Lyric Lab #1: taking lessons from English Teacher
"to look between the wheels I'm scared of being under"
“You can lead water to the daffodils
But you can't make them drink”
I love how Lily Fontaine messed with this idiom. I even tried to look up if there’s a special word for the process of that (there’s not, it’s just ‘changing an idiom’). When listening to her lyrics, it feels like she approaches words like rearranging puzzle pieces, deliciously slotting them into the wrong places in order to paint an abstract, yet more truthful picture of what’s really happening. A horse’s head on a stalk, her face on a paving slab; the world happening inside her head is a symbolic and beautiful reflection of the one laid out in front of her.
An ‘idiom’ is when a group of words form a meaning beyond what each individual word can offer, such as, ‘over the moon’, or, ‘beating around the bush’. Most of us know what these mean; happy as a cow flying over a moon, or, not being direct and beating that damn bush. Here, Lily has taken the idiom of ‘leading a horse to water’ and painted so perfectly a picture of leading water itself to daffodils, two subversions of one idea (the horse becomes a group of daffodils, the water is the object now moving and being ‘led’).
I love it. The original is ‘you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink’. We always form personal connections to songs, and when you can plant yourself in them (no pun intended), that’s when a piece of music usually becomes important to us. I’ve always been obsessed with daffodils. They represent softness, romance, a vivid childhood memory, a vibrant field, the return of spring. I’ve also always loved the line, ‘you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink’. That idiom feels like the punchline of my life. To hear that punchline with a change, some sort of twist, offers me a new perspective on my life. It ‘gives me permission to think about my life differently’ (something in songwriting I’ll talk more about in the future).
And when we start abstracting things in our lyrics, things about our own psyche are often revealed. Unlike horses, daffodils can’t choose to drink. Why lead water to daffodils? Will water not simply find its own way? It’s fun to speculate over the meaning of the imaginary world Lily has created for herself and then shared with the real world. But we’ll never know. It’s personal, private. And that’s part of the fun of poring over artists’ lyrics, right?
If you’re a lyricist, you’ll know the process of words falling out is more like an unconscious waterfall, not a well-thought out English essay. I didn’t hear English Teacher’s song, ‘Nearly Daffodils’ and go ‘ooo, what a brilliant subversion of an idiom’. I formed a personal connection to it first, and then wanted to process the song through writing about it, so I went to google to try and even remember the word idiom, while having blurry flashbacks to some english lessons of my own from school.
The thing with lyrics is, if you’re honest and blunt, then they can produce the most amazing stories people can pore over, like with Phoebe Bridgers. I keep coming back to Phoebe Bridgers because I both am a huge fan, and am fascinated by her rise to worldwide stardom. She wrote quite direct lines like, “you were in a band when I was born” (who is that about?) and “I hate your mum” which invite us into her world, where we can then relate to her particular experiences. Who is wearing a mask on Halloween? Who are the skinhead nazi neighbours? Who is holding picket fence signs? These are not events from our lives, but we can watch them through her music. But that technique is a double-edged sword. Particular lyrics also expose really intimate parts of your personal life, as well as others’ lives, too.
As Florence Welch wrote in her book, ‘Useless Magic’;
Monster
so you start to take pieces of your own life
and somewhat selfishly
other people’s lives
and feed them to the song
at what cost
this wondrous creature
that becomes more precious to you
than the people that you took from
how awful
to make human sacrifices
a late night conversation
a private thought
all placed upon the altar
but you have to satisfy the monster
the monster has loved you for longer
than anyone else.
Sometimes it feels like we’re cannibalising our own lives to make money, and the juicier the story, the more money we could make. Sometimes, it even feels like we’re creating stories out of our relationships with people so we can have a life to write about, instead of making our relationships functional. And songwriting can feel like a monster in this way. I relate hard to what Florence Welch has written; songwriting can feel very self-exploitative at times, sacrificing precious moments to the altar of the world so people can spectate and speculate.
I think that’s why I like a lot of British post-punk with fun word-play, and in particular, Lily’s lyrics. You can’t speculate over leading water to daffodils, you can only see yourself in it. Universal, natural imagery means you can insert yourself easier into the story, as well as re-shape the meaning of the song into whatever meaning you need at the time, whereas particular imagery makes us relate to an artist and see ourselves in them. There’s no right or wrong, but it’s an important choice for an artist to make. Do you want to reflect people’s worlds back at them? Do you want to reflect the entire world back? Do you want to invite people into your own world? How much of yourself are you comfortable revealing?
And class is also important here; how much of yourself can you reveal, are you safe to reveal? Are you in danger if you reveal too much? I do believe class underpins why certain artists bare all, while other artists are naturally inclined to be more reserved and abstract. In this way, I love natural imagery and abstract lyrics, because sometimes, we need to hide, but still need to speak.
Do you want to be an omnipresent voice with a bird’s eye view, or an icon people can see the outline of very clearly (sometimes too clearly?)
I like English Teacher. They feel like The Smiths we never quite got, but still yearn for today.
So…today’s lyric lab lesson? Try changing an idiom.
Here’s my attempt:
fish, fish, fish for me,
(dying)
there are plenty more ways to drown in the pond,
black like tar at the bottom,
the jester on a pack of cards,
the king in a leotard,
and of all trades?
jack calling the kettle black,
sky calling for the sea back
I call the kettle gold,
sewing together the cracks