Who Has Given Up ??

[bombaysaffires]

Originally Posted by michelej1

What I love about SYLM is that he doesn't love her and Christine manages to convey that on one hand, tucking reality neatly beneath frothy romance. The song conveys two contradictory messages in my mind: what she would like to be the truth and what is the truth. I've always thought that was very clever.

Stevie ... thinking about what you wrote, I've thought that EFO does have a certain detachment. I see the protagonist as fooling herself. She exudes false bravado. She taunts. He adores her. They do it everywhere they can, every time they can get away. Get away!(much like Paul's alleged "get back" to Yoko). But none of it's true and she's really dying inside. The lyrics always gave me the impression of an outside narrator looking in, detached, shrewd, sad, witnessing someone else's delusion. But we listeners, what are we supposed to feel? Are we cheering the affair? I think yes, in a way. The pounding disco music says triumph. We dance as "the other woman" chortles. We support her. I don't know if we are necessarily supposed to be connecting to the despair.

Anne Lindbergh once described Charles feeding their daughter. He would dangle a cherry in her face and when she would look up at it, mouth ajar, he'd stick a vegetable in her mouth. I think that's what EFO does.

I mean, I don't think it's the sophisticated song you requested, but I think it conveys more than what's on the shallow surface, because it strikes me as both celebration and doom.

I honestly think the second "get away" is just an aural flourish, i.e. there needs to be an additional couple of syllables at the end of the line which isn't enough to express a new thought so she repeats the "get away", like an echo. I think reading it as otherwise is over thinking it.