| Aimee Mann – You Could Have Been a Roosevelt Lyrics | 3 months ago |
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This song seems to be about two things: the falsehood of limitless potential in young girls (especially upper middle-class American girls) are led to believe in before they hit adulthood, and the fact that most "progressives", whether they want to admit it or not, typically end up collapsing back into the comforts of social and fiscal conservatism because conservatism recognizes the fact that the world is flawed and that utopia is an impossible concept. A lot of upper-class girls in college had high ideals and big dreams, especially when the feminist movement was at its peak, but adulthood isn't clean-cut like that. The album's overall theme of mental illness and the struggle of existing fits into this, not only how the pressure of fitting into the status quo often breaks people who simply can't live up to these expectations, but also how nobody is truly unique or special like we're led to believe in our youths. Most of us start out a "Roosevelt" with "dresses pressed" and "faces as fresh as daffodils", but we're really Kennedys: peaking in our youth, then marred by trauma, hardened by death and age and loss. This is even truer if applied to the wives of FDR and JFK versus the Presidents themselves. The album's relation to the memoir "Girl, Interrupted" - about a girl with Borderline Personality Disorder - also connects well with this song. The song actually reflects a lot of the tenets of a cluster B disorder including identity diffusion, grandiose delusions of things like intelligence and importance in the world, trouble fitting in with social norms, more tolerance for chaos than conformity, black-and-white thinking, a strong ego and a childlike mentality leading to dissatisfaction in regards to the flaws and imperfections that come with adulthood, often linked to some sort of early trauma, such as abuse or neglect. Borderline also leads many who suffer with the condition to self-sabotage relations with others, devaluing and discarding anyone who criticizes them, having intense but short-lived and often inappropriate relationships with others, an inability to secure gainful long-term employment, and co-dependency on other people even if the relationship is toxic. The author of "Girl, Interrupted" had a father who was an advisor to JFK (Carl Kaysen), and Susanna herself lived through the JFK Assassination, so she was well-versed in the Kennedy history. Kaysen has often come across as inanely self-pitying, pretentious and contrary in any memoir she writes about herself, as critics note, but this is part of her disorder and she doesn't try to hide or mask the reality of this. Susanna is notable entirely for her memoirs - she lives a somewhat private life and her sole form of employment post-publication seems to be her books - but "Girl, Interrupted" reveals a rebel, a moody teen trapped in an adult age and body who wants to be more than what she is, and who feels that the conventions of New England's postwar society are drowning her. She "could have been a Roosevelt". Instead she spends her formative years of adolescence in a mental hospital, has an inappropriate affair with an older married man, embarrasses her family, knows she wants to write for a living but doesn't take the conventional route of an Ivy League university common for her social class, and she's mostly known for something generally considered upsetting and unpleasant, even if it did help destigmatize a mental illness. Aimee Mann's incredible ability to write a song in the 2020s that actually sounds vintage to the 1960s era, with no digital giveaways or loud bass or limited instrumental variance, really sets it up well. I could see some listeners interpreting the song these days and in our current political climate as illustrating the inevitable division between liberals and conservatives, or being about a social misfit, but Susanna Kaysen wasn't really any of this. She was well-liked by peers and came from an upstanding family, she eventually longs to go back into the world in spite of what problems it has rather than rebel against it or try to bend it to her own whims and values, and she concedes that the approach that modern mental healthcare takes is often limiting and restricts the ability for patients to actually get better, develop introspection or recognize when they themselves are the one causing the problem. I guess it could be said that this song effectively and poetically reflects how painful all of this is, and how most of us start out in adolescence "sailing" in without realizing how easy it is to crash and burn, especially if we fail to acknowledge the other vessels around us. Youth is fleeting, and we all often want to have lives we wished could happen based upon what can simply never be, wanting others to see potential in us that we've lost on our own. |
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| Hoyt Axton – Della and the Dealer Lyrics | 1 year ago |
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A lot of us as little kids thought that this catchy, pithy folk song was literally about a gang of friends on a road trip, including a cat and a dog (any of us with pets especially had an affection for it). The lyrics actually reveal a rather violent tale about a coke dealer (and jealous, mean-spirited addict), his lady (Della), whom we can infer the Dealer doesn't treat very kindly, a close friend or possibly brother named Jake/"Jake the Dog" who carries a gun on him but has scruples, and "a Cat named Kalamazoo" - the most enigmatic figure in this story. This ragtag group of most likely petty criminals leave the city to go out west and make a lot of money, probably through the dealer's drug trade, but the dealer is a mean addict who snorts his drugs through "a century note" (hundred-dollar bill, so he's probably a show-off and bad with money also). They leave in a pickup truck and end up in Tuscon, where at the bar they stop in, Della becomes enamoured with Randy Boone, a local guitar player there. Interestingly, the narrator notes that Boone is actually a friend of his. When the Dealer gets jealous of Della's affection for Boone and threatens to kill Boone, this is where the story gets more interesting. Clearly none of the characters like the unnamed Dealer, as not only is he never given a name in the song but it's also implied that Jake shoots the Dealer to stop him from stabbing Boone with his knife, after which Jake, Della, Boone and "Kalamazoo" flee the scene and continue on the run together (although the song can also be interpreted to suggest that Boone stayed behind, as it's never explicitly stated that he goes with them). The names in the song are pretty much generic: "Randy Boone" is the only character given a surname though, whereas the other characters go by nicknames, pseudonyms or singular names, as criminals on the road are wont to do. Jake, short for "Jacob", is described as a "dog", Della is just Della, not much else known about her, and "Kalamazoo", a gibberish word, is described as a "cat", a "cool cat" who drinks a shot of rye, keeps to himself as a mere observer through the story, and "never [says] a mumblin' word!". The terms "dog" and "cat" are both animal terms and common domestic pets in the West, but in terms of slang, a "dog" is usually a gruff, weathered but loyal person and a "cat" in AAVE is a friend, a companion, a local fellow. Calling someone "dog" used to be considered insulting, but the term has also developed the meaning of "friendship, camaraderie, or solidarity" in recent American slang. Why Hoyt Axton decided to refer to his characters like this is a mystery to me. I've heard some listeners infer that the Dealer was abusive to Della, Jake and "Kalamazoo" and that the death of him was a chance for this trio to escape together on the Dealer's remaining money to ACTUALLY "make some dreams come true" without any sort of crime being involved, that this is a redemption song about our characters starting over. Jake killed the Dealer to defend Boone, an honourable act rather than murder since Boone was in the act of attempting to stab Boone to death. "Kalamazoo" had a "shot of rye" and was an innocent bystander, and Della never hurt anyone either, she was just the Dealer's woman. These characters are all set free by the Dealer's death - Axton's choice to never give the Dealer a real name and to only describe him by his criminal activity alone is quite telling. |
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