Pictures of Me

I think the "completely wrong/totally wrong" is not only saying that the media's portrayals of him are inaccurate (the obvious interpretation), but also that he just hates seeing pictures of himself... he's fucked up and doesn't like all the attention on him when he's still so unfinished and vulnerable... Not just that the pictures are wrong but that HE'S all wrong and hates seeing it reflected back at him.

I think "everybody's dying just to get the disease" is saying it's weird for him to be so popular when his songs are all about horrible crippling depression... something people should never wish to know.

"Who'd like to see me down on my fucking knees" -- I think this means he knows the media would just love more ways to show how depressed he is, it's almost like they want him to get worse...

How fucked up is it that his whole fame was based on his being miserable, and that that kind of became "cool"? That's what I think this song is about... But he also gave a lot of people who were already depressed the comfort of knowing that they weren't alone. RIP Elliott.

i noticed that a lot of elliott smith songs are like words directed to a "you", which i think himself. it's like all of his songs are like angry letters to himself about different situations that have happened to him, and things he observed and thought about. that's what makes elliott's stuff so real, because they're simply just pieces of his life put on paper to explain an event or situation that has happened to him.

I guess I kind of interpret this song close to how Elliot did when he wrote it. It makes me think about how often times the traits i dislike most in others are often my own greatest faults.

”Pictures of Me”, maybe not one of my favourites, but obviously still very good. Once again I’d like to state that I don’t believe this song has to do anything with drugs or alcohol.

Once again, like in “Say Yes”, I’ll refer to an interview Elliott Smith did where he answered what “Pictures of Me” was about.

(Interviewer asks what “Pictures of Me” is about) Elliott Smith: “That song was supposed to be about someone seeing other people doing things they don’t like, and it disturbs them because if another person could do something wrong, then you gotta figure, you can too.”

“I'm not surprised and really, Why should I be? See nothing wrong See nothing wrong”

I myself interpreted in another way, of not wanting to bend for higher authorities in society, where I’d put the line. “Who’d like to see me down on, my fucking knees?” Where it as if he’s questioning why he should do it.

But if I go by Elliott Smith’s explanation, I think it simplified would mean that we usually scold at people for doing something we think is wrong, but we usually forgot to look at ourselves, therefore “Pictures of Me.”

Damn I thought the lyrics at the end were "Everyones dying just to get THROUGH disease" It had more meaning to me that way.

I'm kinda bummed out that I heard the lyrics wrong. Damn it.

sweet deity, please speak to me. today was the day that i realized that this song was about me. as stupid acting smart, it was easy to see everyone else screwing up. it gets to the point that you gotta turn off the inner monologue and take a look around- stop with the charade, and realize that the stupid front you put up in order to get through the day is adding pictures to the photo album of the world that are just totally wrong. those personal hells are every relationship i've been in, and every one of those guys loved to see me on my fucking knees. here i thought it was just for kicks, and now it is obvious that i am the victim of my own dirty tricks. i know that elliott had different images in mind when he wrote the lyrics, but holy hell i am certain that i feel what he was feeling- and thats what a song means

The song is about how the outcomes in our lives are often defined by the images created of us, and can imprison us in our own personal hells by participating in it. He eludes a lot to maybe going along with what's happening in real time, and finding out that it would trap him in his own self made tragedy. I think his intentions were being overshadowed by the attention he was getting, and the fact that he felt complicit in that dichotomy. I think he never intended to sell people depression, until that's what he was doing with his life.

Well, I had felt this way with some of my own pictures of the past. Not because I used to look ugly or stupid you know, but because of all the f*cked up the context, I was living in back then. So yeah, some pictures even from yourself aren't lovely or pretty even to look at.

So yeah, I think in some pictures people are like forced to smile when they are living in a pretty freaked-up context. You know like those Christmas pictures you are forced to take even when your own family is ruined morally, or when you had intrafamilial violence problems and stuff like that. Some people nowadays had a bunch of pics on their FB or Instagrams, and yeah some of them may reflect legitimate happiness, but some others are just to get validation from the rest, and that's so sad and some kind of pathetic and very generalized in many people.

This song makes me remember that exactly, I mean, how many can take a picture that is a total fake pose, You may live in hell and be forced to smile nevertheless...

And well, Elliott was totally abused by his mother fcker stepdad, Charlie Welch, that's a fact, any psychological sexual abuse test would affirm that now, with the overwhelming emotional evidence Elliot left. So imagine that! Elliott himself was forced many times to take pictures next to this mother-fcking monster his stepdad was. He was forced to smile for those familiar mandatory pictures, that actually hid a horrid abusive truth. So yeah for him looking at those pictures must be dreadfully painful, especially when he lived in Texas during the early 80s.

A hard-living childhood is something that marks you forever and sadly never leaves, you always carry that hell within you. So pictures are only a sad terrible memory, even if you may look "happy" in them.

So I only hope Charlie Welch and Elliot's own mother rot in hell! they were the real monsters in Elliott's life. Because Charlie abused him and his mother never act against that. F*ck them both.

not flirting with the "flicks," flirting with the flits, which is old slang for a homosexual man. I'm 95% sure Elliott was thinking about The Catcher in the Rye, as the word is used frequently in the book. Makes sense cause the song has some thematic similarities to the book. I might be wrong though.

[Edit: clarify my point]

no comments on this one? i love this song, when you first hear it its one of those that gets stuck in your head and you can't think straight until you listen to it again