I think to properly understand PYMOM, you need to understand the whole of side B preceeding it, so here goes. Electric Blue opens with the lyrics "summer's gone and so are you," not to mention the "Every single night I dream about you" bit. It's clearly a song born out of separation on a societal level, but also at a personal level. Win has described this album as a love story, which, as I interpret it, consists of a boy lost in the Everything Now culture and a slightly more disillusioned girl who struggles with depression. At this point the boy and the girl are physically separated. As the song builds and develops, a struggle develops between the song's competing themes - ie being lost in the obscurity of the world of social media (a thousand girls who look like me) and Everything Now, where one feels insignificant against a bleak and expansive sea, but having this pervasive sense of missing the other person in a way which inspires profound meaning. Electric Blue isn't just a symbolic color, it's an emotional state of depression, meaninglessness, and sedation - but the girl's love is breaking through and overwhelming the "electric blue(s)." This is displayed beautifully in the outro - which alternates between the lyrics “cover my eyes, electric blue” and “every single night I dream about you,” which land in direct opposition to one another. The former refers to the pervasive influence of social media, which we can't seem to escape even when we close our eyes, diminishing us and our friends into little more than a profile picture. The latter, on the other hand, shows a real relationship, one that can only exist between two full people. This part shows just how internally conflicted the singer is and how powerful the competing forces of love against Everything Now are inside her. And Good God Damn it’s beautiful. Good God Damn picks up right after this, and though the characters are still separated physically, they’re both directly involved in this song. Both characters echo the earlier images of themselves built in Creature Comfort and Signs of Life, as both struggle with separation. Lyrically, there’s not a whole lot to go on here, but it’s clear that the verse pays tribute to the similar line in Creature Comfort. For the boy, we don’t get as clear of a connection, but I think this is the beginning/continuation/development of a drinking problem that we hear about across the record (e.g. Chemistry, GGD, and WDDL), hence getting “messed up.” While he gets messed up drinking, she retreats into the bathtub and contemplates suicide – and this matches the personalities we’ve seen before. Both are faced with this existential challenge of love in the age of Everything Now – like we would expect, the girl retreats into contemplative solitude, while the boy becomes further embedded in consumerism, trying to literally buy happiness (alcohol, in this case). They’re both running away from love, because neither of them know how to deal with something so profound and meaningful – it’s just not what we’re used to in the culture of Everything Now. But damn it, love transcends. Just like in Electric Blue, the characters are caught between existential meaningless and the terrifying weight of love. Only, this time there’s movement – despite the bleakness of consumerism, love gives them an overwhelming feeling of meaning, translated into spirituality. “Maybe there’s a good God, damn – if he made you.” i.e. How can everything be meaningless when I feel this overwhelming sense of purpose because of you. The sense of wonder that their love provides parallels the traditional religious experience such that it completely transforms the world view of each lover. That’s powerful. Also: “if he made you” seems to be the first line since Peter Pan that could actually be dialogue between the two characters - Everything Now separated them, but love has brought them back together again, setting us up for the main attraction, PYMOM.
This song is as much a surrender to love as it is a rebellion from Everything Now. There seems to be a strong connection to Rebellion (Lies) from Funeral, with the characters fighting sedatives to escape the superficial world of consumerism. In fact, there’s even a very strong musical similarity, and I don’t think this is unintentional. In this song, the two lovers are singing to each other, and the lyrics constitute a dialogue, shown literally by the combination of Win and Regine’s vocals. I think the title “Put Your Money on Me” has two very specific meanings, and each one applies specifically to one character, which is the beauty of the songwriting. The boy was unreliable and flaky in the past, constituting his contribution to their previous separation. He is telling her, "now I’m a safe bet and I’ll always be here.” He’s telling her that he’ll never let her go, “even when it’s easy” – which is a confusing lyric. You would expect him to say that he’ll be there when it’s hard, but that’s not the problem with him. For him, he can’t bear to be without her now – in fact, he can “barely breathe” without her. Things are hard now and he has no intention of leaving. The real concern is that he’ll leave when things are easy – in the midst of the overabundance, and choice offered by Everything Now. He struggles giving up the empty shell of Everything Now for the fruits of something meaningful, and has an impulse to be free – but he’s realized that what he gains in freedom, he loses in love. But won’t let her go anyway. This hits me hard in all the rights places – the feels are real, man. Meanwhile the girl is saying the same words, but with different meaning. She’s always been reliable, even though she struggles with depression. She doesn't need to say that he can feel safe putting his money on her, it’s a plea – a beautiful, passionate plea. While the boy talks about money abstractly, in the context of a betting idiom, she asks him to take all the money, all the lust for wealth and superficial possessions and invest it into their relationship. She sees money as corrupting and offers him a way to give it up. Hence, “baby you can give all the money away.” She’s the one asking him to “tuck [her] into bed and wake [he] when [she’s] dead” which is a poignant contrast to Creature Comfort in which she struggles with death, being unsure. Here she accepts it as an eventuality, but doesn’t wish for it immediately. Her love leaves her with no fear of death, which reminds me of that Hemingway quote: “We fear death because we feel that we haven't loved well enough or loved at all.” The verses are a bit more difficult to differentiate between speakers, other than a few lines here and there, so I’ll mostly avoid doing so. I think the image of a race is fitting, but perhaps not quite so fitting as a rebellion. The lovers must fight through ether, ambien, and chloroform, all sedatives. These represent the complacency and depression of living in the empty, meaningless culture of Everything Now (see: Electric Blue and Chemistry). Love is a constant battle and a constant choice against the corrupting distractions of the world, which begin to influence you as soon as you are born. But in the end, there’s really no competition, and the race between corporations and real love and emotion is “over before it starts.” i.e. Love can break through even the deepest depressions and challenge the most alluring aspects of consumerism. Win becomes much more comfortable with religious imagery in these later songs. In effect, PYMOM isn’t so different from Peter Pan, but it feels more mature. The contrast here is clear and deliberate – while Peter Pan is a light-hearted fantasy of love in a Disney film (talk about consumerism), PYMOM shows the true depth and struggles of love by invoking religious imagery, making it gloriously out of place in the Everything Now culture. Both allude to outside material (dare I say mythology?) but PYMOM reaches for something raw, emotional, and in a sense truer than a Disney movie. This seems to be a deeper comparison, paralleling the illusion of a superficial and meaningless world, providing a mere distraction and escape from pain (Creature Comfort), but obscuring reality, which is as painful as it is meaningful and beautiful. Peter Pan wants nothing to ever change because of fear of the unknown, but PYMOM accepts the unknown as the price of a meaningful existence (love). Broken presents and promises represent the empty and temporary nature of material things, but their love/friendship extends beyond death, which seems to have ultimate meaning. His skin sheds as he begins to (figuratively) give up consumerism (money) and he finds a different but truer person underneath. And even if the Silicon Valley, the epitome of the Everything Now culture, just melts away, they have each other as an isolating force against the rest of the world. How depressing would it be if felt you couldn’t survive without Apple and Google, because they give you they only meaning that you know. If you haven’t you should definitely read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by a Czech author, Milan Kundera, because the number of influences I can find in this song are staggering. This song is a damn masterpiece and its brilliance is in its subtlety. Hopefully I was able to shed some light on it and this post wasn't too insanely long.
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I think to properly understand PYMOM, you need to understand the whole of side B preceeding it, so here goes. Electric Blue opens with the lyrics "summer's gone and so are you," not to mention the "Every single night I dream about you" bit. It's clearly a song born out of separation on a societal level, but also at a personal level. Win has described this album as a love story, which, as I interpret it, consists of a boy lost in the Everything Now culture and a slightly more disillusioned girl who struggles with depression. At this point the boy and the girl are physically separated. As the song builds and develops, a struggle develops between the song's competing themes - ie being lost in the obscurity of the world of social media (a thousand girls who look like me) and Everything Now, where one feels insignificant against a bleak and expansive sea, but having this pervasive sense of missing the other person in a way which inspires profound meaning. Electric Blue isn't just a symbolic color, it's an emotional state of depression, meaninglessness, and sedation - but the girl's love is breaking through and overwhelming the "electric blue(s)." This is displayed beautifully in the outro - which alternates between the lyrics “cover my eyes, electric blue” and “every single night I dream about you,” which land in direct opposition to one another. The former refers to the pervasive influence of social media, which we can't seem to escape even when we close our eyes, diminishing us and our friends into little more than a profile picture. The latter, on the other hand, shows a real relationship, one that can only exist between two full people. This part shows just how internally conflicted the singer is and how powerful the competing forces of love against Everything Now are inside her. And Good God Damn it’s beautiful. Good God Damn picks up right after this, and though the characters are still separated physically, they’re both directly involved in this song. Both characters echo the earlier images of themselves built in Creature Comfort and Signs of Life, as both struggle with separation. Lyrically, there’s not a whole lot to go on here, but it’s clear that the verse pays tribute to the similar line in Creature Comfort. For the boy, we don’t get as clear of a connection, but I think this is the beginning/continuation/development of a drinking problem that we hear about across the record (e.g. Chemistry, GGD, and WDDL), hence getting “messed up.” While he gets messed up drinking, she retreats into the bathtub and contemplates suicide – and this matches the personalities we’ve seen before. Both are faced with this existential challenge of love in the age of Everything Now – like we would expect, the girl retreats into contemplative solitude, while the boy becomes further embedded in consumerism, trying to literally buy happiness (alcohol, in this case). They’re both running away from love, because neither of them know how to deal with something so profound and meaningful – it’s just not what we’re used to in the culture of Everything Now. But damn it, love transcends. Just like in Electric Blue, the characters are caught between existential meaningless and the terrifying weight of love. Only, this time there’s movement – despite the bleakness of consumerism, love gives them an overwhelming feeling of meaning, translated into spirituality. “Maybe there’s a good God, damn – if he made you.” i.e. How can everything be meaningless when I feel this overwhelming sense of purpose because of you. The sense of wonder that their love provides parallels the traditional religious experience such that it completely transforms the world view of each lover. That’s powerful. Also: “if he made you” seems to be the first line since Peter Pan that could actually be dialogue between the two characters - Everything Now separated them, but love has brought them back together again, setting us up for the main attraction, PYMOM.
This song is as much a surrender to love as it is a rebellion from Everything Now. There seems to be a strong connection to Rebellion (Lies) from Funeral, with the characters fighting sedatives to escape the superficial world of consumerism. In fact, there’s even a very strong musical similarity, and I don’t think this is unintentional. In this song, the two lovers are singing to each other, and the lyrics constitute a dialogue, shown literally by the combination of Win and Regine’s vocals. I think the title “Put Your Money on Me” has two very specific meanings, and each one applies specifically to one character, which is the beauty of the songwriting. The boy was unreliable and flaky in the past, constituting his contribution to their previous separation. He is telling her, "now I’m a safe bet and I’ll always be here.” He’s telling her that he’ll never let her go, “even when it’s easy” – which is a confusing lyric. You would expect him to say that he’ll be there when it’s hard, but that’s not the problem with him. For him, he can’t bear to be without her now – in fact, he can “barely breathe” without her. Things are hard now and he has no intention of leaving. The real concern is that he’ll leave when things are easy – in the midst of the overabundance, and choice offered by Everything Now. He struggles giving up the empty shell of Everything Now for the fruits of something meaningful, and has an impulse to be free – but he’s realized that what he gains in freedom, he loses in love. But won’t let her go anyway. This hits me hard in all the rights places – the feels are real, man. Meanwhile the girl is saying the same words, but with different meaning. She’s always been reliable, even though she struggles with depression. She doesn't need to say that he can feel safe putting his money on her, it’s a plea – a beautiful, passionate plea. While the boy talks about money abstractly, in the context of a betting idiom, she asks him to take all the money, all the lust for wealth and superficial possessions and invest it into their relationship. She sees money as corrupting and offers him a way to give it up. Hence, “baby you can give all the money away.” She’s the one asking him to “tuck [her] into bed and wake [he] when [she’s] dead” which is a poignant contrast to Creature Comfort in which she struggles with death, being unsure. Here she accepts it as an eventuality, but doesn’t wish for it immediately. Her love leaves her with no fear of death, which reminds me of that Hemingway quote: “We fear death because we feel that we haven't loved well enough or loved at all.” The verses are a bit more difficult to differentiate between speakers, other than a few lines here and there, so I’ll mostly avoid doing so. I think the image of a race is fitting, but perhaps not quite so fitting as a rebellion. The lovers must fight through ether, ambien, and chloroform, all sedatives. These represent the complacency and depression of living in the empty, meaningless culture of Everything Now (see: Electric Blue and Chemistry). Love is a constant battle and a constant choice against the corrupting distractions of the world, which begin to influence you as soon as you are born. But in the end, there’s really no competition, and the race between corporations and real love and emotion is “over before it starts.” i.e. Love can break through even the deepest depressions and challenge the most alluring aspects of consumerism. Win becomes much more comfortable with religious imagery in these later songs. In effect, PYMOM isn’t so different from Peter Pan, but it feels more mature. The contrast here is clear and deliberate – while Peter Pan is a light-hearted fantasy of love in a Disney film (talk about consumerism), PYMOM shows the true depth and struggles of love by invoking religious imagery, making it gloriously out of place in the Everything Now culture. Both allude to outside material (dare I say mythology?) but PYMOM reaches for something raw, emotional, and in a sense truer than a Disney movie. This seems to be a deeper comparison, paralleling the illusion of a superficial and meaningless world, providing a mere distraction and escape from pain (Creature Comfort), but obscuring reality, which is as painful as it is meaningful and beautiful. Peter Pan wants nothing to ever change because of fear of the unknown, but PYMOM accepts the unknown as the price of a meaningful existence (love). Broken presents and promises represent the empty and temporary nature of material things, but their love/friendship extends beyond death, which seems to have ultimate meaning. His skin sheds as he begins to (figuratively) give up consumerism (money) and he finds a different but truer person underneath. And even if the Silicon Valley, the epitome of the Everything Now culture, just melts away, they have each other as an isolating force against the rest of the world. How depressing would it be if felt you couldn’t survive without Apple and Google, because they give you they only meaning that you know. If you haven’t you should definitely read The Unbearable Lightness of Being, by a Czech author, Milan Kundera, because the number of influences I can find in this song are staggering. This song is a damn masterpiece and its brilliance is in its subtlety. Hopefully I was able to shed some light on it and this post wasn't too insanely long.