Erasure: Always

This week Lyrics, Weakly runs the risk of offending one of its three readers.

A few months ago, Mariana posted a comment in response to my take on the Atlantic Starr song “Always”, saying she’d initially thought the post was going to be about the Erasure song of the same name. Well, it wasn’t, but it got me thinking that that song really does need to be discussed here—and now i’ve finally gotten around to it. So this week’s entry is the 1995 Erasure song “Always”.

(By the way, you really should click on that last link and watch the video—it’s visual LSD. Not saying it’s perfectly bizarre or anything, but if there’s a video that cries out for a literal treatment as badly as Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart”, it’s this one.)

“Always” was a top-twenty hit in 1995 (top-ten in the United Kingdom), but, to be quite honest, i missed this song back then—i was in the midst of one of my periodic classic-rock phases at the time, and so while i was vaguely aware of the whole grunge thing, i missed this little synthpop gem. (And it really is a gem. Musically, that is. Lyrically, it has its moments, many of them not quite so gemlike.) Since then, it’s gained some notice from the soundtrack of the Adult Swim game “Robot Unicorn Attack”, which can only be described as a really, really weird bit of pop culture.

So let’s go back to 1995 (or, alternatively, to the land of the robot unicorns) and let ourselves get carried away by the somehow stark yet lush synthesizer intro, as Andy Bell begins to sing…

Open your eyes
I see
Your eyes are open

So open your eyes, please—oh, wait, never mind, already done. Okay, cool.

You’re just trying to make this easy for me, aren’t you, Mr. Bell?

This is the sort of exchange that takes place every day in households across the world—you know, maybe people are getting ready for dinner, and one of them says “Could you get the butter out of the fridge for me? Oh—you already got it. Thanks”

It’s not the sort of thing that really makes sense in a song, though, you know?

Of course, it’s one thing to have odd lyrics, but it takes serious confidence to actually start your song with them. So i guess you’ve got that going for you.

Wear no disguise
For me
Come into the open

You know, if you can tell the person you’re singing to has open eyes, they’re probably already in the open.

Basically, this song seems to be all about stating the obvious.

When it’s cold (when it's cold)
Outside (outside)
Am I here in vain?

This is the beginning of the chorus, and i’m finding it impossible to parse the grammar here. I mean, it’s got to be one of the following…

1. When it’s cold outside. Am i here in vain?
2. When it’s cold outside, am i here in vain?

…but option 1 contains an incomplete sentence, and option 2 makes even less sense.

The best i can figure is that, for some reason, now that i live in Alaska something is more in vain than it was when i lived in Florida.

So basically, in the move into the chorus, we lost the whole obviousness thing. Now i’m not sure whether i like obviousness or obscurity better.

Hold on to the night
There will be no shame

First of all, you can’t hold on to the night—the night is a period of time, not a concrete object.

That aside, there will be no shame about what, exactly? Is this saying there’s no shame in a warm night? Well, sure, but there’s no shame in a cold day, either.

Really, it’s prettily sung, but it makes no logical sense whatsoever.

Always
I wanna be with you
And make believe with you
And live in harmony harmony oh love
Always
I wanna be with you
And make believe with you
And live in harmony harmony oh love
Always

This all sounds good (and, in fact, Mr. Bell apparently thought it sounded so good it needed to be repeated, as you can see), but really, you don’t want to always be with anybody—it would almost certainly lead to some very uncomfortable situations.

Melting the ice
For me
Jump into the ocean

This is actually good advice—before jumping into the ocean, it’s always a good idea to melt the ice there first. Otherwise you end up surrounded by icebergs and being really, really cold.

It’s possible to go too far, of course—if you melted all of the ice, then ocean levels would rise about 180 feet, give or take (according to some quick googling), enough to place twenty stories of the Empire State Building under water. Let’s hope Mr. Bell’s friend isn’t quite as successful as that.

Hold back the tide
I see
Your love in motion

See, here we get confusion again. Even leaving aside the fact that love is a noncorporeal entity and therefore its motion can’t be observed, this seems a bit self-contradictory. It would take a great deal of inertia to hold back the tide—a moving liquid can be pretty powerful. Therefore, in order to hold back the tide, it’d be more efficient to be very massive, and very much at rest. Here, though, the person holding back the tide is in motion.

First melting the ice caps, then changing tidal patterns in unexpected ways. I’m thinking Mr. Bell may need to rethink the physical science underlying this song a bit.

When it’s cold (when it's cold)
Outside (outside)
Am I here in vain?

Maybe Mr. Bell feels like he’s there in vain because it’s cold, meaning that the person he’s singing to was unsuccessful in melting the ice in the ocean? That makes as much sense as anything else i can come up with, really.

At least this would mean that Manhattan isn’t under water, so that’s a good thing.

And then we get repetition after repetition, which i’ll spare you, except to note that we get eight instances of this…

Always
I wanna be with you
And make believe with you
And live in harmony harmony oh love

…as we get to the end of the song.

I mean, it’s a nice sentiment, Mr. Bell, but would it have killed you to have written a third verse instead?

Maybe that’s the point of all the making believe in the chorus—we’re supposed to all make believe the song is longer and telling a coherent story.

And speaking of not writing things, Lyrics, Weakly will be taking a break next week, since i’ll be away visiting friends. Two weeks from now, though, i’ll be taking on what some people believe is The Greatest Song Ever Recorded. They’re wrong, of course, but it’s been too long since i had someone get properly annoyed by one of these.