This is way, way overdue, especially for the most popular song off an album that vaulted a popular musician’s career and set the tone for a summer of my life (don’t ask).
“Strip away the modern, droll irony and just love” – that’s one of the points behind the album. Between this track, the album’s titular song, “I Love You, Honeybear,” and “Holy Shit,” you can paint a convincing picture of modern love as something we choose to do despite all the pressures and stumbling blocks we’ve constructed in this world. The other songs add to this conversation – perhaps especially “True Affection,” which laments the filter of cell phones we pass our relationships through now – and paint a virtuosic portrait of what romance is possible when people can cut through the crap.
The title is a wonderful callback to Leonard Cohen (Chelsea Hotel #2) and John Lennon (some unreleased work), which is, if you’re an up-and-coming folk singer, the too-clever, eye-rolling cruft you tend to collect along the way.
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/2eg2gvPXuwZ9FyrPaLgrXi?si=uqDbgAYeQciw40BzgYyaEw
Tidal: https://tidal.com/track/68640807
Qobuz: https://open.qobuz.com/track/48910771
Emma eats bread and butter
Like a queen would have ostrich and cobra wine
We’ll have Satanic Christmas Eve
And play piano in the Chateau lobby
I’ve never done this
Baby, be gentle
It’s my first time
I’ve got you inside
People are boring
But you’re something else completely
Damn, let’s take our chances
I wanna take you in the kitchen
Lift up your wedding dress someone was probably murdered in
So bourgeoisie to keep waiting
Dating for twenty years just feels pretty civilian
And I’ve never thought that
Ever thought that once in my whole life
You are my first time
People are boring
You’re something else I can’t explain
Here, take my last name
First time you let me stay the night despite your own rules
You took off early to go cheat your way through film school
You left a note in your perfect script:
“Stay as long as you want,” and I haven’t left your bed since
I haven’t hated
All the same things as somebody else
Since I remember
What’s going on for, uh, what are you doing with your whole life?
How about forever?
Bonus!
Oh, Honeybear, Honeybear, Honeybear
Mascara, blood, ash and cum
On the Rorschach sheets where we make love
Honeybear, Honeybear, Honeybear
Fuck the world, damn straight malaise
It may be just us who feel this way
But don’t ever doubt this, my steadfast conviction
My love, you’re the one I wanna watch the ship go down with
The future can’t be real, I barely know how long a moment is
Unless we’re naked, getting high on the mattress
While the global market crashes
As death fills the streets we’re garden-variety oblivious
You grab my hand and say in “I-told-you-so” voice:
“It’s just how we expected”
Everything is doomed
And nothing will be spared
But I love you, honeybear
Honeybear, honeybear, honeybear
You’re bent over the altar and the neighbors are complaining
That the misanthropes next door are probably conceiving a Damien
Don’t they see the darkness rising? Good luck fingering oblivion
We’re getting out now while we can
You’re welcome, boys, have the last of the smokes and chicken
Just one Cadillac will do to get us out to where we’re going
I’ve brought my mother’s depression
You’ve got your father’s scorn and a wayward aunt’s schizophrenia
But everything is fine
Don’t give into despair
‘Cause I love you, honeybear
Honeybear, honeybear, honeybear
Both songs written by Josh Tillman.