No Concern of Yours

I was just watching mad men, season one. I think this song could loosely refer to Don Drapers life. He wanted people to not pry into his life, he was a huge fan of old fashioneds, and his father "ruined both his sons" with religious upbringing and manipulation. Also in the first one or two episodes he is seen putting on a brand new "clean white shirt" after spending the night at his mistresses. In an episode I recently watched his coworker says something about his "name on the building". Lots of things about the song seem almost directly reminiscent of mad men.

For me, there are several related subjects in the interpretation I have of the song.

The first one to me seems to criticise the media industry's interest in gossip and nosing into musicians' private lives over what the music actually has to say. It's a blunt message, but a clear and powerful one - "We're not here to talk about me/we're here to get things done." It's still quite a traditional mindset in some families for a parent to frown upon their daughter or son's decision to try and make a career as a working musician, hence probably the lyric about daddy not ruining both his sons - which can serve to motivate musicians such as the Punch Brothers to work damn hard at their craft!

In that scheme of things, they see gossip and allegations about personal life as superfluous and unnecessary.

The second one seems to suggest perhaps a more personal slant - that the singer has been the subject of untrue gossip and is justifiably annoyed about it. Particularly with lyrics like "It's hard to hold your head up when it's in your hands/ To wash off last night's trouble in a clean white shirt." It suggests that whilst certain temptations may be there (hence the clean white shirt analogy - it's tricky to keep them looking that way for long, as anyone who has had to try knows!), it's followed up with "If anyone can do it, I can" which suggests basically that there are no skeletons in the closet to hide, therefore being upfront about that is pretty easy. That doesn't mean that it's an easy thing to feel the need to constantly maintain though - the head-in-hands aspect suggests it's a frustrating battle.

There's defiance there too in the last verse. To me, it's kind of like saying "I'll more likely consider criticism from my betters, not my equals". The whole name on the building/take me out for lunch thing suggests that they have been wined and dined by sleazy gutter press journalists paying for their lunch, with the expectation that a scoop will be handed to them in return that feeds their myth. The depiction of them being too drunk to give proper credence to the true story, which will only be offered once, disempowers them and what they're trying to do.