This is my favorite Eels song from my favorite Eels album. Like the best lyrics, it reveals as much by what is left out as what's included. You don't need to know the true story of E.'s sister to grasp the theme, or the fragile beauty lurking within. The song is suburbia, plastic surfaces, childhood awkwardness and the seeds of madness. The real turning point for me is when he arrives at the lines, "you think I got it all going my way/ then why am I such a fucking mess?" That shatters the illusion of charmed youth, if only for a moment. Paranoia peeks out with the perceived bomb in the sky, while the scary clown connotes a hint of danger in the dreamlike parade of girlhood fantasy. For me, this song serves as kind of a thematic bookend with "Climbing Up to the Moon," the two songs representing the beginning and end of his sister's life, and neither one as forcefully blunt as "Elizabeth on the Bathroom Floor" or "Driving to the Funeral." The true power of "3 Speed" is not just in its brilliant simplicity, but the tender empathy with which E relates the tale. It's too late to help her... but wasn't it always too late? Was her story already written during those seemingly idyllic suburban days? Somehow you can hear both regret and acceptance simultaneously, a very hard thing to pull off... but E achieves it in this song.
This is my favorite Eels song from my favorite Eels album. Like the best lyrics, it reveals as much by what is left out as what's included. You don't need to know the true story of E.'s sister to grasp the theme, or the fragile beauty lurking within. The song is suburbia, plastic surfaces, childhood awkwardness and the seeds of madness. The real turning point for me is when he arrives at the lines, "you think I got it all going my way/ then why am I such a fucking mess?" That shatters the illusion of charmed youth, if only for a moment. Paranoia peeks out with the perceived bomb in the sky, while the scary clown connotes a hint of danger in the dreamlike parade of girlhood fantasy. For me, this song serves as kind of a thematic bookend with "Climbing Up to the Moon," the two songs representing the beginning and end of his sister's life, and neither one as forcefully blunt as "Elizabeth on the Bathroom Floor" or "Driving to the Funeral." The true power of "3 Speed" is not just in its brilliant simplicity, but the tender empathy with which E relates the tale. It's too late to help her... but wasn't it always too late? Was her story already written during those seemingly idyllic suburban days? Somehow you can hear both regret and acceptance simultaneously, a very hard thing to pull off... but E achieves it in this song.