Emily seems to often express a fairly depressed persona in her songs, along with a sentimental nature, a belief in her dreams. Hell, the album is called 'fantasies'..
Sick Muse contains the lines
'Watch out, cupid struck me with a sickness'.
'Everybody just wanna fall in love'.
She recognises that her idea of love is a bit of a fantasy. Here I think she is confounded by her inability to instigate and feed the relationship. Bear these lines from 'Twilight Galaxy' in mind;
'Did I ask you
For attention
When affection
Is what I need
Thinking sorrow
was perfection
I would wallow
Till you told me
There's no glitter in the gutter
There's no twilight galaxy'
Blindness is my end to the album (forget Stadium Love, it sucks and sounds like an afterthought to pad out the album. Along with countless other Emily lyrics, it describes her as the passionate hero in the moment of crisis. Her dramatic, passionate side. I think Collect Call shows us the flip side.
The lyrics here are a bit confusing in places but here goes.
If the fire is out - If the heat of the relationship is at an ebb
How you going to keep me warm?
(She can't keep herself warm. And maybe the passion is all she's any good at. Maybe she struggles to nurture emotional closeness in the everyday)
Supposing you let me
(I can't figure this out in relation to the lyrics before or after. I used to believe she sang 'left me').
With the door wide open, no-body can leave
(which at this point runs into...)
I know it's a lie, I want it to be true
(Is this a recognition of a perverted emotional dynamic? She acts passive and uncaring, leaving the door wide open for the SO to leave, but in her heart it's actually a plea for him not to... a way to be gratified by his staying)
The rest of the ride, is riding on you
(for the clearest statement of the theme, her passive stance)
Over goodbyes we'll buy some place
For wishing you could
(I'll come back to this)
Keep me closer I'm a lazy dancer.
When you move, I move with you
(she desires the closeness of a relationship built on more, but like a lazy dancer she can't lead, only follow him...also, move can mean to move emotionally, so maybe she is feeling numb to herself, and feels through the proxy of his emotions)
If somebodies got soul...
You gotta make them move.
(Soul is such a cop-out word in lyrics! It could mean almost anything. Let's say it means someone has deep feelings. This is not incompatible with being numb on a day to day basis. In fact we hear her talk about her perception of herself as deep and heartfelt through this album and the preceeding one, often with humour and irony. But is she talking about herself here? Or her SO? It's unclear, so this could be a recognition that seizing the moment, taking the initiative, provoking emotions in the other, is essential. Either she is begging her SO to do this, which would be pretty self-pitying, or she is asking herself to step up. The final possibility is that she is talking about being resigned to the possibility of one of them finding another lover... she'd understand if it was him? or is she saying, if it happened to me, I would have to act on it.... which would maybe explain her passive stance.. leaving the door open)
I know it's a lie, I want it to be true.
(now things are really getting ambiguous. She could be saying that she knows it's not on him to make up the ground. She could be saying the whole 'soul' thing is a front, a self-delusion. She could even be saying the whole relationship is the lie she wants to be true, that the fire is out and she's not feeling it anymore, that the dependence on passion reveals the lack of true closeness... she has a dream where the other person will make up for her lack of emotional intimacy, but she knows she is kidding herself)
Over goodbyes
(how fatalistic is that? Idoes she realise it's just a matter of time?)
we'll buy some place
For wishing you could keep me closer.......
(ahh... the act of saying goodbye may 'buy the space' for the dream to be reborn. at the moment where you look at the end of the relationship you start to feel what you would lose. The sense of loss is shared in that moment. Maybe this brings her the emotional connection she was looking for the whole time.)
For wishing you could
Keep me closer....
(and in that closeness, that moment of sentiment and drama, the relationship is reborn...her numbness is forgotten, she has even managed to expose her fragility... but the melancholic, self-pitying 'wish', the lie, is not addressed, but it's all she muster, and it will keep things going. And so, I believe, the song is about a pattern she knows will repeat, The passion of the dream, followed by the emptiness afterwards, followed by her emotional withdrawal... and so on)
I think collect call is a great title. It's where you instigate communication without having to pay the price.
Emily seems to often express a fairly depressed persona in her songs, along with a sentimental nature, a belief in her dreams. Hell, the album is called 'fantasies'..
Sick Muse contains the lines
'Watch out, cupid struck me with a sickness'. 'Everybody just wanna fall in love'.
She recognises that her idea of love is a bit of a fantasy. Here I think she is confounded by her inability to instigate and feed the relationship. Bear these lines from 'Twilight Galaxy' in mind;
'Did I ask you For attention When affection Is what I need
Thinking sorrow was perfection I would wallow
Till you told me There's no glitter in the gutter There's no twilight galaxy'
Blindness is my end to the album (forget Stadium Love, it sucks and sounds like an afterthought to pad out the album. Along with countless other Emily lyrics, it describes her as the passionate hero in the moment of crisis. Her dramatic, passionate side. I think Collect Call shows us the flip side.
The lyrics here are a bit confusing in places but here goes.
If the fire is out - If the heat of the relationship is at an ebb How you going to keep me warm? (She can't keep herself warm. And maybe the passion is all she's any good at. Maybe she struggles to nurture emotional closeness in the everyday)
Supposing you let me
(I can't figure this out in relation to the lyrics before or after. I used to believe she sang 'left me').
With the door wide open, no-body can leave
(which at this point runs into...)
I know it's a lie, I want it to be true
(Is this a recognition of a perverted emotional dynamic? She acts passive and uncaring, leaving the door wide open for the SO to leave, but in her heart it's actually a plea for him not to... a way to be gratified by his staying)
The rest of the ride, is riding on you
(for the clearest statement of the theme, her passive stance)
Over goodbyes we'll buy some place For wishing you could
(I'll come back to this)
Keep me closer I'm a lazy dancer. When you move, I move with you
(she desires the closeness of a relationship built on more, but like a lazy dancer she can't lead, only follow him...also, move can mean to move emotionally, so maybe she is feeling numb to herself, and feels through the proxy of his emotions)
If somebodies got soul... You gotta make them move.
(Soul is such a cop-out word in lyrics! It could mean almost anything. Let's say it means someone has deep feelings. This is not incompatible with being numb on a day to day basis. In fact we hear her talk about her perception of herself as deep and heartfelt through this album and the preceeding one, often with humour and irony. But is she talking about herself here? Or her SO? It's unclear, so this could be a recognition that seizing the moment, taking the initiative, provoking emotions in the other, is essential. Either she is begging her SO to do this, which would be pretty self-pitying, or she is asking herself to step up. The final possibility is that she is talking about being resigned to the possibility of one of them finding another lover... she'd understand if it was him? or is she saying, if it happened to me, I would have to act on it.... which would maybe explain her passive stance.. leaving the door open)
I know it's a lie, I want it to be true.
(now things are really getting ambiguous. She could be saying that she knows it's not on him to make up the ground. She could be saying the whole 'soul' thing is a front, a self-delusion. She could even be saying the whole relationship is the lie she wants to be true, that the fire is out and she's not feeling it anymore, that the dependence on passion reveals the lack of true closeness... she has a dream where the other person will make up for her lack of emotional intimacy, but she knows she is kidding herself)
Over goodbyes (how fatalistic is that? Idoes she realise it's just a matter of time?)
we'll buy some place
For wishing you could keep me closer.......
(ahh... the act of saying goodbye may 'buy the space' for the dream to be reborn. at the moment where you look at the end of the relationship you start to feel what you would lose. The sense of loss is shared in that moment. Maybe this brings her the emotional connection she was looking for the whole time.)
For wishing you could Keep me closer....
(and in that closeness, that moment of sentiment and drama, the relationship is reborn...her numbness is forgotten, she has even managed to expose her fragility... but the melancholic, self-pitying 'wish', the lie, is not addressed, but it's all she muster, and it will keep things going. And so, I believe, the song is about a pattern she knows will repeat, The passion of the dream, followed by the emptiness afterwards, followed by her emotional withdrawal... and so on)
I think collect call is a great title. It's where you instigate communication without having to pay the price.