down in my basement I've raised him, and bathed him And named him Jason Statham I've trained him to make me these beats Now my pet cheetah's quicker in the studio than on his feet Naming the Pet Cheetah Jason Statham emphasizes the strength and toughness of this expectation, and the difficulty the author has in quieting the internal conflict. "quicker in the studio than on his feet" The author has so internalized this demand to produce that it has overgrown the demands of anyone or anything external to his own studio. In other words, he puts more pressure on himself than do his fans, or his record label, or anyone else who might be a source of this kind of pressure. "I'ma get mine and get going" This stanza reflects the author taking the demand to produce to it's logical conclusion. The demand will allow him to extract fame and fortune from his music, but at what cost? "I'll stay in my room" refers to neglecting a flourishing life in favor of remaining isolated and churning out music. "the vultures perch" The vultures are the foreshadowing of death, and the next creatures in line to feed on the demise of an artist. "Get behind me" is a Biblical reference (see Mark 8 and Matthew 16), juxtaposing the will of men (for comfort and ease) and the will of God (for sacrificial love). "This clique means so much to this dude" "It could make him afraid of his music" "And be scared to death he could lose it" The ironic twist is that the mechanism for achieving artistic success (staying in the studio with his pet cheetah) could ultimately leave him bound on one hand by his fear of making music (fearing the high demands on his soul and life) and on the other hand his fear of losing his music altogether (which onstensibly feeds his soul and life). What began as "the pet" threatens to become "the beast" which could finally devour the artist. And that is the surface plot line. But there are other threads to follow. - What began as an "earworm" baseline, a primitive verbal association to a beat ("Pet Cheetah") was given real sense and profound meaning by the author. - What began as a songwriting exercise for him ("the beat I should delete"), became a compelling work, demonstrably worthy of making the album cut. And it's in those two transformations that the author sows the seeds of the Pet Cheetah's demise. The author takes us into his intimate internal struggle with making music, and instead of bravado, he reveals his weakness. It is not difficult to imagine a shallow, chart-busting single coming out that original baseline if it had been produced for a money-making single; but because of the author's unflagging committment to an honest, accurate self-portrait, his music will not take on the feel of mass-produced, mass-appeal money makers. Its popularity will be a simple reflection of the listeners' ability to resonate with the author's joys and struggles, like enduring art should. |
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