In the last post on this topic I discussed “Bombs Away” by the Police; in that song, we found a sobering and dark message embedded in a pert and bouncy melody, and touched on similar techniques of juxtaposition in pop art.
This next song tackling a dark theme in a shockingly upbeat way is Elton John’s “I Think I’m Going to Kill Myself.” Included on 1972’s “Honky Chateau” album (possibly one of his finest, if also more understated, records).
The song starts out in a minor key, so the initial feeling is one of unease. And the opening lines only reinforce that feeling:
I’m getting bored, being part of mankind;
there’s not a lot to do no more.
This race is a waste of time.
So the nihilism sets in early, and fast. He then launches quickly into talking about purchasing a gun (“I think I’ll buy a .44 and give ’em all a surprise”).
Then comes the chorus, with its wickedly singable refrain:
Think I’m gonna kill myself, cause a little suicide.
Stick around for a couple of days; what a scandal if I died!
Yeah, I’m gonna kill myself, get a little headline news.
I’d like to see what the papers say on the state of teenage blues.
I Think I’m Going to Kill Myself by Elton John
For the second verse we get into the specific details about the troubles of our despairing narrator; he’s got to fight for the right to use the car, and stifling under the yolk of a 10 o’clock curfew. Trifling things, we might be tempted to say; and yet, they’ve driven this young man to threats of violence. His life is not completely beyond salvation, however, as he confides:
I’d make an exception, if you want to save my life:
Brigitte Bardot gotta come and see me every night.
And there we have the kernel of the thing; whereas our last song spoke to widespread destruction and war, this song is a lament of the the quotidian writ large. The things that most concern a teenager, things that will drive a young person to hopelessness, seem petty with only a few more years’ experience. (Elton John was 25 when he wrote the music; lyricist Bernie Taupin was only 22 when he wrote these words.)
Then, at about 2:25, we get a musical interlude with not only drums, but tap-dancing, provided by “Legs” Larry Smith of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. It would be tempting to think that the use of tap-dancing as percussion on a song about teenage suicide means this song belongs to the theater of the absurd, that this is a callous, unfeeling sendup of outdated notions of the sacredness of life. Resist that temptation, I say. I myself was this sort of teenager: so caught up in myself that the smallest disappointment led me to despair. (And I wrote lots of terrible poetry around those same disappointments.)
Drastic Measures for Mildly Upsetting Times
And lest the optimists in the audience (if there are, in fact, any optimists reading this blog, do me a favor and leave a comment so I’ll know you’re there) think that suicide is a bit drastic a leap to make just because a young man can’t take the family car out or bed Brigitte Bardot, let me assure you that it is not. I remember many nights (and bad poems) spent thinking of self-destruction in the face of my insurmountable privations. Additionally, I suspect that there’s a bit of self-reflection in these lyrics; the song, released in 1972, mentions an actress whose heyday was perhaps a decade prior, I can only imagine that Mr. Taupin was dipping into his own experience, at least a bit, when writing these lyrics.
Enough About the Lyrics, Let’s Talk About the Music
Okay, we’ve already addressed the tap-dancing, and the fact that the song opens in a minor key. But how is that minor key played? The song sounds like an old barroom song (the album’s title itself calling to mind a honky-tonk); this in itself sets the musical stage. The narrator, being a teenager, isn’t old enough to frequent a bar; but that doesn’t prevent him from wanting to drown his sorrows, to affect the hang-dog look of a man much older who bears the weight of the world on his shoulders. So the melody itself, and the piano arrangement, give us a thematic counterpoint to the somber lyrics.
Of course, the great irony of the song is that once the topic of suicide is broached, the melody hops into a major key. Just like the refrain in “Bombs Away”, we have an ironic combination of cheerful chords and brooding words serving to highlight the disconnect between what the narrator is saying and the things the audience is intended to think about those words. While I certainly would never want to make light of such a horrifying reality as teenage suicide, I think it’s fair to say that many teenagers (like myself) simply used the word as a sort of mental escape (the same sort of pressure valve that 19th century Americans may have had in the Western frontier, according to the hotly-disputed Turner Thesis) from pressures they were only beginning to learn to cope with.
I Don’t Think I’m Going to Kill Myself After All
Being removed from my own teenage years by more than a decade, I appreciate being able to laugh at my own egotism and tendencies to dramatize petty things. That laughter is not degrading or dismissive of those (admittedly melodramatic) mood swings of years past. But rather, it’s a humble recognition that problems that seemed utterly defeating weren’t really so bad when viewed in perspective; and it’s also a gentle reminder to me today, to never forget that, however bad things may seem, there’s likely a bigger picture that I’m just not seeing yet.