SONGS ABOUT ROCK (VII): “You Were Right”
BUILT TO SPILL
“You Were Right”
from Keep It Like a Secret
“You Were Right” is one of those songs: half jokey, half-not-jokey; absurdist, serious; nonsensical, profound; about nothing … about everything. It could only have come out of the 1990s.
If you haven’t heard it, it begins with a crashing, soaring, repeated chorus: “You were wrong/When you said /Everything’s going to be all right.”
The vocals cry out with pain; the song, it seems, will be a tragedy and an elegy.
Except, then the verses come, quieter, confiding, intimate:
You were right when you said
All that glitters isn’t gold
You were right when you said
All we are is dust in the wind
You were right when you said
We are all just bricks in the wall.
Oh, you say, I get it. And that’s about it, though as the song goes on the group get funnier, quoting Dylan, Seger, the Stones, and, in a burst of imagination, Hendrix. (“You were right when you said/Manic depression’s a frustrating mess.”)
The question about the song is just who or what is being made fun of. At face value, the song is probably trying to say that homilies (”Everything’s gonna be all right”) don’t help us, but that on some level even the hoariest stadium rock cliché contains truth. Which I think I agree with.
On the the hand, the guys in Built to Spill are probably being arch. They know John Cougar Mellencamp has nothing to say, and that Hendrix, often, didn’t either. And in the end, after all, a hard rain hasn’t yet fallen. You can’t help noticing most of the lines are from dorky classic rock acts, the last line of the verses is a total kiss-off: “You were right when you said/That this is the end.”
… which in turn is a joke, because it’s not the end, really; the song concludes with the repeated mocking refrain, “Do you ever think about that?”, which seems to be another swipe at credulous music fans.
On the other hand, it is true that all that glitters isn’t gold, and it could be the band is trying to make it clear that wisdom comes from unexpected places. On the other hand, the “all that glitters isn’t gold” line is probably just an acid “Stairway to Heaven” reference. On the other hand, the woman in the song is sure that all that glitters is gold.
On the other hand, you can’t buy a stairway to heaven, either.
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Last week’s “Song About Rock.”
The complete “Songs About Rock.”
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Nothing to say?? You speak as though “R.O.C.K. in the U.S.A.” had never been written!
This is a great theme.
The arch tweepop band Tullycraft have done several of these. E.g., “Pop Songs Your New Boyfriend’s Too Stupid to Know About” (”He can keep the Lemonheads and Weezer he gave you / Cause you and me got Heavenly and Nothing Painted Blue”) and “Twee” (which begins “she wakes up every morning to the sound of sarah records”).
thanks for the tip i’ll check them out. i meant to do one of these a week but got behind. i think i’ll get back on sched now.