Sticking it to myself

JoAnn in VA

I heard this at the Birchmere last weekend, and thought right away- here is one for the forums to really dig into. I find it intriguing- if he had written it in his thing a week days I would have assumed it was about hating working as a code monkey, but it is new and now- what do you think? My suspicions are that it is a kind of "burning out" song, or at least one for those times he FEELS like he is burning out. A hint of anger- but at who? Himself? His success? His "Accolades lined up on the shelf" ( I think that was the line).
Love to hear what you guys think of it!

robgonzo

Hey JoAnn, the board seems very light on these kinds of discussions these days, so I'll do my part to keep it going.
I realized I needed to research this one a bit and listen closer to the lyrics so I played this video. JoCo starts off by saying it's a song about quitting, something he recommends. So that would seem to make it about quitting the code monkey job. Yet at Pax he said the song was about being imprisoned in a horrible cage of success.
Perhaps it's a cop out but I kind of think the song is about both things.
Something interesting to add to that, is how the verses remind me of a Miss Susie rhyme. Where the end word turns out to be the beginning of the next line.

chicazul

JoCo often prefaces this song with a line like "This song is about extreme job dissatisfaction. I don't know what that's like anymore." I like to think it's about the character in Code Monkey, years later, finally getting fed up.

It's kind of interesting to me that some people don't make a distinction between Jonathan and the first-person narrators who inhabit his songs. (This apparently has hilarious and uncomfortable consequences when the song is Millionaire Girlfriend.) He doesn't seem to write autobiographical songs (I can think of possibly two: You Ruined Everything and When You Go) so I'm always hesitant to start drawing lines about what parts of given song are "real" and which flow from the character.

Caveat given:

To me the song is about the frustration when you realize that all this time it's been you holding yourself back, sticking with something unsatisfying because it's the safe, comfortable thing to do. The lyrics imply it's about quitting the code monkey job, but it's a feeling most people probably relate to from time to time. If it has anything to do with JoCo's current life I think it's about starting the new album--being successful from his previous work but feeling stagnant, and trying to make the leap to something new and terrifying instead of resting on former accolades.

JoCo said some relevant words in today's Thing a Week Redux (about Famous Blue Raincoat,) namely:

I’ve been writing more in this direction for the new album, trying to explain less and evoke more. Trying not to worry too hard about what any song is ABOUT until late in the process. I think there are a couple that will be mysteries to most people, or rather, they’ll assume a different shape for every listener.

Are you really the person saying that, do you secretly feel that way? Well, yes and no. The bits and pieces that grow into a song come from personal experience, they have to. But then you can use them as a guide, strike out in a certain direction, just hang them out there in the wind and see what sticks to them.

That first bit is likely the root of a complaint Spiff had about the new album, that the songs don't seem to have as much story as they used to. Spiff described a lot of the older material as "like tiny three-act plays," but we now have it from the horse's mouth (so to speak) that JoCo is deliberately moving away from that style.

Rob: I wasn't familiar with the "Miss Susie" term, but I know Jonathan's been quoted as saying it was a deliberate challenge to himself. It's quite fun but makes it difficult to figure out where to put line breaks in the lyrics!

Jmonkee

It's quite fun but makes it difficult to figure out where to put line breaks in the lyrics!

"...when my heart is breaking I can close my eyes, and it's already here on earth they'll wonder..."

Others?

He doesn't seem to write autobiographical songs (I can think of possibly two: You Ruined Everything and When You Go)

Definitely You Ruined Everything. I'm not sure about When You Go. I'm sure we could make an argument for several others being at least somewhat autobiographical. Code Monkey? Pull The String? I Crush Everything? Stroller Town? The Town Crotch? I Hate California? First of May?

chicazul

I'll admit that When You Go is not directly autobiographical, but it extrapolates from the love for a child to imagining when they grow up and leave you. Combined with the fact that it's such a sweet, personal song, and it just feels a little different than his other work. I may be biased by my strong personal attachment to the song though. (:

Bry

I Hate California comes to mind first for me:

Breakup song. I had a girlfriend who was an actress, and who was doing a long stretch of time living in California, working on a show... a musical... so it was kind of the tail end of our relationship, as it turned out, so yeah -- that's where that came from.

(source)
but I don't know if it's honestly more or less autobiographical than, say, something like Code Monkey.

My thought was Miss Suzie as well. Jmonkee took my example -- I may come up with others, but I'd have to think about it.

Spiff

I originally thought "Sticking It To Myself" was about him being hard on himself now that he was a success. I obviously hadn't listened to the lyrics closely enough.

Also, that video Rob linked to showed a much smoother performance of the song than I'd seen before. The couple of times I'd seen it in vids or live, JoCo must have still been getting used to it, because he seemed to just be pounding it out, with a constant, fast beat, as if he was just trying to bull his way to the end (which, at the time, he probably was). I like it better in that vid than I have in any others I've seen.

JoAnn in VA

I think that nearly everything JoCo wrotes is autobiographical in some way, if only that some part of his soul was revealed in the song, and this is why so many of his works resonate with so many of his fans. Will I ever be a code monkey? As those who know my Luddite fear of techno stuff, and tendency for killing hard drives, of course not. But I can understand having a romantic crush on someone, and dreaming of being with them, and enduring a bad job to do so. I think all of us have had a manager like Rob at some time. Same thing as with "I Crush Everything"...being outside of the bright outer world you long to join for fear of hurting others there. You don't have to be a giant squid to feel like the fun is happening elsewhere and you can't join in.
The wonderful mystery of so many of his songs is their layering- like an opal, you see things from one angle which are gone if you look at it another way; new colors and meanings are always appearing, dominating and then fading. Folded in the layers of this song is his signature layer of pain, twisted and polished so that you an see yourself in it, and wonder if it is reflecting him in the same way...so that you want to help stop the pain, and realize that by sharing it musically, you are maybe doing so after all. Here is my heart set to music; does your ever follow the same beat?

Angelastic

I write things from my imagination which some people insist are autobiographical in some way (e.g. when I was 14 and had never so much as had a boyfriend I wrote a story from the perspective of a woman with an abusive husband, which my mother claimed was autobiographical somehow (?) I don't know whether my father was abusive to her, but if he was, I didn't know anything about it that I could have incorporated into the story), and I think rather that if those things resonate with a lot of people (which I suppose they might, hypothetically, given that the aforementioned story won a prize; let's pretend they do for the sake of argument) it's not because they reveal something specific about my soul in particular, but because whatever part of actual soul they do have in them underneath the imaginary stuff is close to the lowest common denominator soul-kernel that's common to all humans. Some of JoCo's songs are autobiographical, sure, but I would be hesitant in claiming they were unless he said so, because I know what it's like to have people assume things are autobiographical when they aren't, and assume they know personal things about me that they don't.