Hiding Meaning and Seeking Depth

A unique array of music notes played its way into the international music business in 1998 when Imogen Heap emerged as a musician with her album i Megaphone. The tracks were self produced, and the songs that were not created by her were co-written by her creative mind. Several of her singles were released until the debut of another album named Frou Frou, which was created alongside a Guys Sigsworth. In 2002 they released the album Details along with several other singles.

She decided to produce her second solo album in December of 2003 and in August of 2005 announced that she had licensed her new record Speak For Yourself to Sony BMG to be released in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. It was one of the tracks of this album that captured my ears with it's mesmerizing sound and poetic lyrics. She was later nominated for several Grammy Awards and is currently hoping to finish her next album in December of 2008.

The highlight of her 2005 album is a song titled Hide and Seek, and as a listener, this song created a new angle of music to me that would raise the bar for all other creative art in music. The song is a solo voice accompanied by a vocorder which creates an eerily beautiful harmony. I know very little about musical jargon and details, but due to the fact that one of my passions is writing poetry and lyrics to songs, I choose to focus on the lyrics of this song. However, I read quite a bit of feedback on the quality of the instrumental and musical aspects of this song. One blogger commented "It is jammed full of tweaky effects, and is wildly inconsistent. One minute we have large concert hall reverb, the next the room is dead. There is exactly one industrial hammer sound in the 4 minutes. One minute we have bright (almost painful) treble-rich pop EQ, the next we have mid overload: muddy distorted vocorder. This inconsistency should make it really bad. It makes it really good." I did not understand most of this language, but it served to increase the value of the song as far as I am concerned.

These are the lyrics of the song (if you want to watch the video, click here):

Where are we?
what the heck is going on?
the dust has only just begun to form
crop circles in the carpet
sinking feeling
spin me round again
and rub my eyes,
this can't be happening
when busy streets amass with people
would stop to hold their heads heavy

Hide and seek
trains and sewing machines
all those years
they were here first

Oily marks appear on walls
where pleasure moments hung before the takeover,
the sweeping insensitivity of this still life

Hide and seek
trains and sewing machines (oh, you won't catch me around here)
blood and tears (hearts)
they were here first

Mmmm whatcha say,
Mmm that you only meant well?
well of course you did
Mmmm whatcha say,
Mmmm that it's all for the best?
Of course it isMmmm whatcha say?
Mmmm that it's just what we need
you decided this
whatcha say?
Mmmm what did you say?
ransom notes keep falling out your mouth
mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cut outs
speak no feeling no I don't believe you
you don't care a bit, you don't care a bit
(hide and seek)
ransom notes keep falling out your mouth
mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cut outs (hide and seek)
speak no feeling no I don't believe you
you don't care a bit,
you don't care a (you don't care a) bit
(hide and seek) oh no, you don't care a bit
oh no, you don't care a bit
(hide and seek) oh no, you don't care a bit
you don't care a bit
you don't care a bit

Obviously the message of this song is very powerful. So powerful that there are several blogs and websites dedicated to finding the meaning behind this song. This website is a blog that has dozens and dozens of different perspectives. One perspective that stood out to me was by a blogger named Anon, who claims the song is about a house and what it experiences as the last member of the house lay dying. I do not agree in the least bit with his opinion but that proves nothing about whether it is right or wrong. One of the beautiful things about music is that it can transcend all differences that most things cannot. Regardless of age, gender, nationalism, religion, or any other defining characteristic, music can mean millions of different things to different people. I can write a song about experiencing a break up, and someone else can read it and connect to the song thinking it is talking about the trauma of moving to a new country. Music connects people from so many different places in life, and I believe music holds far more power than we understand.

Personally, I strongly believe the song is written from the perspective of a lover, either close to marriage or in a marriage, being left. I took some time one evening to dissect the song and analyze the meaning behind it, and the conclusion I came to was that this was a song written about the painful loss of love and how it shakes the narrator's world, and how she suffers from the aftershock of such turmoil. Here are my arguments:

"Where are we?
what the heck is going on?

the dust has only just begun to form
crop circles in the carpet
sinking feeling
spin me round again
and rub my eyes,
this can't be happening
when busy streets amass with people
would stop to hold their heads heavy."

This verse of the song describes the unreal feeling and shock that takes over when her life abruptly changes. She is dazed, soaked with confusion, and wondering where her reality is and how she got to this point. The dust begins to crop circles in the carpet describes her situation as if there has been so much turmoil, and only now is the truth setting in and the dust begins to settle around her as it all comes crashing down. Then comes that sinking feeling that we all have felt at one point or another when our grieving truly begins. She hopes to be spinned and woken up from this nightmare and asks her tormenter to rub her eyes because this surely is not real. She has entered the phase of denial in her grievance, where reality is impossible to swallow. Just as we have all felt the sinking feeling, we have probably all had those moments where we asked "How is the world still going on when something so horrible has happened?" This situation is causing her deep sorrow, yet the people still travel the streets while she feels like they should stop and hang their heads in mourning along with her.

"Hide and seek
trains and sewing machines
all those years
they were here first"

I believe she uses the words hide and seek to create an image of innocence, and simpler days before this all happened. In analyzing the trains and sewing machines, the commonality that seemed to speak the boldest was that of a wedding; the sewing machine that would create her wedding dress, and make the train that would flow behind her, in happier days.

"Oily marks appear on walls
where pleasure moments hung before the takeover,
the sweeping insensitivity of this still life"

As she analyzes the situation, she begins to sadly accept it. The oily marks on the walls are from where her fingers touched the wall and removed the pictures, the hanging pleasure moments. However she cannot escape the pain that this lover caused her when leaving. She describes it as sweeping insensitivity of this life taking over. This is also another emotion most of us have felt when life seemed to come crashing down on us.

"Hide and seektrains and sewing machines (oh, you won't catch me around here)
blood and tears (hearts)
they were here first."

Here she repeats the same loss of innocence and happiness in her wedding dreams and seems to enter the more bitter part of mourning that is particular to a break up, because there is resentment from the one who left. Her feelings have developed more of a painful anger as she uses words like blood and tears to describe her emotions. When she says "they were here first," I think she is stating that heartbreak has been happening for thousands of years, which is perhaps a form of comfort for her grieving.

"Mmmm whatcha say,
Mmm that you only meant well?
well of course you did
Mmmm whatcha say,
Mmmm that it's all for the best?
Of course it is
Mmmm whatcha say?
Mmmm that it's just what we need
you decided this
whatcha say?
Mmmm what did you say?"

The bitterness takes root to anger and resentment in this verse as she repeats lines that were used to justify her lover's abandonment. She describes the statements that were made and her responses, which seem to be powerless against the will of her lover to leave. She then makes the simple statement "you decided this". In that statement she confides in the listener of her rejection, because all of those choices made for her were not her own. She continually asks what did you say as if to portray the disbelief she is feeling towards ths situation.

"ransom notes keep falling out your mouth
mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cut outs
speak no feeling no I don't believe you
you don't care a bit, you don't care a bit(hide and seek)
ransom notes keep falling out your mouth
mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cut outs (hide and seek)
speak no feeling no I don't believe you
you don't care a bit,
you don't care a (you don't care a) bit
(hide and seek) oh no, you don't care a bit
oh no, you don't care a bit(hide and seek)
oh no, you don't care a bit
you don't care a bit
you don't care a bit"

The ransom she seems to be speaking of here is everything she ever gave her lover; commitment, love, time, thoughts, emotions, secrets, irreplaceable moments, emotional investment, and all the other things you willingly pour into a person that you love. The lover that abandoner her holds these things of hers ransom. The "newspaper word cut outs" create a powerful image of her loss as she compares her lover's

rejection to a kidnapping.This gives the lover a much more antagonistic characteristic, due to the fact that we always cheer on the victim. She wraps up her painful artistic realization by simple stating "you don't care a bit" and explaining that she no longer believes her former lover. This is where her grieving develops into a loss of hope.

This review is, of course, my personal opinion. However as I mentioned earlier in this blog, music transcends several layers of society and culture and is very based on the perspective of the listener, or the eye of the beholder. So it is more than likely and highly possible that my perspective of this song is based my personal connection to the song and on an opinion shaped by my own experiences.