You knew that I would have to get to Jack's Mannequin eventually. It's the current project of Andrew McMahon from Something Corporate fame and the band from which I drew the title of this blog (although not from this song, but rather this one). Let's listen to the first song from his first album:
Holiday From Real
She thinks I'm much too thin
She asks me if I'm sick
What's a girl to do with friends like this?
She lets me drive her car
So I can score an eighth
From the lesbians out west in Venice
Oh, California in the summer
Oh, and my hair is growing long
Fuck yeah, we can live like this
But if you left it up to me
Every day would be a holiday from real
We'd waste our weeks beneath the sun
We'd fry our brains and say it's so much fun
Out here
When it's all over
I'll come back another year
I look for work today
I'm spillin' out the door
Put my glasses on so no one sees me
I never thought that I'd be livin' on your floor
But the rents are high and L.A.'s easy
Oh, it's a picture of perfection
Oh, and the postcard's gonna read
Fuck yeah, we can live like this
We can live like this
But if you left it up to me
Every day would be a holiday from real
We'd waste our weeks beneath the sun
We'd fry our brains and write it's so much fun
Out here
Hey Madeline
You sure look fine
You wore my favorite sweater
Being poor was never better
A safety buzz
Some cheap red wine
Oh, the trouble we could get in
So let's screw this one up right
But if you left it up to me
Every day would be a holiday from real
We'd waste our weeks beneath the sun
We'd lie and tell our friends it's so much fun
Out here
When it's all over
I'll come back for another
When it's all over
I'll come back for another year
-----------------
As with last week's song, the lyrics are actually pretty straightforward. Upbeat, poppy, and piano-driven, it's typical Jack's Mannequin. Bonus points for being about Southern California, where I've lived my whole life. It's an anthem for laid-back living down here.
McMahon discusses spending his time essentially getting drunk ("A safety buzz/Some cheap red wine"), high ("I can score an eighth"), and fooling around with girls ("Madeline/You sure look fine...Oh, the trouble we could get in"). It's great! He sings about "California in the summer" and exclaims "Fuck yeah, we can live like this". As I said, a perfect anthem.
You can choose to see the song this way, and it's perfectly fine, you can nod your head to the beat and sing along. But...you would be entirely wrong.
The beauty of the lyrics here is that it's not a song about the perfection of California, but rather McMahon's slow realization that his life there is a complete mess. The first lines are sung with a bit of attitude: "She thinks I'm much too thin/She asks me if I'm sick/What's a girl to do with friends like this?" We can take this at face value, that he's either starving or addicted to drugs or both, but the tone is clearly one of defiance; when McMahon sings "what's a girl do with friends like this?", he's almost mocking the girl for caring about him.
(Eerily, these lines also foreshadow that in real life McMahon will actually become sick-- he was diagnosed with leukemia shortly before releasing this album. The number of references to doctors and illness on Everything in Transit . Maybe somehow his subconscious already knew about his illness, or maybe it's just coincidental. Either way, it's quite a trip.)
Throughout the rest of the song, we get little clues that maybe McMahon's California summer isn't idyllic as it seems. This is especially true in the chorus, when he sings that "We'd waste our weeks beneath the sun/We'd fry our brains and say it's so much fun/Out here". The word choices here are extremely important; he's not spending his weeks under the sun or treasuring them or feeling good about them or whatever he should be doing: it's a "waste". He's on drugs ("fry our brains") and says that it's so much fun. Again, word choices: McMahon doesn't assert that his time is actually fun, just that he'll say it is when talking to his friends.
We've already discussed how in the song, McMahon is on drugs and possibly starving. He's also out of work and embarrassed about it ("I look for work today...put my glasses on so no one sees me") and doesn't even have his own place to live ("I never thought that I'd be livin' on your floor/But the rents are high"). This life isn't the actual ideal that he's claiming it as, just a "picture of perfection". In this context, when he sings "Fuck yeah, we can live like this/We can live like this", it's much less of a proclamation and more like he's trying to convince himself. The same goes for when he states that "being poor was never better". At that point, it's almost become a joke.
Hammering the point home, in the final chorus McMahon changes the words up slightly and sings that he would "lie and tell [his] friends it's so much fun". If it wasn't already clear, this clinches it: everything he's said about the greatness of his California living is a lie, an illusion. The title "Holiday From Real" now takes on a kind of double meaning. Not only is this life a holiday from real due to the drugs and drinking, but McMahon's own perception of his life, his health, his well-being, is unreal. He sings that "when it's all over, [he'll] come back for another year"-- but as with the line that "we can live like this", it doesn't sound like he's coming back to something amazing. Rather, it sounds like he's trapped in a downward spiral.
On the up side, we do know that McMahon eventually does pull out of it. In a standalone song called "The Lights and Buzz", he describes returning to California after making a recovery from his battle with cancer. The echoes from the summer that he spent here follow him everywhere, as "it's Christmas in California/And it's hard to ignore that it feels like summer all the time". But he's also come back older and wiser, and doesn't want to fall into the same traps, singing, "This place is paradise, I'm sure/Here's my reservation/I got lost here once before/Inside a good vibration."
Whether McMahon's escape from the worst part of the California lifestyle was solely due to his illness wresting him forcefully from it or because he finally came to his senses and left his "holiday from real", we know things turn out okay for him in the end. "It's good to be alive", he sings throughout "The Lights and Buzz", and it really is an affirmation and a bookend to "Holiday From Real". At any rate, it's more life-affirming than the somehow-appropriate fake glossy sheen of that song.
I do love a happy ending.
Next week, I'm going to give one more shot to Fall Out Boy and make a better attempt to show you all why they are just so terribly witty. Trying and failing is better than not trying at all, right?
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