Song Analysis: Dido's "Grafton Street"

While listening to Dido's "Grafton Street" for the hundredth time on my way to school this week, I got the, uh, brilliant idea to try my hand at a song analysis, reflection, interpretation, and review. A true songwriter, Dido's lips are closed when it comes to her songs - she's stated that she doesn't want to rob her listeners of the opportunity to interpret her songs. Also, I've mentioned her songs before, but I don't feel like I've done them justice. So she is the perfect person to interpret.

Dido's Safe Trip Home is one of my favourite albums of all time. I have never heard a collection of songs so poignant, moving, and well-crafted. The first thing that might strike you about it is the cover - which depicts, in freefall over the earth, an astronaut: a white speck among the boundless black. I feel like this image was perfect for the album (though the person in the image is allegedly suing her for it). In this song, many of Dido's songs draw details from everyday mundane life, and her lyrics often find her forgoing an ambitious life for the comfort and joy of home and hearth ("I might have been a poet / who walked upon the moon / a scientist who would tell the world / I discovered something new / [...] / but among your books / among your clothes / among the noise and thoughts / I've let it go.") The other theme that runs through her album is death of a loved one - specifically, her father's death. The cover is ambiguous. It suggests that the astronaut is leaving the planet and departing into the emptiness of space... yet, simultaneously, it also suggests that the astronaut is approaching the blue, glowing Earth, and that he is on his Safe Trip Home.

Anyway, that's enough about the cover. Let's get into the song! (note that I am really bad at recognizing instruments, so you'll have to bear with me if I make a mistake :( )

Here's a video of her song:


The song opens a soft, chime-like melody, which is quickly joined by the drums. The timpani repeating a subtle, low-pitched motif (B - D - B - D - E, though sometimes the notes switch up) which gives the song a tribal ambiance. Over the beat and this motif, Dido's voice glides and we hear a Celtic-influenced melody in the natural E minor scale. The song title, "Grafton Street", is in fact one of the main shopping streets of Dublin (Dido's father was Irish). The absence of a leading tone in the scale means that the melody does not generally have an obvious direction to resolve in. This helps to establish a subdued, elegaic mood.

The first two stanzas of the song have the same syntactical structure, as well as the same melody (with slight variations):

No more trips to Grafton Street,
No more going there,
To see you lying still while we all come and go.

No more watching sunsets, it seems
Like summer’s holding on.
And no more standing quietly at your window.

The third line evokes the image of a person (who we can infer, quite confidently, is her father) not being able to move from a bed. The speaker is reminiscing about the things she used to do with her father - having trips to Grafton Street, seeing the sunset together, watching him from his window. The rhyme between go and window is subtle but effective.

No more driving down your road
Wondering when you’ll be home.
And no more peace when they all leave and leave us two alone.

The initial downward arc of the melody changes in the 3rd stanza. Instead, the melody rises upwards. This change is accompanied by crescendoing strings in the background; both evoke a sense of swelling emotion. In the lyrics, Dido continues her use of the anaphora, starting her lines with "No more...". This suggests an insistent, grieving pattern of thought; it also underscores the swelling in the music. The image created by the last two lines feels haunting and real: the image of other people ("they") leaving Dido and her father alone so that they can share a heartfelt, father-to-daughter moment.

And time we always lose... is finally found here with you.
My love, I know we’re losing, but I will stand here by you.

These two lines form the chorus. The first line, I think, shows us that the speaker feels that any time spent with her father is infinitely worthwhile. The next line, "My love, I know we're losing, but I will stand here by you" has got to be one of the strongest declarations of loyalty and love that I've ever heard sung in music. These powerful lyrics and joined by vocal harmony, more powerful strings, and - softly, in the background - the meandering, wandering melody of a recorder.

No more calling friends from the car
saying “I don’t know when
I’ll be there but I’ll do my best to come.”

No more letting you warm my hands,
No more trying to take it in.
And no more saying goodbye for the last time again,
And no more saying goodbye for the last time again.

The verse's melody returns, accompanied by an insistent rhythmic figure in the double bass. The strings also feature in this section, creating smooth, swelling harmonies. In the lyrics, the use of the anaphora continues as the speaker reminisces about forgoing meetings with friends so that she could take care of her dad (the first three lines). She also tells us that she is unable to say goodbye again for the last time to her father - as he has already passed away. Yet, "goodbye for the last time again" is the only line in the song that she sings twice consecutively. The juxtaposition of this repetition with her inability to repeat this line to her father this intensifies the feeling of pain and loss in the song.

And time we always lose... is finally found here with you.
My love, I know we’re losing, but I will stand here by you.

The chorus returns, along with the vocal harmonies and the recorder. After this, an instrumental interlude follows, made up of an agitated, rhythmic woodwind melody. After several bars, the recorder joins the woodwinds, its high melody soars over the other instruments. The interlude reaches a cadence on the dominant (a minor chord, since we are in the natural minor scale).

No more trips to Grafton Street,
No more going there,
No more sitting up all night, waiting for any word.

Nothing’s left that’s safe here now,
Nothing will bring you home
Nothing can bring us the peace we had in Grafton Street.

The first line and the verse melody returns, punctuated by loud plucked notes on the strings. The absence of the drums evokes a feeling of sparseness. On the third line the drums return as she tells us about "sitting up all night, waiting for any word", which means perhaps she was not able to sleep at nighttime because she was waiting for the hospital's call.

On the last verse the anaphora changes. The beginnings of the phrases morph from "No more..." to the more absolute "Nothing...". "Nothing's left that's safe here now / Nothing can bring you home", the speaker says. The speaker now feels afraid and alone in the world; she knows that she is now powerless in providing her father comfort and love. The speaker concludes the vocal portion of the song with one last reminiscence of the trips she spent with her father on Grafton Street.

A long instrumental passage follows. At first, only strings and the drums can be heard, playing harmonies that reach lower and lower pitches. Then the recorder once again repeats its wandering melody, as the strings swell in response to it. Eventually, the drum fades. The strings and the recorder play together for a while; then the the strings die out one by one, leaving the recorder to play its final, haunting E.

One cannot help but think that had her father heard this wonderful and heartfelt tribute to him, he would've had the utmost pride in his daughter. This is without doubt one of the most poignant, poetic, and personal songs I have ever heard and I will carry its wisdom and sentiment with me when I grow up and inevitably experience some losses of my own.

Group-think

Living in a media-saturated world is just so exhausting. Honestly. Sometimes, when I read TheStar or The Globe and Mail, I am amazed at the amount of stupidity that exists. I remember coming across an article on the G&M about a new research study that came out that "discovered" that television was making kids more distracted. Why stupid studies such as these ones exist is beyond me. Then there are the exercise more/lose weight articles. Reading Men's Health depresses me because of all the "Get abs!" articles they recycle. Reading many women's magazines depresses me because of all the shallow advice they give... as well as all the make-up advertisements. The world is superficial enough.

And the relationship columns. Today someone asked a column writer on the the G&M whether or not they should consider having a threesome. They both wanted to try it, but they were probably just insecure. The column writer was like "Well, I can't control what you do it in the end, but just be careful, it might ruin your relationship". Or that was the gist of it, anyway.

You know what that means! Time for Timmy to go off on a tangent about sex for the millionth time on this blog! I don't really think a threesome that all parties want ruins a relationship. I think what it can do, if it goes wrong, is bring issues such as lack of trust, respect, and communication into attention. Because if respect and openness were deeply entrenched relationship in the first place, there's no reason why having a threesome would change that. It is not as if your life undergoes such a drastic change that it can be divided up into "before threesome" and "after threesome" portions. If only one person in the relationship wanted to try a threesome and were trying to persuade/manipulate the other person into going for it, that would be a different story. There is so much irrational sex-negativity in the media.

I did, though, see a comment that said, "Life is too short to let fear and insecurity get in the way of exploring your desires. Have fun tell us how it goes." So I guess there is some hope. But mostly, there's a lot of group-thinking going on in the comments and it makes me kind of sad because I feel like the media kind of enforces this conformist world. The media shapes the subjects we think and talk about, and frames the ways we think about them.

In contrast, the arts, in which free expression is encouraged, is not really noticed by a lot of people. There seems to a decline in the appreciation of literature (especially poetry) and music in favour of (often shallow) radio-ready pop music, which is worrying. I try to be open to different modes of expression, and different genres of literature and music; I wish that others would do the same.

Which is not to say that "art" does not have its problems. "Classical music" and "literature" and "art" can seem like ivory tower categories--only accessible and enjoyable to the people who are privileged (i.e. rich and snobby) enough to have learned about their nuances. I get that. But at the same time, it is important to have an open mind to them. and not judge it by its genre.

Anyway I enjoy many other "common" (or considered less "artful" the academic world) genres ranging from country music to electronic/dance to pop to Pokemon music and I can see their merits all the same. Not to sing my own praises, but the important thing is not to limit oneself by saying "I don't listen to anything other than pop", and to judge a piece of music not by its genre but by its technique (whether musical or rhetorical), innovation, intent, and emotional intensity.

Come on world, stop this closed-mindedness, stop this group-thinking! (Though you can keep having group sex if you want *ahem*)

Strip away the Tuxedo

I am enjoying History of Sexuality course and it is pretty laidback so far. The readings, while short, are pretty thought-provoking. Last week, we read a paper by Halperin that said that by treating "sexuality" as a part of our identities that have always existed, we are being historically inaccurate. As justification, he cited the sexual hierarchy of the Greeks. In ancient Athens, there were two classes of people: citizens (men) and non-citizens (women, children/youths, slaves). Sexual practices in Athens occured between a citizen and non-citizen, whether the non-citizen was a woman or a boy, and the citizen was always the penetrative one. There was no usage of the terms gay/straight/homosexual/heterosexual, nor did the Greeks find anything inherently different if a citizen preferred to have sex with boys instead of women - it was an accepted practice. Their sexual practices were simply a manifestation of the way Athenian politics were set up and were in no part constitutive of their identity. In our current society, it's the opposite: our sexual practices are seen to affect our politics and our identity.

Reading Halperin's paper did make me think. Why do we view sexuality as a core part of our identities? When I meet someone, I almost immediately tell them "I'm gay". Why is it so important that it is one of the first things I tell them?

For instance, I frequently feel very out of touch with the with the gay community. Maybe it's my introverted and ruminative nature, but I feel distant from others I've met who are very active in uniting the queer community and countering homophobia and prejudice. (That is not to say that I feel like their work is unimportant—of course not!)

Moreover, I don't think "I am gay" even fully describes my sexual desires and practices, nor does it fully define my idea of love or romance. In fact when I first discovered that I was gay, I didn't even use that word. I told my friend "I think I don't like girls". But maybe over time, I have chosen to take on the gay identity when it is necessary. After all, it would be very frustrating to have had to tell my parents "I partially identify as gay, though I think of myself as gay basically I want to make a political statement". Besides, saying "I'm gay" is basically the most energy-efficient way of telling people and that 1) I'm looking for a male partner and that 2) I like to subvert the norm.

But is being gay really an important part of my identity? In the past I've sometimes thought that coming out to myself was the defining moment in my life—that it made me see things that I was unable to see before, that I was finally "becoming my true self" somehow. But maybe it's not the gay identity that helped me to do this; maybe at that moment I simply realized the cultural constraints that were embedded inside me, and subsequently I resolved to subvert these society norms and that helped form my identity. After all, as an aspiring writer, I really want to create something new and challenge people's perceptions of different forms and ideas. So I think having my own way of thinking and doing things is more important to me than being gay and that in a way, I identify as gay because it helps identity of being contrary to the norm.

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Recently there have been a few things going on that just makes me feel not exactly depressed, but... a bit blue. It's the same feeling as the one I was feeling before; so many things are going on that I cannot change and have no control of. For instance, at the end of my sexuality classes, I start thinking about how there are so many other ways of viewing ourselves, but many of us are stuck in thinking with just one way. I really do wish that more people could view gender and sexuality as being more fluid, and perhaps as something that might not even be a fundamental part of us.

I sometimes think about all the guys on craigslist claiming that they're straight, yet seek a guy to fool around with... (there are MANY. If you don't believe me, go to the "men for men" section on Craigslist.) Somehow it hurts, to see them vehemently declaring that they are straight, to imagine them locking up their truest feelings in favour of living a "normal life". If only we could just totally strip away this notion of being "straight" or "gay".

I've been listening to LeAnn Rimes' CD, Family, lately. In one of the songs, she sings
"I will learn to let go of what I cannot change.
I will learn to forgive what I cannot change.
I will learn to love what I cannot change,
but I will change, I will change
whatever I, whatever I can."

And so I will learn to let go of what I can't change. I tell myself that when they—those guys—grow older, they will discover that they don't need to label themselves and don't need to conform to what they perceive the norm to be.

After all, when they stand at the altar in a tuxedo with hundreds of people looking up to them, maybe they'll feel that there's some discrepancy between what they're expected to live up to and what they can do. Maybe they will discover that they cannot keep hurting themselves and the people around them, and that something is missing from their lives. I can only hope.

The Songs that Touch Me

I've been meaning to make a post about song lyrics for a while now, but I've never got around to doing it.

A lot of the pop songs out on the radio these days are, frankly, pretty terribly written or engineered or performed. But there are bits and pieces of poetry in some pop artists' pieces, and I find that these songs invariantly end up being the ones that move me the most...

One such artist is Jann Arden. Not all of her songs are good, but there are some gems in there. "If You Loved Me" is one of these gems. Unfortunately, I can't find a YouTube video of it, but here are some lyrics from the bridge, which is my favourite part. The music is really needed to complete the effect though.

I would clench my hands
and hold my breath
and promise to be true

I would never speak
I’d hardly eat
I would not cost a cent

I would watch you sleep
and count your sheep
and lie beside the bed

I would never think
I’d pour your drink
I’d laugh at every joke you tell

I love this part of the song. It captures perfectly all the yearning, selfless feelings that sometimes accompanies love - wanting to take care of someone ("I would watch you sleep and count your sheep"), wanting to please him or her ("I'd pour your drink"). Yet at the some time, there is something ridiculous and obsessive about the narrator's lines. Submission may accompany selflessness. We see it here in her claims ("I'd hardly eat, I would not cost a cent." or "I'd would never think"), and we worry that she will lose herself. She doesn't sound like she has much self-esteem. But that's not surprising. Love may require, in turn, selflessness and submissiveness. And one can lose oneself in love.

Another one such artist is Dido. Now, Dido has been criticized for being a songwriter who writes "vanilla", slow, boring music that appeals only to older women. I think these are valid arguments regarding her first two albums, but not her third album. Her third album, Safe Trip Home, is filled with so much poetry that I feel compelled to return to it again and again. Also of note is the fact that she used only organic sounds for this album. Nothing is electronic and the arrangements are sparse but they are also subtle. A bit tribal, even. Listen to this song, about her father's death...