Snow Patrol -- Eyes Open
4/10
WARNING: THE NICSPERIMENT IS GENERALLY A FAMILY BLOG RUN BY A FAMILY MAN. THE WAY THE NICSPERIMENT SPEAKS ON THE NICSPERIMENT IS HOW THE NICSPERIMENT GENERALLY SPEAKS IN REAL LIFE. HOWEVER, THIS ENTRY IN THE "EVERY ALBUM I OWN" SERIES IS A VENT SECTION EMPLOYING VARIOUS USES OF PROFANITY NORMALLY ONLY HEARD ON PRISON SHIPS ORBITING THE NINTH CIRCLE OF HELL. IT IS NOT RECOMMENDED FOR CHILDREN, PREGNANT OR BREASTFEEDING WOMEN, OR PEOPLE SENSITIVE TO CAFFEINE. CONSUME RESPONSIBLY.
It's so clear now that you are all that I have (Ooh)
I have no fear 'cause you are all that I have (Ooh)
Goes the chorus on the opening track of one of the most lyrically harmful albums of all time. According to a 2009 Times interview quoted by Wikipedia, "(Snow Patrol lyricicst and lead-singer) Gary Lightbody has been in many doomed relationships, and he blames their failure on only himself, considering himself "rubbish with women."
No fucking shit, Gary.
If you approached any of those women as co-dependently as you do the relationships you detail in Eyes Open, every woman who sees you coming should run and hide.
* * *
When my wife of nearly 13 years and I started dating, she expressed interest in learning the drums. I told her I'd teach her, and picked out some songs from Snow Patrol's Final Straw for her to learn to, as playing drums on a Snow Patrol album is easier than tripping over your shoelaces. A few weeks later, we started talking about getting engaged, and she, in retrospect likely out of humor, bought me the just released Snow Patrol album, Eyes Open.Not only was this my first serious relationship, but only six months before, I had left the cult I grew up in (if anyone affiliated with that cult wants to argue with me that it is not a cult, I already made my very thorough argument that it is five years ago here on The Nicsperiment, and you are welcome to argue with that post, and also to enjoy likely the best longform travelogue I have ever written).
If you're familiar with cults, you know that in a cult, members agency is taken away. "You don't have to make decisions anymore. We'll make your decisions for you," is a general statement cult leadership will often make. I resisted hard the entire 15 years I was there, from the age of 8 to 23, particularly the final five years, which was the time encompassing when I was in college and the year after, 2005, when I finally broke away.
Unfortunately, as much as I liked to think that I made a clean break, seeds of poison had been planted in my psyche, and throughout 2006, they bloomed vigorously. The worst two petals on this shit bush: the one where I thought I was absolute shit, and also the one where I thought I needed someone else to tell me what to do and to give me an identity.
I would have never admitted to those two things, but they are both more true than anything else about me in 2006. My girlfriend knew me back when I was resisting the cult hard, and not fully comprehending my situation, thought I was some sort of badass. Poor dear.
The version she got of me in 2006 was broken, not beautifully, but in a form that was noxious-inducingly grotesque.
You know when you ask someone, "What do you want to do today?" and they answer, "I don't know, what do you want to do?"
That was my personality.
"I don't know, what do you want to do?"
Every thought I had was twinged with self-doubt and a desperate need for validation. I have no idea how my wife and I got to the altar, but I do know that I not only highly identified with the lyrics of Snow Patrol's Eyes Open, but was harmed by them.
The second track, "Hands Open," includes the lines "It's hard to argue when/You won't stop making sense/But my tongue still misbehaves/And it keeps digging my own grave," and indeed I felt I had to apologize for every word that came out of my mouth no matter what it was--I thought they would doom me in the relationship, just like before I thought they would doom me to hell.
I also had no idea how to have a non-judgmental conversation. "With my hands open/And my eyes open/I just keep hoping/That your heart opens." That's creepy. If she doesn't like you, move on. There are plenty of women who will love you for who you are. Stop trying to make her into what you want her to be, while trying to be what she wants you to be when you're not.
"It's not as easy as willing it all to be right/Gotta be more than hoping it's right/I wanna hear you laugh like you really mean it/Collapse into me, tired with joy." "Yes, my emotions are completely dependent on yours." "Put Sufjan Stevens on/And we'll play your favorite song/"Chicago" bursts to life/And your sweet smile remembers you." "Maybe I can emotionally manipulate you into having the reaction I want if I play some music...hey, look indie kids of 2006, I have great tastes. Okay, lady friend, I'm gonna creepily stare at you and see if you make the face I want. You know, you'd look way prettier if you smiled..."
"Chasing Cars" is the big song the band got onto the second season finale of Grey's Anatomy, when Denny dies. Grey's Anatomy is the show for people who are in bad relationships--just think about your friend who always goes back to the same shitty partner again and again expecting something different...Grey's Anatomy is probably their favorite show. Though Grey's Anatomy was hugely in the zeitgeist of 2006, a free-willed The Nicsperiment still wouldn't have been caught dead watching it...but as he was buried beneath layers of codependent garbage, I sat obediently on the couch next to my girlfriend and watched the second season of it with her, then watched the entirety of the third season with her in the fall of '06 and spring of '07, until, after that season's finale, six months into our marriage, when I finally started to shake off and rip those layers of garbage away, said "This show sucks, and I'm done with it. Now I need to catch up on the whole '06-'07 seasons of all the shows I actually like, but didn't watch because I was afraid to express my own deeply hidden personality in front of you." It's not like I expected her to watch The Shield or Battlestar Galactica with me, but if she wasn't interested, she could sure do something else during the hours of the week that I wanted to watch them. I was too scared and twisted before that epiphany to even think that could be an option.
I haven't talked about the music on Eyes Open yet. It is highly calculated radio fodder pop-rock. The guitar mostly just strums barely distorted power chords anyone could learn in three or four minutes, the drums are so simplistic, they barely feature even a back beat, let alone a drum roll. I don't even know why this band needs a drummer. A machine could easily play the boom-boom-tap, boom-boom-tap, boom-boom-tap beats that he's mirthlessly laying down. Then you've got a whole bunch of electronics and studio trickery to dress it up, with each song written with as much cynical calculation as possible, where even the moments of catharsis are so mechanically and formulaically constructed and added, that a poor AI may have composed and presented these 11 tracks as something that they thought humans might enjoy.
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| Also, that AI is another good metaphor for my personality at the time. I should also add, during 2006, I weighed 30 pounds lighter than I have on any given year past 10th grade, and not in a healthy way. |
Don't worry, though, track five, "It's Beginning to Get to Me" comes right back with even more harmfully codependent lyrics than before, and a wannabe explosive bridge that features the same "tat-boom-boom, tat-boom-boom" drum pattern from half of the songs that were on K-LOVE at the time this not CCM album was released.
"I tried to tell you before I left/But I was screaming under my breath/You are the only thing that makes sense/Just ignore all this present tense," codependently belts Lightbody in his pleasant, inoffensive voice, before breaking out with an even more emotionally weak and over the top repetition of "We need to feel breathless with love/And not collapsed under its weight/I'm gasping for the air to fill/My lungs with everything I've lost." Dude. Get a fucking life. And stop creating a romantic ideal out of Shonda Rhimes quotes!
Lightbody is mercifully freed from the relationship, but thinking even more unhealthy thoughts on the quiet, music box-inspired "You Could Be Happy." After essentially whining about how sad he is that they've broken up, he ends the song with, "Do the things that you always wanted to/Without me there to hold you back, don't think, just do/More than anything I want to see you, girl/Take a glorious bite out of the whole world." Dude, worry and work about and on your fucking self! And did you just command someone you've broken up with to "Don't think/just do?" How controlling were you in the relationship? Are you one of those assholes who is both controlling AND codependent? UGHHH!!!!
The next track, "Make This Go On Forever" is an insanely powerful display of the most absolutely fucked up lyrics on this absolutely fucked up album. The song is led by piano and a thudding, steady kick drum, as Lightbody desperately intones, backed by a massive, modern choir of voices on the chorus that only increase in intensity the more it is repeated, before the final, midnight bleak outro features only Lightbody and the piano again. I am going to post all of the lyrics to it here.
Verse 1
Please don't let this turn into something it's not
I can only give you everything I've got
I can't be as sorry as you think I should
But I still love you more than anyone else could
Verse 2
All that I keep thinking throughout this whole flight
Is it could take my whole damn life to make this right
This splintered mast I'm holding on won't save me long
Because I know fine well that what I did was wrong
Chorus
The last girl and the last reason
To make this last for as long as I could
The first kiss and the first time
That I felt connected to anything
The weight of water, the way you taught me
To look past everything I had ever learned
The final word in the final sentence
You ever uttered to me was "love"
Verse 3
We have got through so much worse than this before
What's so different this time that you can't ignore?
You say it is much more than just my last mistake
And we should spend some time apart for both our sakes
[Outro]
And I don't know where to look
My words just break and melt
Please just save me from this darkness
Please just save me from this darkness
And I don't know where to look
My words just break and melt
Please just save me from this darkness
Please just save me from this darkness
Holy shit! To quote the very disturbed character from a good friend's short story: so much wrong and so little right! The girl sung about here has hit the jackpot to get away from this codependent leech! "Don't leave me because no one else can love you like me." "I never felt connected to a single thing in my entire life except for you, and you taught me that I don't know anything and I should listen to just you." What the fuck is going on in this relationship? The worst part is, I identified more with this song than almost anything else in life when this album came out. If I'm angry at the song, I'm angry at myself. Then again, years of therapy have taught me not to be.
It's not my fault. I eventually learned how to be my own person. I didn't choose to grow up the way that I did. Also, holy cow is Lightbody pathetic in that outro. "Please just save me from this darkness?" Dude, get a fucking life!!! The worst part is, musically, "Make This Go On Forever" is an excellent song. The rhythm feels like a desperate heartbeat, the build is organic and incredible, and the chorus is one of those long, drawn out melodies that actually works. The choir, rather than feeling like a cynical ploy, feels like a unique artistic risk that pays dividends. And yet, the lyrics. Oh, fuckity, fucking, mother-fucking fuck the lyrics!
According to Wikipedia, "Make this Go On Forever" has been featured on Grey's Anatomy twice.
Also, what was the last sentence the girl said to Lightbody that ended with "love?" "I don't want to do this anymore, love?" "You're scaring me, love?" "You don't understand love?" "Stop always talking about love?" "THERE ARE OTHER THINGS IN LIFE BESIDES LOVE!!!" "Dependency isn't love."
"Set the Fire to the Third Bar" somehow continues to tap into the glowing vein of the Earth that "Make This Go On Forever" did. The song features a duet with the warbly and haunting Martha Wainwright. The music creates dark, mystical imagery, of a dark country road at night, and a smoky, lamp-lit pub. The lyrics at first seem like they are going to paint all these evocative fitting metaphors as Lightbody looks at a map and puts his finger on the place he knows his lover is, eventually setting out to her, and stopping at a bar for a drink. Of course, this being Lightbody, he eventually breaks down in desperation, lies on the ground, and waits to die, hoping some supernatural force will pick him up and carry him to his lover. What a fucking pussy. If you love her so much, get the fuck up and get walking!
"Headlights on Dark Roads" is a quick rush of energy that speeds up the boom-boom-tap, boom-boom-tap. Lightbody at least says, "I'm tired of all this fear," but then again, he starts the song off with "For once I want to be the car crash/Not always just the traffic jam." Dude, you don't have to be either.
This is followed by the title track, which is the most "a robot made this song" track on the album. To this point, the drummer might as well have been playing a four-piece kit, but here he suddenly realizes he has some toms. He plays the same basic pattern throughout this song on them until the "catharsis" at the end, which is composed of tired, sickly power chords, a bunch of filler keyboard and electronics, the choir from earlier singing "Woah-oh's," and the drummer doing that tap-boom-boom, tap-boom-boom, tap-boom-boom K-LOVE thing from earlier. I know the drummer took lessons to get better for this album. I feel bad continuously slagging him because this guy has toured the world playing drums for the last 23 years, and I am sure that on his own, he is likely not only a far better drummer than I am, but a great drummer. However, on this album, anything he does can be duplicated by a machine. I don't understand where the lessons went, unless they were just time-keeping lessons, in which case, he does indeed stay on beat.
"Open Your Eyes" is supposed to be triumphant, a "We're gonna make this relationship work" type thing, but of course it sounds like Lightbody is being demanding, unreasonable, and out of touch with reality. The chorus quotes the title of the album, "Tell me you'll open your eyes." It is repeated over and over again. Dude, she doesn't have to tell you anything. MOVE ON.
I don't know what "The Finish Line" is supposed to be about. I'd love to think it's about how Lightbody is finally moving on from this relationship he's obviously having distorted thoughts about, thinking it's a thing when the girl's obviously not interested, being controlling and demanding, and deriving his entire identify from it. I'd like to think that he's become his own man, and is free. But it's probably the opposite.
It took me years to recover from the codependent thought processes I had learned and adopted growing up in a cult. Eyes Open came to me at the absolute worst time possible. If my relationship with my girlfiend/fiancee at the time had ended then, I probably would have killed myself. At some point, in the first six months of marriage, when things weren't going well, with both of us shouldering the blame, I had to awaken to the simple thought process that if God-forbid we split up, my life would go on and could still be beautiful. I'd love to say that I've had that healthy perspective for the last 13 years straight, but honestly, it's been a struggle to defeat that codependent thing, involving years and years of therapy, and mental health strategies. I don't know how Lightbody grew up, if he actually believed all the crap he wrote for Eyes Open 13 years ago, and if so, if he's grown into a healthier human being since then. That's his own battle. I know that in the other two albums by Snow Patrol I own, he never comes across like he does in this one.
This was a long ramble that I frankly don't expect anyone to ever read. However, I felt it was important to write and post this because it also pertains to The Nicsperiment.
The same month that Eyes Open was released, the same month I got engaged, I took The Nicsperiment, the purest expression of myself, and put it on hiatus because I said I had nothing left to say. Indeed, at that moment, I did not, as in my mind, I no longer existed.
Fucking horrible.
I became an "I don't know, what do you want to do?" lump on the couch. I literally became the "Good for nothing, useless cum stain" I had constructed in my mind. How sad for my wife that she had to endure at least a full year of being in a relationship with a complete non-entity. Perhaps her own issues led her to stay with me. How gross for her, though.
Frankly, as much as I love going back and seeing my old blogs for the first 1.5 years of Nicsperiment life ( Dec '04-May '06), I can also see how much of an image I was attempting to cultivate for myself in unreality. I thought I could just ignore all of the mental abuse I'd endured in my life. I thought I could just blow off that the last interaction I had with the leader of the cult involved him saying, "Without us, you'll become the next Charles Manson. You'll marry the wrong person, and you'll never find your purpose in life." That guy was dictating my every thought for 15 years. Instead of trying to portray myself as a cool Southern gentleman of acute political beliefs, who had it all together, and was ready to hang the blog up, I should have kept blogging, and framed my posts under the banner of "My road to recovery from mental and emotional abuse." Of course, I didn't realize just how much damage all of that cult stuff had done to me until I sat down in a therapist's chair years later and actually talked about it out loud. Brutal.
So the last thing I have to say: If you've been raised by or grew up around alcoholics, drugs addicts, abusive people, or in a cult or extremely authoritative educational structure, and you find that when you're in a relationship, you depersonalize, or that you don't assert yourself and just go along with whatever the other person is doing to you or wanting to do, read Melody Beattie's Codpendent No More. I found it long after I'd started the proper self-care and therapy, and it STILL made a hugely positive impact on me.
Get help. Realize that your own life and thoughts and opinions are important, and that if you are just getting those things from another person, you are not healthy, whole, and living the best life you could and should.
And that is why Snow Patrol's Eyes Open is a terrible album. The end.
2006 A & M Records
1. You're All I Have 4:33
2. Hands Open 3:17
3. Chasing Cars 4:28
4. Shut Your Eyes 3:17
5. It's Beginning to Get to Me 4:35
6. You Could Be Happy 3:04
7. Make This Go On Forever 5:47
8. Set the Fire to the Third Bar (featuring Martha Wainwright) 3:23
9. Headlights on Dark Roads 3:30
10. Open Your Eyes 5:41
11. The Finish Line 3:28
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