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What They Say About You |
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BRETT ANDERSONS LYRICS
The main reasons of Brett Andersons success
in the British youth culture during the 90s lie in the centrality of the
aesthetic and sexual question in Suede production.
Through the textual analysis of his lyrics, we will attempt to unravel the
complex imagery of the leader of the band, author of the lyrics of any song of
Suede except Elephant Man(Head Music, 1999, written by Neil Codling).
The themes deal with a distorted relationship with reality. The atmosphere in
Suede songs is never sunny or light-hearted, but topics as drug, death,
perversion, city violence and sex are central in their production. The setting
is day-to-day, ordinary: it plays a fundamental role in Andersons poetry,
alternating enclosed space (bedroom, kitchen, bungalows, elevators) and wide
open space (street, city, London, Europe, the continents up to uncommon setting
as the sky or the sea). The dimension linked to the enclosed space, which
sometimes shrinks providing sensations close to claustrophobia, suggests a more
intimate state of the author. In an enclosed space ones unknown sides, hidden
sides closely connected to the beings sickness, become manifest. In fact,
inside houses one is free to live his own perversion, or one can hide out from
the rest of the world to rediscover a better relation with the things that
surround him. The open space represents the place where the previous private
perversion join the outer world and becomes provocation, exhibitionism,
voyeurism; on the other hand the open space is also the ethereal, the reach for
less human, metaphysical dimensions. The sky and the sea (that sometimes merge
together and combine), for instance, represent the external world: the meeting
of souls, the wholeness of the individual and as a consequence, the resurfacing
of the androgynous archetype.
And its in this internal-external contrast in Anderson that we can find the
premises of his androgyny, and its means to emerge.
Andersons image (his clothes, his look and his gestures) codifies a youth language full of references to the previous decades and in particular to the 70s of Bowie, and to the 80s of Morrissey, drawing a sort of linguistic and artistic continuity, adapted to the commercial demands during the 90s. One of these commercial demands is the video clip: a short film in order to promote the track released as a single for the television schedule of the musical channels. In this field, Suede were among those artists in the last decade to put the visual means to good use and interpret the role of sharp split with musical industry of the period. The clip for Animal Nitrate, single which topped the charts, for instance, shows a man and a woman almost naked (they only wear a mask and leopard skin underwear) filmed during an erotic act. The video was immediately found unsuitable for minors and banned from the Saturday morning broadcast video programme, Chart Show. It shows the group performing inside a council block flat: after a quick, manic shot through a concrete balcony the camera switches through a door into a darkened, fantastically decorated room (). Brett performs his special, oft-mentioned and ridiculed, ritual of banging the microphone on his hip while dancing. When they performed live at the Brit Awards in front of millions of people (as the only band who did not win any nominations), one could hear the sound of the microphone when it beat his hips, while his tiny womens top gradually slid off. The performance was later described as glam terrorism(Geyrhalter T).
The video starts and ends outside a building where there are
ordinary people who engaged no particular attention, while inside the same
suburban building bodies start to move to the beat of suede music, and the
setting becomes the place where the ambiguous and perverted characters take part
in strange erotic games. Even the colors, concrete grey outside, very bright
inside, suggest a more vital impulse as one gets distant from the straight
stereotype.
The lyrics of the song is about a homosexual relationship brutally interrupted
where the protagonist tries to fill up the gap the partner left with drugs. The
title of the song refers the use of popper or amyl nitrate, which is a light
drug very popular in the gay background that gives a very short but intense
thrill. The violent character is described as an animal, and in the video clip a
dog tore a pig-faced puppet. In the lyrics theres also a reference to the age
of consent, which is 21 for homosexuals in Great Britain.
Like his dad, you know that hes had
Animal nitrate in mind
And in your council home, he jumped on your bones
Now youre taking it time after time
Oh it turns you on, on
Now he has gone
Oh what turns you on, on
Now your animals gone
Well he said hed show you his bed
And the delights of the chemical smile
So in your broken home he broke all your bones
Now youre taking it time after time
What does it take to turn you on, on
Now he has gone?
Now youre over 21?
Now your animals gone?
animal, he was animal, an animal. ( Anderson B., Animal Nitrate, in Suede,
Nude Records, 1993.)
In Andersons performance, facing the stage, from the very beginning, has always been a very spontaneous act. He often plays with his microphone as if it were a phallic symbol (during Animal Nitrate it is a horsetail), or like an appendix of his own body, representing a provocation against his contemporaries:
Suede seemed to be determined right from the start to pose as queer, perverse and on the edge as possible. Bretts feminine voice that tends to go high and sound almost like a womans, his lyrics that employ he instead of she when singing about his lover, and his androgynous appearance are a radical departure from the overtly masculine look and music of trendy. ( Geyrhalter T ).
Suede singularity lies in the kind of sexuality expressed by Anderson and from the rest of the band on record, video and, in particular during the live performance.
I dont premeditate what I do onstage, its just a pure expression of myself. It happens to be sexual and it happens to get interpreted either way. Its not intended to be homosexual or heterosexual, just sexual. ( Brett Anderson, cit. in Smith R ).
From their first single sexual co-ordinates have been clearly brought out. The line Do you believe in love there?, in the video clip for The Drowners, was tattooed on Bernard Butlers naked back: this opened a great debate in the musical circuit and helped promoting the band through the media.
Wont someone give a gun?
Oh, well its for my brother
He writes the line wrote down my spine
Oh, do you believe in love there?
So slow down, slow down, youre taking me over
And so we drown
Sir we drown, stop taking me over.
Wont someone give me some fun?
(As the skin flies all around us)
We kiss in his room to a popular tune
Oh real drowners
So slow down, slow down, youre taking me over
And so we drown, Sir we drown,
Stop taking me over! (The Drowners).
Another debate through the media was the most popular one called The Great Sex Debate, it dealt with the relationship between pop music and sex. Many popular British artists participated at this special issue, among them there was Brett Anderson who was also on the cover and was voted as one of the brightest hopes of British Music in almost any readers poll. In this article Brett Anderson claimed I see myself as a bisexual man whos never had a homosexual experience. Thats the way I approach my songwriting. (cit. in Smith, R.), which turned to be one of his most popular quote. Anderson underlined the importance of not declaring ones own sexuality not to limit the interpretation of the lyrics.
I really dont think you have to declare your sexuality absolutely. Morrissey never has his songs can be homoerotic, or about friends or just about love. And hes all the more interesting for that. (Brett Anderson, cit. in ibidem).
Being whole means, according to Andersons words, being man and woman at the same time fused in one and only body beyond the sexual activity. Its highest expression lies in the artistic perception of reality, so complex and unstable that only who has certain characteristics can reach. Ambiguity progressively turns to be a formula of success: It is more subversive to suggest and flirt with the sexually ambiguous without declaring a fixed sexual identity(Brett Anderson, cit. in ibidem).
The sexuality you express is not limited to the things youve already experienced. I mean, if youre a virgin, does that make you asexual? Well, no, it doesnt. The only validation I need for what I do is that sometimes I feel like a woman.() I mean that I know I have certain traits and sometimes they come out. () Thats just the way I am, thats the way I write the songs. And, also, Im not always speaking for myself. I can be speaking for other people.() Most music seem to treat sex as something straightforward, whereas in reality its transient and in lots of cases, completely deviant. ( Brett Anderson, cit. in Smith R).
He and She blur, and according to Anderson himself at the beginning of his career he preferred the male personal pronoun in any case:
I say rather He than She in virtually all our songs. But, on the other hand, if I said She any debate would be closed, and it would just seem to be my point of view and couldnt be anyone elses. (Ibidem)
In 1999 he was accused to repeat the word She in his lyrics, he replied he just loved the sound of the word and did not care about its meaning. In Andersons idea of man we can both find masculine and feminine elements as well: feeling real is a consequence of feeling like a woman, and the wholeness of human being is the wholeness of a god, Buddha.
I feel real now walking like a woman
And talking like a stone age man
I feel real now talking like Buddha and doing it again
I get kick I rip it up kick it uptake it like a teenage tough
I feel real now talking like sugar and shaking that stuff
I cant get enough
I feel schizo ever so psycho kicking at an old tin can
I feel real now like a man like a woman like a woman like a man
I make dead space feel like a headcase take it like a teenage tough
And feel real now watching those wheels and shaking that stuff I cant get
enough
The possibility to live a sexuality in a fluid way was anticipated in Moving, a 1993 track which appeared in their first record. In Moving the man is considered close to animals, like before in Animal Nitrate and further in Dog Man Star in songs like We Are the Pigs.
Shame on me well I had the beast you see
And if you can take it I can take him home with me,
Shame on her, shes a lovely little number
And when we go lassoing you get lassoed, all of you
If you can take it, I can take it
And were moving, so moving,
So we are a boy, we are a girl
So moving so moving
Shame on the girl, shes got a big black dog in her
And while tough kids sing about tough kids she just skins the world()
The man-animal condition analogy produces a sharp contrast when in parallel the author devotionally cites Hollywood stars in Heroine, The Wild Ones and Daddys Speeding (respectively Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, and James Dean). These are the stages of the soul, a process that brings men from the animal phase to the human phase and then to the divine phase (Dog Man Star), an upward development, towards the sky, the same sky which often is the protagonist of Suede most intimate songs, a sky which tends to blur and merge with the sea or stains the snow one can see from the top of the city.
Because were young, because were gone,
Well take the tides electric mind, oh yeah, oh yeah,
Were so young, and so gone, lets chase the dragon
Because were young, because were gone,
Well scare the skies with tigers eyes, oh yeah, oh yeah
Were so young, and so gone, lets chase the dragon
from our home high in the city where the skyline stained the snow
I fell for servant who kept me on the boil
Were so young and so gone lets chase the dragon from our home! (So Young).
The human experience expands, the boundaries which tradition established on whats to be considered male or female disappear to leave room for a creature which tends to perfection, perfection that can be reached only by going away from an ordinary human condition: suicide. And the couple suicide, diving from the top of a skyscraper is the main theme of Stay Together, a song which was never included in any of their records and that soon became a rarity for the fans.
Come to my house tonight
We can be together in the nuclear sky
And we will dance in the poison rain
And we can stay a while in heaven today
Lets stay together
Lets stay, these days are ours
Lets die together?
Two hearts under the skyscrapers
Theres a time bomb in the high rise
Theres a blue suburban dream
Will I see you in paradise
Or have you come to catch me?
Come to my arms tonight
Just you and me together under electric light
Come to my arms Im lost
Just you and me together in the year of the horse
Single file in the nuclear night
And we could feel a little closer
As we tumble through the sky
The lovers become an only individual in the very moment they
are tumbling, when they are parting from the earth and at the same time getting
closer to the skies. The double, the alter ego, lies in a body which is
different from ours but that is deeply tied to us. In the video clip of this
song, in fact, two womanly faced people dressed manly, tie their own hands with
a rope before tumbling out of a skyscraper, and any members of the band play
their instruments tied to a second person that manoeuvres him. The dive
mentioned in the song reminds the dive of the androgynous. Elmire Zolla, in
fact, wrote that in many Hindu populations the androgynous were the ones who
dived and resurfaced from the waters. They were the elected and were androgynous
because the sea had the power to dissolve the name and appearance of the diver
and make him redeemed.(Cfr. Zolla E).
The element of water is recurrent in the poetic imagery of Brett Anderson, and
it is the protagonist of By The Sea, written only by Anderson and included in
the third 1996 record Coming Up. In this track two characters He and She are
described almost in parallel, and they become We in the end of the song, when
they will be bleeding and breeding, celebrating their union.
He can walk out anytime, anytime he wants to walk out, thats fine,
he can walk out anytime, across the sand, into the sea, into the brine,
and when I start my new life I wont touch the round,
Im gonna try hard this time not to touch the round.
So we sold the car and quit the job
And shook some hands and wiped the make up right off
And we said our good-bye to the bank
Left Seven Sisters for a room in a seaside shack,
and when I start my new life I wont touch the round,
Im gonna try hard this time not to touch the round
Its by the sea well breed
Into the sea well bleed.
The androgynous being meets the will or need of a radical change of ones existence. A change which can be reached by the sacrifice of bleeding that can be recollected to the one of ancient Mediterranean populations:
To this androgyny one could recall the sacrifice of a girl and a boy who were thrown into the sea with Tesedeo and Crisa in the Triade. The ritual had origin from the myth of Tene, thrown through the streams with his sister. I think that he was no-one but the androgynous Egyptian god Ten, whose sister Neit had his name reversed and had a phallus. (Zolla, E).
The dive or the suspension from the ground represent therefore a means to part from the ordinary and earthy life to reach dimensions far from those space and time coordinates which are characteristic of the existence fixedness and sketchiness. As already said, the air has the power to dissolve categories such as the sexual ones, in particular if the dive is joined with the singing:
Dont take your life cos your bicycle wont fly
You may be going to heaven tonight
I wouldnt give a shit if your bicycles in bits
I think Im going to heaven on it
I see her by the window and I see theres a day
Well walk out to the traffic, pour the poison away
So Ill sing to the birds here at my side
And Ill sing to the birds who will save my life (To the Birds).
Andersons sexual identity, like the divers one, is here
therefore represented in an ambivalent or ambigous way.
Anderson is so woman and man, and this is what constitutes one of the main
traits of his lyrical research. Since Moving on, culminating in Introducing
the band, which is Andersons (and therefore Suedes) imagery and poetic
symbology manifesto, this theme has been represented many times. This last one
is the opening track on Dog Man Star, maybe their best work, and deals with a
universe of elements the record is to deepen during its course, and which sum up
Suede creative path (Brian Eno liked this very track and remixed it for a second
version of Suede The Wild Ones 1994 single). I want the style of a woman,
the kiss of a man is maybe the central line of this song, and has a particular
relevance in this analysis . The style of a woman, held in Andersons poses and
gestures before a camera combines with the kiss of a man, the choice of his own
sexuality, to produce a new ideal of persona beyond the categories of gender
that have in our times (in the post-modernity) lost any meaning. The being, man
and woman, is the protagonist of his own fate, is god to himself and this leads
him to cross phases of a Pascal-like path from the animal to the star (a star of
the sky or a Hollywood star) also thanks to drugs (suck on a pill) from which
originate an all world cultures and peoples unifying will or force.
Androgyny is in Anderson a new interpretation of the human complexity, love and
attraction towards the other.
Dog Man Star took a suck on a pill
And stabbed a cerebellum with a curious quill
Europe, America, Winterland
Introducing the band
Chic thug stuttured through a stereo dream
A fifty knuckle shuffle heavy metal machine
The tears of suburbia drowned the land
Introducing the band
So steal me a savage, subservient son
Get him shacked up, bloodied up and sucking on a gun
I want the style of a woman, the kiss of a man
Introducing the band
And as the sci-fi lullaby starts to build
See them whipping all the women, cracked governments killed
Oh let the century die to violent hands
Introducing the band