Fuzzy

Yesterday I got home from work, picked up my guitar and for some unknown reason, (apart from the fact that I was feeling a bit low) played THIS song. Aside from the name I’ve never pondered over what the words actually meant until after I finished playing it this time. I must say I’m a bit relieved that there are no definite interpretations given here, so allow me to offer you mine…. I’d say this song is about the disillusionment of growing up, a lament for days no more. The word ‘Fuzzy ‘is rather childish and whimsical - now could ‘Fuzzy’ perhaps be Grant ‘s imaginary friend he had growing up as a kid, someone he would confide in, someone who would always assure him that things would be alright (Ok, admittedly I never knew that he said ‘NOW I’M Fuzzy’ I always thought he was saying ‘OH Fuzzy’, although these lyrics could be wrong, and hey I’m only giving you MY interpretation)? Cries of ‘I’ve been lied to’ are so heartfelt and can only mean that things are not okay…. The opening line ‘Bring me home to this house of many days’ already suggests a longing to return to years of your childhood – in most cases the house you grow up in as a kid feels very permanent, the first 10 years of your life seems like a lifetime, as opposed to the 10 years between 20 and 30 which feels inexplicably shorter. A few lines down ‘You know I love it more and more than before I ran away’ reflects how we as humans find it easier to only appreciate things when they are gone. When we are kids we wish these days away as quickly as possible, we can’t wait to become independent, when we eventually earn these rights we see the world for what it really is, a rather scary place, and then we realise there’s no turning back, so we tend to romanticise these days through nostalgia (which interestingly enough is a common symptom of a quarter-life-crisis, another important theme of this song worth mentioning). … The Second verse alludes to the notion of the soul mate. We believe this person is out there somewhere and destiny will somehow (‘All and all the world is SMALL enough…’) always bring us together. Although this verse is truely beautiful it is not as optimistic as it appears, because don’t forget Grant will once again utter the line ‘I’ve been lied to’… The final verse still has me stumped but if I must, I’d say its more grounded in reality then the first two. In fact it’s probably the most optimistic of the 3. In the last two lines; ‘We hunger for a bit of faith to replace the fear’ suggests a desire to stop feeling so cynical and the part about ‘water like a dead bouquet’ could be self-mockery admitting to being over sentimental…….. I hope this all made sense, I guess its more of a reflection of how I’m feeling as opposed to what Grant was feeling when he wrote it, but that’s the beauty of music
P.S. I never had an imaginary friend;)

When this album was released in 1993, is was just finishing an this amazing novel from John Irving : "The cider house rules" . (Spoiler alert !) The main character, Homer Wells grew up in an orphanage , where used to live a young boy named "Fuzzy" . When he finally came back to this place years later, he has the opportunity to replace his mentor, by pretending to be Fuzzy who died many years before .

I'm pretty convinced that the author found some inspiration here, Irving was a successful active novelist in the 90's and the mood of this book match the music perfectly too !

Actually I hoped somebody helped me in understanding something about this song , but I could not find any comment about it and no comment about Grant Lee Buffalo too, very very strange , their high quality music deserves more attention.

I would say it's about a love lost, that when love is lost the fear of the pain that love can cause makes people overlook the possiblility of finding a new loves. "Fuzzy" would be an indication of un focusedness or it could be that people don't get to see the true him/her because he/she's recovering from the loss of the relationship and is trying to remember what he/she did before. Grant Lee Buffalo is one of those bands that will totally rip your head open fill it full of great music and clamp it back on.

Yeah... unfortunately not a lot of comments. I was surprised too.

"It was a pretty exciting time. You're taken off guard as a young band. You don't know what all of it means to find your record on the shelf and your band name on a marquee. You're met with all sorts of new characters in your cast of relations, and a good many of them are there for the opportunity that your art/product represents. The naive parts of me thought, wow, there sure are a lot of new nice people around! Some of them have proved to be genuine, but it was a learning lesson. There was so much pressure to make it great. Then there was the question in the back of your head: Will this be the last as well as the first? In some ways, that accounts for the urgency on the album, and it also accounts for whatever's misdirected on it. But I think it's a pretty solid record." Source: EliotWilder.com, 2001

"The lyrics are full of sexual imagery. I've been told by more than one woman that Fuzzy happens to be the record of choice when it comes to finding a nice background to, well, you know... These songs have to entertain me and bear repetition. Talking about it is the worst thing of all - I could probably point out things in there that would destroy me, and obviously I won't, but the less vulnerable I choose to make myself, the harder it is to write. To dig it all up, to scrape it like a surgeon leaves me feeling like a gold mine that's been stripped and is just a hole." Source: Let's Go To Work, Q Magazine, ca. 1994

I think the songs about a bad break up and the process leading up to it where he has to sleep on the 'floor hard'. The the break up happens and causes 'hurtful words and broken plates' to be exchanged between the couple. To deal with it he gets 'Fuzzy' e.g drunk, although he still believes that they were both to blame for the break up as he lied and was lied to.

A couple who seem to be struggling to keep their love strong, but that's not an easy task at all, especially because he's not as trustable as he would like to be.