Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit? Read Free Page B

It could equally have been called “Farewell My Lover.” Or “See Ya! My Lover.”
    Blunt—the “epitome of 21st-century chic,” according to Britain’s
Daily Mail
—has probably said good-bye to quite a lot of lovers. If the tabloids are to be believed, he can’t keep it in his trousers: sort of like a posh-rock Charlie Sheen. But those were merely casual lovers. The lyric of “Goodbye My Lover” explores the crucifying angst of losing a woman whom Blunt apparently “pretty much considered the one.” Interviewed on
James Blunt at the BBC,
the queen-guarding balladeer called the story “very tragic.” And, in many ways, he is right.
    The song begins by questioning whether he failed his departed lover, before his thoughts turn back to the early flowering of romance, depicting himself as some sort of victor (that would be the army background, presumably). His powerful presence caused his new lover temporarily to lose her sight. So he decided to take, not forcibly but with a certain righteous zeal, what he considered his property by an everlasting, possibly even divine, covenant. Continuing this reverie, Blunt imaginatively plants his mouth over various parts of his ex-lover’s body before recalling how they would both sleep under the same sheets. This is the reason he can then claim intimate knowledge of her physical odor. In the chorus, he repeatedly bids his lover farewell before revealing she was probably the only woman for him in the world. The implication is that he can never love again. That’s it. He is spent. Good-bye to love, perhaps.
    The second verse finds the war-hero-turned-singer still urgently envisioning his former girlfriend and imploring her to remember him, too. He has watched her at various times, he reveals, while she was crying, while she was smiling, and also while she was sleeping (but not for that long, he also assures her—not so long that it would become fucked up). You see, he would happily have sired offspring with this woman and spent all his born days with her. Actually, you know what? If she isn’t there, if she has definitely disappeared for good, then he is genuinely unsure about whether he can carry on living. It’s almost “Don’t leave me or I’ll kill myself!” But it’s not quite not that, either. Self-harm, possibly?
    The chorus then repeats the claim that she was his only hope. Everything is ruined. And so on. We’re nearing the end now, but he must still detail the haunted nights; the nights when, lying in bed, he actually feels her hands. Honestly, it’s like she’s really there. She’s not, though, as we hope we’ve established. At the song’s climax, he brings out what we have already surmised: that this heartrending experience has left him an empty husk. To emphasize this point, he repeats it six times.
    Don’t make the mistake of thinking his life has any meaning. Because it hasn’t. Okay? Selling lots of records in America? He’s not bothered. “People have said it sounds like she died or something like that,” he admitted. He’s very hunky with his top off and all that. But wouldn’t you chuck him, too? The moaning fucktard.
    BODY ART
    Actually, we think you’ll find it’s called a
tattoo.
When Picasso painted
Guernica,
it was not, as we understand it, a toss-up between a nightmarish pyramid arrangement of horrors in black, white, and gray representing the effects of fascist bombing, or a big eagle with MOM written underneath it. We could be wrong.
    BOOKMAKERS
    It is not true what your granny tells you: that no one makes money from gambling and the bookies always win. Very rich people who own horses make money from betting, as they have the information and connections to get on to a good thing. It’s old men who hang around in OTBs all day smoking, cheering for horses and dogs in a very quiet, desperate, defeated way, often abbreviating the name as if using the full name of an animal that will, in all likelihood, only cause them pain is