music talk - ELLIOTT SMITH 2

It's noted that after his tour for the Either/Or album some friends staged an intervention for Elliott about his heavy drinking after he relocated from Portland to Brookland but his next album XO was primarily recorded in Los Angles. His next album XO-1998 features more cherry songs such as "Sweet Adeline" "Waltz #2" and my personal favorite "Baby Britain" although the lyrics don't match the more upbeat tone and fast beat the song carries like putting white paint over a painting of a massacre, you won't notice at first but slowly the white paint will peel and chip and you'll see through the facade. You see this metaphor in Baby Britain, I'd listened to it for a long time enjoying the cheery tune, the drums, and the piano giving a nice response along with Eliiots voice going from deep and raspy and almost talk-singing to a higher-pitched singing and sounding like it was a fun song and Elliott was certainly having fun but there's always a shadow, a face underneath the mask, the lyrics say "Floating over a sea of vodka
Separated from the rest" which sound much like Between the Bars when he says "Drink up one more time, and I'll make you mine Keep you apart, deep in my heart Separate from the rest, where I like you the best" we get conformation in an interview ( there's little information about the interview but I'll link it) in the interview a female out of frame says "Would you say it's more personal than say like an iron maiden song?" (right before this they cut and played Angles a song of Elliott's from album Either/Or so I'm assuming it's that song or a song from that album) and Smith responds with "Um I don't know...I mean if I was playing Iron Maiden songs I would feel like that's extremely revealing about me. No, no I don't know I guess they just turn out that way, I guess they just sound personal, I don't know. I mean, of course, they do. Makeup a song it's gonna sound like how you feel, whether you wanna shout at the devil or whatever you wanna do you know?" This is one confirmation that Elliot's songs are quite personal as it's just the writing process. A little bit more into the interview the video cuts and Smiths says "Playing things too safe is the most popular way to fail...dying is another way...um...or like killing your emotions is another popular way with you know drugs or alcohol or whatever but yeah, I don't know those would be types of ways." The interviewer asks "Are you succeeding then?" Smith responds, "Um, no. Not right now, but I think I might you know, I know, yeah, I might" He twists his head to the right and left as if to say he might or might not, and the video cuts. It's obvious he was struggling and when I quit writing last night I put on some music to see if I could catch anything any sign or struggle that was so severe it's surprising nobody saw this coming (or at least they didn't step in if they did know) and thankfully I did, Say Yes a song from the 1997 Either/Or album Elliott sings "She'll decide what she wants I'll probably be the last to know No one says until it shows See how it is They want you or they don't Say yes." I think that Smith was directly talking about d3ppr3ss!on and su!c!d3 here. I think we can take all of this