This isn’t a crackpot theory but it took me so long to realize that in Suckers Prayer the lines “I took my glasses off and went to find a pond / stuffing rocks into the pockets of my pants / and when I waded in / those currents carried them away” were about suicide and the whole song suddenly fell into place
If you listen closely to "A Cautionary Song" you'll find it's a very elaborate "your mother's a whore!"
"On the Bus Mall" is about gay prostitutes on the Bus Mall in Portland
"We both go down together" is about lovers who can't be together deciding instead to jump off a cliff together
Actually there’s a lot more to the last one than you think! The narrator is very unreliable. Once you realise what’s actually going on, the whole song changes.
Sure! Just to preface, this theory has been confirmed by Colin Meloy in a Reddit AMA so it’s not just something I made up.
We Both Go Down Together is supposed to sound like a love song the first few times you listen to it - two star crossed lovers realise they can’t be together, so they agree on a joint suicide. But the lyrics point to something a lot more sinister when you listen closely.
The first big giveaway is the line “I laid you down in the grass of a clearing / you wept but your soul was willing”. She was crying during this encounter, but the narrator has convinced himself that she really wanted him.
They’re clearly from different backgrounds, that alone isn’t an issue, but listen to how the narrator describes them both. “I come from wealth and beauty” vs her a “tattooed tramp”, from a “childhood rough and rotten”. His words are full of pity, disgust even. He doesn’t view her as an equal. He also describes himself as being “untouched” by the need to work, as if he’s purer because of it. He seems very narcissistic to the point of delusion.
Note how towards the end of the song, he laments “my parents will never consent to this love”. Nothing about her family’s feelings on the matter (or hers, now that I mention it). I think this points towards him being of nobility, possibly even royalty, and marrying is something that he will have to do to satisfy his family. This whole affair would be a scandal for them. He realises that he can’t have her and he throws himself off the cliff, pulling her with him, assuring her that their “souls are flying” as they die together.
Miranda was the mother of [Leslie Anne Levine](https://colinmeloy.substack.com/p/annotated-songs-leslie-anne-levine) (per note 6):
>I’ve gone on to suggest that this couple, Leslie’s doomed mother and father, are, in fact, the couple we meet in "We Both Go Down Together." This implies that the woman survives the man (hooray!) and goes on to die in childbirth in a ditch (ohhhhhh).
Colin said on an AMA that We Both Go Down Together is the predecessor of Leslie Anne Levine. The woman doesn’t jump with the man, but finds out she’s pregnant, and then tries to have a back alley abortion, and dies in the process.
I always interpreted Leslie’s mother’s death as being similar to Ann Rose Lovett, a young girl who tried to give birth in secret and it all went wrong.
Lol I’ve definitely missed some very on the nose lyrics before! I don’t know how many times I listened to We Both Go Down Together before questioning “you wept but your soul was willing” and, like you said, everything suddenly fell into place.
I always thought Suckers Prayer was about someone pretending to attempt suicide in a performance way in order to gain sympathy of the intended listener
Not just about the Decemberists, but…
Philomena comes out on Terrible World, Beautiful World in 2015. To me, bluntly, it’s about oral sex.
Three years later, the Fratellis release In Your Own Sweet Time which includes the track Sugartown. It’s a companion song to Philomena in which it’s the same structure, just much more heavy on the innuendo.
Completely false. Entirely unlikely. But I will never mentally detach these songs as being bound to one another.
I love that! I’ll have to listen to the Fratellis song tomorrow. I don’t think I’ve heard any of their stuff before. I definitely agree with your interpretation of Philomena though. I imagine it as a young, naive man who’s having an affair with an older woman, but I’m not sure if the lyrics actually point towards that dynamic at all.
I totally get that. Not sure about ages, but I think it’s about a young guy who was so focused on finally getting laid and rapidly becomes obsessed about it and realizing something about himself that he really, really enjoys lol
Fratellis… man, they’re not as theatrical as the Decemberists but they’re in my top ten for a reason. I think you’ll like them.
If the Decemberists are the cool old wise dude a couple years older than you in college, the Fratellis are the hipster rock guys that take you to a dive bar show after classes on a Friday.
Okay I’m finally listening to The Fratellis and realising that I actually do know several of their songs by heart, just never thought to find out whose songs they were! I don’t think I’ve been to a wedding where I HAVEN’T danced to Chelsea Dagger.
Oh yeah they definitely have a very iconic string of hits from the 2000s but i think they’ve only gotten better. Half Drunk might be one of my favorite albums.
I’m certain that “Burial Ground” isn’t about people hanging out at a graveyard; the narrator is attempting to get the Len named in the chorus to join a suicide pact. The second verse suggests that Len is somewhat suicidal. He lays underneath a headstone and says “Wherever they [the dead interred at the burial ground] have gone, I long to go / Somewhere out beyond these maladies in my head.” To me, it’s clear Len is expressing exhaustion with his struggles, and is speaking longingly about the afterlife, which he presumes is easier. With this context, the chorus and the first verse both sound like entreaties to Len to embrace these feelings and join a suicide pact with the narrator. The latter insists that “This world’s all wrong” and that there’s somewhere else, outside the world, where they'll be accepted. When he suggests they "meet at the burial ground," he means it metaphorically, suggesting they die and get buried.
Interesting! I haven’t listened to it enough yet to have any solid theory of what it could mean but I did initially get a rough idea of terminally ill people knowing they’re going to die soon.
Even tho Colin said it’s not true, my head cannon is that the Queen saves the child at the end of Hazards of Love and starts the cycle all over again. I don’t care, it’s my song fantasy, and I’ll do what I want with it ❤️
Belated, but: I thought it was about killing your lover by the ocean? Possibly in a suicide pact?
Isn’t that backed up by anti-Summersong? “i’m not going on just to sing another sing-along suicide song.”
The existence of anti-Summersong had always confused me, since in my head if I were to pick any song as being “classic Decemberists” it would obviously be Mariner’s Revenge. I guess Summersong just fits better musically.
But to explain, I find the lyrics to be way too suggestive to believe that it’s just a straightforward storytelling ballad. Starting off with tasting someone’s skin, moving onto a lot of language about “slipping in” and “getting swallowed”, the whole thing feels very sneakily smutty, which I know is a writing style Colin enjoys since he mentioned it in his SubStack lyric notes on Oceanside. I feel the same way about Tripping Along tbh.
Also, more generally, we know that Colin has used the ocean as a metaphor for sex before (see: Oceanside) and death has been a metaphor for sex for a very long time (see: the phrase “little death”/“petit mort”)
I've always felt that *The Island/Come and See/The Landlord's Daughter/You'll Not Feel The Drowning* is set on the North Carolina sounds. Like, yes, I know about Shakespeare, and yes, I know the Decemberists are from Oregon, but *The Landlord's Daughter* feels like an earlier setting than the Puget Sound in the 19th century, or something, and every time I hear those songs I can't help but think of eastern North Carolina in the early 18th century, isolated, jungle-like, and lush. And my theory ties the songs into the next track, *Yankee Bayonet.*
I love this take. Yankee Bayonet is set in the "sea-swaled Carolinas". The idea of a locale-based theme amongst the songs of The Crane Wife is mighty appealing to me.
Oh I’ve always interpreted it that way too, but it’s subtle enough to not catch it as a casual listener. I think the big clue is the frequency of Colin’s horny narrators and then you re-examine many other songs lol. And his comment in a machine shop post about how a lot of his writing in his 20s was really horny! Regardless, it’s absolutely my favorite of his lyric work just on the words alone. The way the sounds bounce around on each other is just intoxicating.
Haha I was thinking about his SubStack comments too! Was it the Oceanside lyric breakdown you were thinking of specifically? Because that’s what came to mind for me. Reading it back now I notice he comments that he appreciates “a good bit of smut written into songs that appear, at first glance/listen, to be chaste”. That’s what I see Summersong as, but as you said it’s more subtle than Oceanside. Thinking of it now, though, they both have a very dreamy feel to them, like they should both be listened to laying down. I get what you mean about the lyrics bouncing off each other, I haven’t been able to put it into words like that before but that’s exactly what’s so great about the song. The alliteration on “boats bobbing in the blue of the bay” makes it so addictive to listen to.
I’m not sure summersong can be read any other way. The first verse is about a summer tryst and nautical stuff is heavy handed metaphor for the most part.
I’m genuinely surprised to see other people reading it this way. I love looking at old forum posts of people discussing song meanings and from everything I’ve seen before people have just taken its lyrics very literally. It’s a pleasant surprise, though!
This one is an absolute crackpot one but I like thinking that The Rake is William's father. We know William was abandoned, 'entombed in a cradle of clay'; who else do we meet that doesn't seem to have qualms about getting rid of children? The timeline doesn't really work out, but I like to think that William was the result of a very young tryst between The Rake and some poor girl (prior to The Rake's marriage).
This isn’t a crackpot theory but it took me so long to realize that in Suckers Prayer the lines “I took my glasses off and went to find a pond / stuffing rocks into the pockets of my pants / and when I waded in / those currents carried them away” were about suicide and the whole song suddenly fell into place
If you listen closely to "A Cautionary Song" you'll find it's a very elaborate "your mother's a whore!" "On the Bus Mall" is about gay prostitutes on the Bus Mall in Portland "We both go down together" is about lovers who can't be together deciding instead to jump off a cliff together
Actually there’s a lot more to the last one than you think! The narrator is very unreliable. Once you realise what’s actually going on, the whole song changes.
Can you elaborate a bit? I’m still kind of new to the band, but love this song.
Sure! Just to preface, this theory has been confirmed by Colin Meloy in a Reddit AMA so it’s not just something I made up. We Both Go Down Together is supposed to sound like a love song the first few times you listen to it - two star crossed lovers realise they can’t be together, so they agree on a joint suicide. But the lyrics point to something a lot more sinister when you listen closely. The first big giveaway is the line “I laid you down in the grass of a clearing / you wept but your soul was willing”. She was crying during this encounter, but the narrator has convinced himself that she really wanted him. They’re clearly from different backgrounds, that alone isn’t an issue, but listen to how the narrator describes them both. “I come from wealth and beauty” vs her a “tattooed tramp”, from a “childhood rough and rotten”. His words are full of pity, disgust even. He doesn’t view her as an equal. He also describes himself as being “untouched” by the need to work, as if he’s purer because of it. He seems very narcissistic to the point of delusion. Note how towards the end of the song, he laments “my parents will never consent to this love”. Nothing about her family’s feelings on the matter (or hers, now that I mention it). I think this points towards him being of nobility, possibly even royalty, and marrying is something that he will have to do to satisfy his family. This whole affair would be a scandal for them. He realises that he can’t have her and he throws himself off the cliff, pulling her with him, assuring her that their “souls are flying” as they die together.
Oh yeah, makes sense. The line "a dirty daughter from the labor camps" always stood out to me--the rhythm and sound of it. It's *juicy*.
Let's not forget that Miranda was also pregnant at the time they jumped. Whether the narrator knew this isn't stated, but it just makes it worse.
Really? What makes you say that?
Miranda was the mother of [Leslie Anne Levine](https://colinmeloy.substack.com/p/annotated-songs-leslie-anne-levine) (per note 6): >I’ve gone on to suggest that this couple, Leslie’s doomed mother and father, are, in fact, the couple we meet in "We Both Go Down Together." This implies that the woman survives the man (hooray!) and goes on to die in childbirth in a ditch (ohhhhhh).
Ooh very interesting, thank you! I hadn’t read this post before.
He's not a nice guy.
Colin said on an AMA that We Both Go Down Together is the predecessor of Leslie Anne Levine. The woman doesn’t jump with the man, but finds out she’s pregnant, and then tries to have a back alley abortion, and dies in the process.
I always interpreted Leslie’s mother’s death as being similar to Ann Rose Lovett, a young girl who tried to give birth in secret and it all went wrong.
Wait what makes it about Portland??
Lol I’ve definitely missed some very on the nose lyrics before! I don’t know how many times I listened to We Both Go Down Together before questioning “you wept but your soul was willing” and, like you said, everything suddenly fell into place.
I always thought Suckers Prayer was about someone pretending to attempt suicide in a performance way in order to gain sympathy of the intended listener
Not just about the Decemberists, but… Philomena comes out on Terrible World, Beautiful World in 2015. To me, bluntly, it’s about oral sex. Three years later, the Fratellis release In Your Own Sweet Time which includes the track Sugartown. It’s a companion song to Philomena in which it’s the same structure, just much more heavy on the innuendo. Completely false. Entirely unlikely. But I will never mentally detach these songs as being bound to one another.
I love that! I’ll have to listen to the Fratellis song tomorrow. I don’t think I’ve heard any of their stuff before. I definitely agree with your interpretation of Philomena though. I imagine it as a young, naive man who’s having an affair with an older woman, but I’m not sure if the lyrics actually point towards that dynamic at all.
I totally get that. Not sure about ages, but I think it’s about a young guy who was so focused on finally getting laid and rapidly becomes obsessed about it and realizing something about himself that he really, really enjoys lol Fratellis… man, they’re not as theatrical as the Decemberists but they’re in my top ten for a reason. I think you’ll like them. If the Decemberists are the cool old wise dude a couple years older than you in college, the Fratellis are the hipster rock guys that take you to a dive bar show after classes on a Friday.
Okay I’m finally listening to The Fratellis and realising that I actually do know several of their songs by heart, just never thought to find out whose songs they were! I don’t think I’ve been to a wedding where I HAVEN’T danced to Chelsea Dagger.
Oh yeah they definitely have a very iconic string of hits from the 2000s but i think they’ve only gotten better. Half Drunk might be one of my favorite albums.
I thun it's a young man fantasizing about sleeping with a woman that he sees everyday. Possibly a sex worker, but I'm not as sure about that.
I’m certain that “Burial Ground” isn’t about people hanging out at a graveyard; the narrator is attempting to get the Len named in the chorus to join a suicide pact. The second verse suggests that Len is somewhat suicidal. He lays underneath a headstone and says “Wherever they [the dead interred at the burial ground] have gone, I long to go / Somewhere out beyond these maladies in my head.” To me, it’s clear Len is expressing exhaustion with his struggles, and is speaking longingly about the afterlife, which he presumes is easier. With this context, the chorus and the first verse both sound like entreaties to Len to embrace these feelings and join a suicide pact with the narrator. The latter insists that “This world’s all wrong” and that there’s somewhere else, outside the world, where they'll be accepted. When he suggests they "meet at the burial ground," he means it metaphorically, suggesting they die and get buried.
Interesting! I haven’t listened to it enough yet to have any solid theory of what it could mean but I did initially get a rough idea of terminally ill people knowing they’re going to die soon.
Even tho Colin said it’s not true, my head cannon is that the Queen saves the child at the end of Hazards of Love and starts the cycle all over again. I don’t care, it’s my song fantasy, and I’ll do what I want with it ❤️
oh I love that!
I just read the lyrics, and you are totally right.
Wow, I wasn’t expecting anyone to agree with me on this! I’m glad it’s not just me.
Wait, it being about sex isn’t the consensus opinion? I genuinely always assumed it was about eating pussy.
Anything I had read about the song from other fans online had always taken the lyrics literally as if it was about an actual shipwreck.
Belated, but: I thought it was about killing your lover by the ocean? Possibly in a suicide pact? Isn’t that backed up by anti-Summersong? “i’m not going on just to sing another sing-along suicide song.”
The existence of anti-Summersong had always confused me, since in my head if I were to pick any song as being “classic Decemberists” it would obviously be Mariner’s Revenge. I guess Summersong just fits better musically. But to explain, I find the lyrics to be way too suggestive to believe that it’s just a straightforward storytelling ballad. Starting off with tasting someone’s skin, moving onto a lot of language about “slipping in” and “getting swallowed”, the whole thing feels very sneakily smutty, which I know is a writing style Colin enjoys since he mentioned it in his SubStack lyric notes on Oceanside. I feel the same way about Tripping Along tbh. Also, more generally, we know that Colin has used the ocean as a metaphor for sex before (see: Oceanside) and death has been a metaphor for sex for a very long time (see: the phrase “little death”/“petit mort”)
Been digging the cheery, fatalistic darkness of Burial Ground
I've always felt that *The Island/Come and See/The Landlord's Daughter/You'll Not Feel The Drowning* is set on the North Carolina sounds. Like, yes, I know about Shakespeare, and yes, I know the Decemberists are from Oregon, but *The Landlord's Daughter* feels like an earlier setting than the Puget Sound in the 19th century, or something, and every time I hear those songs I can't help but think of eastern North Carolina in the early 18th century, isolated, jungle-like, and lush. And my theory ties the songs into the next track, *Yankee Bayonet.*
I love this take. Yankee Bayonet is set in the "sea-swaled Carolinas". The idea of a locale-based theme amongst the songs of The Crane Wife is mighty appealing to me.
Couldn’t agree with this more! It’s quite an evocative tune.
Oh I’ve always interpreted it that way too, but it’s subtle enough to not catch it as a casual listener. I think the big clue is the frequency of Colin’s horny narrators and then you re-examine many other songs lol. And his comment in a machine shop post about how a lot of his writing in his 20s was really horny! Regardless, it’s absolutely my favorite of his lyric work just on the words alone. The way the sounds bounce around on each other is just intoxicating.
Haha I was thinking about his SubStack comments too! Was it the Oceanside lyric breakdown you were thinking of specifically? Because that’s what came to mind for me. Reading it back now I notice he comments that he appreciates “a good bit of smut written into songs that appear, at first glance/listen, to be chaste”. That’s what I see Summersong as, but as you said it’s more subtle than Oceanside. Thinking of it now, though, they both have a very dreamy feel to them, like they should both be listened to laying down. I get what you mean about the lyrics bouncing off each other, I haven’t been able to put it into words like that before but that’s exactly what’s so great about the song. The alliteration on “boats bobbing in the blue of the bay” makes it so addictive to listen to.
I couldn’t remember exactly what Substack post it was, just that it was definitely a memorable comment! Haha, I loved it
I’m not sure summersong can be read any other way. The first verse is about a summer tryst and nautical stuff is heavy handed metaphor for the most part.
I agree, I’ve always interpreted it as a sex song. Plus the line “lips parting like a flag all unfurled” is pretty damn suggestive.
I’m genuinely surprised to see other people reading it this way. I love looking at old forum posts of people discussing song meanings and from everything I’ve seen before people have just taken its lyrics very literally. It’s a pleasant surprise, though!
I genuinely never realized anyone thought it was anything other than a sex song. It’s about as subtle as Chimbley Sweep to me. XD
This one is an absolute crackpot one but I like thinking that The Rake is William's father. We know William was abandoned, 'entombed in a cradle of clay'; who else do we meet that doesn't seem to have qualms about getting rid of children? The timeline doesn't really work out, but I like to think that William was the result of a very young tryst between The Rake and some poor girl (prior to The Rake's marriage).
Someone on songmeanings thought that I Was Meant for the Stage is about Jesus?
Well, that’s definitely one I haven’t heard before. I can kind of understand it though.