I am a sucker for poetry, wittiness, sophistication, and deep lyricism in music. It can change a song or poem from being average, to being one of my favorites. Well really, I'm a sucker for anything unique or out of the ordinary. So when I found out that two of my favorite bands, MewithoutYou and Say Anything, would be doing a cover/parody of one of each others songs I was immediately intrigued.
Both of these bands are known for their unconventional musicianship and their provocative, compelling lyricism. Their lyrics tell stories, and are often quite confessional on themes such as religion, life, death, and self-reflection. I highly recommend either of these bands to anyone just on the lyricism alone. They may be aggressive at times, but if you can learn to look past or like it, then you won't be disappointed.
I will be specifically focusing on MewithoutYou's "Torches Together" and Say Anything's "Torches Apart." Now, "Torches Together" is mainly about unity and group strength. The song starts off with "why burn poor and lonely," implying that if we are suffering, why do we suffer alone? Aaron Weiss, the bands singer and lyricist, then goes on to sing;
"Why pluck one string... what good is just one note?
Oh, one string sounds fine, I guess... but we were once 'one notes',
We were lonely wheat quietly ground into grain...
What light and momentary pain!
So why the safe distance, this curious look?
Why tear out single pages when you can throw away the book?
Why pluck one string when you can strum the guitar?"
Essentially what Aaron is saying is that, we shouldn't exclude ourselves, we shouldn't allow ourselves to live alone and feel alone. The guitar metaphor explains that we are all essentially parts of a whole and instead of only allowing or having one part shine at a time, we should all ring together.
On the other hand, Say Anything's version is quite the opposite. Instead of being about the need for fellowship, this is about the dangers of being alone. So this song essentially has the same meaning as Torches Together, but focuses on the horrors of loneliness instead of the perks of groups and friendship.
After listening to both of these songs, one similarity to another's work became apparent. The poet William Blake was known for contrasting and at the same time bringing unity to a major concept. This is true of his contrasting poems "The Tyger" and "The Lamb," which are paired together and found respectively in Blake's collections Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. In "The Lamb," Blake admires the lamb's "Softest clothing wooly bright" and "tender voice," and questions its creator. This is contrasted with "The Tyger," in which the speaker is fearful of the Tyger and its forged in fire nature. However, under further analysis, we start to realize that the poems are not so much comparing and contrasting pieces as a unity piece. The maker of the Lamb is the same as that of the Tyger, and thus we understand that the creator should be both feared and revered. It is two opposite ideas that approach the same thing, just as the pain of loneliness in "Torches Apart" accomplishes the same thing as the joy of friendship.
