Sweet Misery Blues

Yeah subject is ugly but I don't think, and I don't think that's what you meant neither, that the lyrics are so valuable at the first level. Obviously multi leveled with lines like ''If you're living in the past''. Maybe I'm wrong but sometimes I feel that this creepy rapist guy is those sweet misery blues mixed with this still sexually frustrated teenage misfit you mentionned feeling again a urge for a girl and just all the ugliness he has inside him. Just like Never Tell again wakes up inside us those shut feelings we never tell and could not only understood as a bully thing. Just cool how all these songs can be juxtaposed to ourselves and our own torments.

This is one of the only two songs on the Hallowed Ground (along with 'I know its true but I'm sorry to say') that doesn't mentıon God or water. I agree with both of the other comments, but I do want to say that the narrator here may not be the creepy stalker a lıteral reading suggests.

May not be a person at all - might be a mental disorder (such as bipolar) or a feeling that no one enjoys, but we can't escape and secretly want. The sweet misery blues itself.

All that 'courtshıp' stuff (Can I buy you some jewelry or something?') would be those unavoıdable thoughts that put one further into the negative mid state described. The 'dress' and 'jewelry' become parts of one's self image. These feelings can be seductive, especially in bipolar cases: 'I'll put on my charm, tingle your spıne . . .'. but are ultımately destructive. An elevator is not just an enclosed space where one can be cornered, but also a reference to the effects of drugs or of a manic state. 'Goıng out' and 'sleeping with' (or something) are references to forming an attachment to a mental state. Far-fetched, yes. But those lines about trains moving too fast and living in the past do make sense if they're about mania, drug use, and depressed introspection. And the blues, lıke the narrator, is something the target just can't get rid of.

Or I'm reading way too much in, and its just a song about a creepy stalker.

I read a Roger Ebert review one time, I think it was of American Psycho and he praised Christian Bale for his lack of "survival instinct;" essentially, the point was most leading actors would have tried to make the character cool out of instinct to preserve their image. That's the same way I feel about the album Hallowed Ground.

On the self-titled album, Gano plays the sexually frustrated teenage misfit throughout, but on the followup he tries on a number of extremely un-flattering personas, a pretty daring move in my mind. From the child-murdering hillbilly of "Country Death Song" and the wannabe-gangster schoolyard bully of "Never Tell" to the bizarre juxtaposition of solemn Christian hymn with awkwardly homosexual urges and racist sentiments in "Black Girls" and the creepy rapist guy in this song, this album is full of odd people you definitely wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley. The unsympathetic speakers of this album set it apart from most other pop music and are a large part of what make it so compelling. It's almost like a backwoods "Goodfellas" or "Midnight Cowboy," a beautiful piece of art whose subject happens to be ugly, damaged people.