This song found its way into the High Enough Songfight! Good stuff.
- I capo’d the acoustic guitar across the bottom 5 strings, leaving the 1st string open. It’s like drop-tuning, but the chord shapes don’t change.
- The Depeche Mode-y sound in the extro is a guitar that sounds nothing in the mix like it sounds solo’d.
NOTE: This song is on Waking Up In August, remixed and properly mastered.
“Girl” refers to an old friend’s wife, a woman I could not stand. She was shallow, self-absorbed, and inclined to conversations about nothing, on and on for hours as if whoever she had trapped in the room with her hung on every word of the interminable vacuous nonsense that spilled from her mouth. No one did.
Yet, insufferable as she was, I would have tolerated her if not for the way she treated her husband. As she told it, his existence served one purpose: her endless embarassment. She berated him constantly for, as far as I could tell, just being himself…
“Why did you do that??! You can’t do anything right!”
“What’s wrong with you, you idiot?”
“Why are you so useless?”
Everyone who knew the couple agreed she treated him that way, she sucked out his will to live, so she’d feel better about her shallow insecure self. Of course, no matter how much she tore him down, she never did feel better. And the heartbreaker for me was that the guy forever failed to realize what was happening. “Well,” he told me once, “she’s keeping me honest.” The poor miserable bugger believed her hurtful behaviour was good for him. And the clincher: “You know, I love her for it … ” He was convinced that, not only did she help him, but he actually needed her to do it. Just as she was convinced she needed a whipping boy, that if she could just finally, for once and all properly, put him in his place, she’d stop hating herself…
I no longer talk to either of them, but sadly, I suspect they’re still at it.
and the way they oughta be.
But there’s nothing changed about you,
nothing’s there without you.
The rules are all for me.
When you tear me down, no better way to pick you up.
When you tear me down what have you done?
You’ll always be the highest one.
You’ve been standing over me so long.
You’ll always be the highest one.
Still you’re never high enough,
you’re never high enough.
O.K. girl, I get it: you’re the meaning and the words,
I’m just the tune.
I should have run when I saw you coming
with your empty talk of nothing
that somehow filled the room.
If you wanna take my will, some night you’re gonna get it all
and if you take my will, then why go on?
You’ll always be the highest one.
You’ve been standing over me so long.
You’ll always be the highest one.
Still you’re never high enough,
you’re never high enough.
I see it now, the world won’t have you as you are.
I see it now, the world won’t take you alone.
I see it now, you’re only up when you’ve got me down,
and still you’re never high enough.