Cruel

I don't know that I feel this has to do with societal pressures on women (but then again, I'm not female, so Annie Clark may have more to say about that) so much as it has to do with the anxiety of being seen as the means to an end and the nature of objectification that is essential in treating another person as something sub-human–that is, cruelty.

Cruelty, at its core, is defined as indifference to or pleasure in the suffering of another person. "They could take or leave you / So they took you / And they left you" is an exceptionally demonstrative verse–the person at the core of the lyrical narrative is being treated by others more so as a set of options or preferences than as a living, breathing individual with emotions and desires. Not only that, they are being callously "taken" and "left" … like a bit of used up crayon that someone has discarded after they wore it down to a wax nub. The narrative voice is defined by what "… everybody wants from [her]"; taken and left–she's denied intrinsic value and expected to derive worth solely from what she's provides others, from what utility she serves to those around her.

I'd say we don't need to pigeonhole the gender of the narrative voice–the song's about our society's casual dehumanization/objectification of its constituents and the resulting turmoil and distress this causes to the individual. Brilliant music and lyrics always … god, Annie has a knack for formulating a phrase, lyrically and musically.

Absolutely beautiful. I think its about the standards society sets for woman. This is evident in her music video as well. Society wants woman to be the perfect house wife or whatever, but she can't conform to this standard but understands how much easier life would be if she just gave in.

This feels like it's a song about celebrity. We take what we want from them but the minute they fuck up and do something we don't like we discard them. More so with female celebrities. Or maybe it's about the standards that people set for us and we just never want what they want us to want or what they want us to do we never do right then people just give up and move on.

I feel like this song is the cruelty a mother/wife has to face, being the perfect woman to her youngings, and being a perfect housewife and how unappreciative children and husbands may be.

I think it's "they were the zephyr blowing past you, glowing fiercely so they can't see you"

yea these lyrics are not so correct... the zephyr part is " they were the zephyr blowing past you, going fast (or fastly) so they can't see you. This song is actually more obvious in terms of what it means than her other songs... her video is definetly about a woman, but the other characters do seem to feel the same way she does if you look at their expressions... I love Annie Clark, I already got a lyrics tattoed on me, she's a freakin poet... fantastic, an instant classic in my mind, I'll be forcing my kids and grandkids to listen to her records... even my great grandkid if I'm still around.

I feel like this song is the cruelty a mother/wife has to face, being the perfect woman to her youngings, and being a perfect housewife and how unappreciative children and husbands may be.

From analyzing the lyrics and consulting with the 2023 Farmers Almanac, I have come to the inevitable conclusion there is abundant proof that this song is about venereal diseases and the lack of affordable footwear in the Viet-Nam War. “Cruel”, second stanza, right before the chorus demands from the listener a careful introspection of the rhyme of the stilted 2nd and 3rd accents, resembling Irish limericks. The lilting rhymes fool the casual listener into believing this is about women’s bodies in the age of objectivism, but connoisseurs will immediately see the trap for what it is: a brief and clever ode to men’s and women’s shapely and desirable bodies when wearing black tight fitting activewear. I suspect black spandex. These were conspicuously absent in the jungles of the Vietnam war.