The 10 best Elliott Smith lyrics
Elliott Smith had a truly singular talent for stringing words together in song. He could distil his darkest, innermost thoughts and feelings into simplistic phrases without ever compromising on their meaning. In ‘Twilight’, for example, he sings, “Haven’t laughed this hard in a long time, I better stop now before I start crying,” perfectly capturing the effects of depression in a way that is both concise and heart-wrenching.
However, Smith could also create beautiful imagery and poetry, using each to further enhance the emotional devastation of his compositions. He intensified tales of break-ups with imagery of suns, sermons and steeples, drew comparisons between shell games and the falsities of life, and employed repetition to enhance the effects of his music. His lyrics were always carefully crafted, whether they seemed simple on the surface or not.
Allowing himself to be vulnerable while also creating some of the most intricate lyrics in indie rock, Smith inspired countless other artists with his words. Indie icon Phoebe Bridgers has often cited him as one of her biggest influences, which comes across in her moonlit tales of melancholy, and even Frank Ocean has paid homage to Smith in his catalogue.
Almost every song in Smith’s catalogue is steeped in lyrical talent, which makes picking out his ten best lyrics quite a difficult task. Below, we’ve attempted to cover the breadth and depth of his skill with a pen and a guitar, picking out his best depictions of depression, drug use and heartbreak. From ‘Say Yes’ to ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’, find our top ten Elliott Smith lyrics below.
The 10 best Elliott Smith lyrics
‘Say Yes’
“I’m in love with the world, through the eyes of a girl, who’s still around the morning after,
We broke up a month ago, and I grew up, I didn’t know, I’d be around the morning after”
The majority of Smith’s discography is steeped in inescapable sadness, but ‘Say Yes’ is one of few exceptions to that rule. In the same vein, most break-up songs contain negative feelings of bitterness and anger, written in the throes of heartache, but ‘Say Yes’ resists those urges. Instead, Smith’s love for this person still finds its way into his lyrics, as does his hope that they might one day return to one another.
Some of Smith’s most beautiful lyrics come at the beginning of the song, as he sums his former relationship up in two gorgeously constructed phrases. The sweetness and singularity of their love is contained in the first line, while the latter uses the same words to detail their break-up. Just like his former lover stuck around “the morning after,” Smith still finds himself mourning and loving her even though their relationship has ended.
Simple on the surface but intricately constructed, it’s an example of one of Smith’s best pieces of lyric-writing.
‘Waltz #2 (XO)’
“I’m never gonna know you now, but I’m gonna love you anyhow”
‘Waltz #2 (XO)’ contains another example of Smith’s ability to construct heart-breaking meaning with seemingly simplistic phrases. The track charts his relationship with his mother, who “shows no emotion at all” and “stares into space like a dead china doll.” Smith might not be able to reach her, but that won’t stop him from trying. And it won’t stop him from loving her, either.
While the verses are much more intricate, the chorus of the song is made up of just one line: “I’m never gonna know you now, but I’m gonna love you anyhow.” It’s another example of Smith’s more hopeful writings, committed to love even if it might not be reciprocated. As the song reaches its conclusion, Smith devolves into repeating the line over bouncy keys and unnerving sounds. Its impact increases with each refrain.
‘A Fond Farewell’
“This is not my life, it’s just a fond farewell to a friend,
It’s not what I’m like, it’s just a fond farewell to a friend”
The best lyrics are intimate yet interpretable, and ‘A Fond Farewell’ is a fine example of this. In the chorus, Smith sings, “This is not my life, it’s just a fond farewell to a friend.” The line could be Smith detaching himself from his own life in order to soften the impact of suicide or death, a topic that returns much later in the song. He could also be referring to drug use, as often referenced in his songs.
Has Smith reached a point of despair with drug use, relinquishing his life and saying farewell? Or is the farewell directed towards the substances themselves, containing a more optimistic meaning? The lyric can take on whatever meaning the listener ascribes to it, however they interpret the song from the verses that surround it, but it never loses Smith’s voice and emotion in the process. The line is so great that even Frank Ocean referenced it in his 2016 track ‘Seigfried’.
‘Everything Reminds Me of Her’
“The spin of the earth impaled a silhouette of the sun on the steeple,
And I gotta hear the same sermon all the time now from you people”
One of the most accurate and intimate break-up songs of all time, ‘Everything Reminds Me of Her’ charts the inescapability of heartache. Smith flits between admissions that he can’t stop thinking about his former love and apologies for doing so, perfectly capturing the emotional motion sickness induced by a break-up. But there are a couple of lines in the song that stand apart from the rest.
While many of Smith’s lyrics thrive in their simplicity, allowing the songwriter to declare his feelings in the most straightforward manner possible, poetic imagery allows Smith to explain the intensity of his feeling in ‘Everything Reminds Me of Her’. “The spin of the earth impaled a silhouette of the sun on the steeple,” he sings, emphasising the devastation of a break-up while comparing the dismissals of his friends to sermons.
The line stands out all the more for the simplicity of those that surround it.
‘Twilight’
“Haven’t laughed this hard in a long time, I better stop now before I start crying,
Go off to sleep in the sunshine, I don’t want to see the day when it’s dying”
‘Twilight,’ which appeared on Smith’s final, posthumous album From a Basement on the Hill in 2004, is a gorgeous instrumental effort. Smith’s usual, lo-fi sound is still there in his raw vocals and acoustic guitars, but they’re cushioned by birdsong and a truly stunning outro full of strings. Lyrically, it pushes into depression, drugs, love, and all of Smith’s most revisited themes.
In the opening verse, Smith perfectly captures the feeling of depression in a fairly simplistic description. He stops himself from laughing out of fear that he will soon be crying and heads to sleep in the sun so not to “see the day when it’s dying.” The lyrics could feel fairly monotonous, but Smith injects them with a sadness and weight that few other lyricists can harbour.
‘Miss Misery’
“Do you miss me, Miss Misery, like you say you do?
I know you’d rather see me gone than to see me the way I am,
But I am in the life anyway”
In the 1990s, Smith penned a song called ‘Miss Misery’ that would feature in Gus Van Sant’s beloved film Good Will Hunting. The song shot Smith to new levels of fame and acclaim, even earning him an Academy Award nomination. It’s easy to see why – ‘Miss Misery’ contained all of Smith’s trademark, soft, subdued guitars and raw vocals, as well as discussions of the interconnection between addiction and depression.
Several times throughout the song, Smith addresses his title character, which seems to personify alcohol or depression. “Do you miss me?” he asks, before musing, “I know you’d rather see me gone than to see me the way I am, but I am in the life anyway.” The lines reflect the threatening nature of both substance use and mental illness, suggesting they want to see him “gone,” but there is some hope in his final line.
‘Somebody That I Used To Know’
“I had tender feelings that you made hard, but it’s your heart, not mine, that’s scarred,
So when I go home, I’ll be happy to go, you’re just somebody that I used to know”
Beyond the gorgeous guitars that make up the instrumentation for ‘Somebody That I Used To Know’, the song contains some of Smith’s most entrancing melodies. This is particularly true of the very first verse, which is impossibly satisfying in its rhyme and rhythm without compromising on any emotion or meaning. Smith addresses the person that he used to know, the impact they had on him, and how he has grown from it.
Although this person has made his “tender feelings” hard, Smith’s words are optimistic, affirming that he has not been scarred and left behind in the past. Given the more hopeful nature of these opening lines, it makes sense that they’re paired with such an engaging melody, each element serving the other.
‘2:45 AM’
“It’s 2:45 in the morning and I’m putting myself on warning,
For waking up in an unknown place with a recollection you’ve half erased”
‘2:45 AM’ is one of the darkest offerings in Smith’s catalogue, finding the songwriter reflecting on “mute memories” over a quiet guitar. “Tired of living in a cloud,” he sings, “If you’re gonna say shit now, you’ll do it out loud.” Set at 2:45am, the song primarily deals with the painful memories that are more likely to arise when you’re left alone at night or, like Smith, sleepwalking.
At one point in the song, Smith addresses the worst possible outcome of these thoughts with the line, “It’s 2:45 in the morning and I’m putting myself on warning for waking up in an unknown place with a recollection you’ve half erased.” He doesn’t explicitly mention suicide, but his words are despairing enough to imply meaning, a desperate attempt to rid those memories and thoughts.
‘King’s Crossing’
“I can’t prepare for death more than I already have,
All you can do now is watch the shells, the game looks easy that’s why it sells”
Smith addresses death once more on ‘King’s Crossing’, mainly through the lens of his newfound fame. The song deals with the fat men in Beverly Hills and the judgement musicians are subject to, delivering these ruminations over some of his most advanced instrumentation yet. The song flits between eerie swirls, distorted keys, and dramatic swells, each intensifying it further.
“I can’t prepare for death more than I already have,” Smith sings in a particularly devastating lyric, “All you can do now is watch the shells, the game looks easy that’s why it sells.” A perfectly constructed metaphor, Smith’s words could refer to drugs, to fame, or even to life in a more general sense, again thriving in their vagueness.
‘A Distorted Reality Is Now A Necessity To Be Free’
“A distorted reality is now a necessity to be free,
It’s so disappointing, at first I put it all down to luck,
God knows why my country don’t give a fuck, fuck”
The song title of ‘A Distorted Reality Is Now A Necessity To Be Free’ alone could be seen as one of Smith’s best works. It’s a phrase that feels as relevant now as it must have done to Smith in the late 1990s or early 2000s, a phrase that encapsulates the tiring nature of the world and the need to relieve yourself from that exhaustion in some way through drugs, through ignorance, through lies. Whatever it takes.
After delivering the song title, Smith adds, “It’s so disappointing, at first I put it all down to luck, God knows why my country don’t give a fuck.” His words chart a realisation that we have all had, when we remove our rose-tinted glasses and realise that the world isn’t all it was once made out to be. Smith’s exasperated repetition of, “Fuck,” only adds to the impact of these lines.
