“Death of a Clown” tells with devastating candor about the woes of loneliness and sorrow through it’s story of an alcoholic circus clown. It remains one of the most telling three minute format singles about seeing the world through the jaded lenses of substance abuse and depression.
“My makeup is dry and it crags on my chin”. It’s as if the speaker is putting up a front symbolized by makeup and his faults are beginning to show through his worn out, dry facade. At the same time, he won’t stop the act, as the makeup clags. It sticks, and he continues to live a lie as he drowns his “sorrows in whiskey and gin”. By turning to the bottle, he has chosen the path of escape and would rather cover up his sorrows by drowning them than make any effort to resolve them.
“The lion tamer’s whip” he says, “doesn’t crack anymore. The lion’s they won’t fight and the tigers won’t roar.” Everything expressed here is a contradiction, because nothing makes sense to the speaker anymore. The whip and the animals don’t perform their functions and are thus void of all purpose. More alarmingly, the speaker could be unreliable and merely claiming in his stupor that these things are awry if he no longer sees the purpose.
The chorus, interestingly, repeats the speakers sentiment of drinking himself to death in saying “Let’s all drink to the death of a clown.” By drinking to his death, his companions are in a way bringing about the speaker’s destruction by encouraging his demise. However, the speaker already seems unreliable, so this could merely be a drunken ideation and justification of death in being convinced that the world wants him gone anyway.
Lastly, the fortune teller of the circus is said to be “dead on the floor”. Upon saying that the fortune teller is dead the speaker states “nobody needs fortunes told anymore”. The cause and effect of this is very compelling in that the need for the fortune teller did not expire before he did. This suggests that the speaker thinks that fortunes being told was an obligatory but negative event, and furthermore that he doesn’t believe in any grander scheme. This serves to further perpetuate the meaninglessness of his reality. He knows that his current hell is all he’ll ever experience.
“Death of a Clown” tells with devastating candor about the woes of loneliness and sorrow through it’s story of an alcoholic circus clown. It remains one of the most telling three minute format singles about seeing the world through the jaded lenses of substance abuse and depression.
“My makeup is dry and it crags on my chin”. It’s as if the speaker is putting up a front symbolized by makeup and his faults are beginning to show through his worn out, dry facade. At the same time, he won’t stop the act, as the makeup clags. It sticks, and he continues to live a lie as he drowns his “sorrows in whiskey and gin”. By turning to the bottle, he has chosen the path of escape and would rather cover up his sorrows by drowning them than make any effort to resolve them.
“The lion tamer’s whip” he says, “doesn’t crack anymore. The lion’s they won’t fight and the tigers won’t roar.” Everything expressed here is a contradiction, because nothing makes sense to the speaker anymore. The whip and the animals don’t perform their functions and are thus void of all purpose. More alarmingly, the speaker could be unreliable and merely claiming in his stupor that these things are awry if he no longer sees the purpose.
The chorus, interestingly, repeats the speakers sentiment of drinking himself to death in saying “Let’s all drink to the death of a clown.” By drinking to his death, his companions are in a way bringing about the speaker’s destruction by encouraging his demise. However, the speaker already seems unreliable, so this could merely be a drunken ideation and justification of death in being convinced that the world wants him gone anyway.
Lastly, the fortune teller of the circus is said to be “dead on the floor”. Upon saying that the fortune teller is dead the speaker states “nobody needs fortunes told anymore”. The cause and effect of this is very compelling in that the need for the fortune teller did not expire before he did. This suggests that the speaker thinks that fortunes being told was an obligatory but negative event, and furthermore that he doesn’t believe in any grander scheme. This serves to further perpetuate the meaninglessness of his reality. He knows that his current hell is all he’ll ever experience.