Dissecting Jeff Buckley’s greatest lyric
When thinking of Jeff Buckley’s memory, it is difficult not to mythologise him.
The tragedy of his story follows his legacy, yes, but more than anything, the myths that surround him come from his otherworldly presence, preserved in his music and the glimpses of footage that fans can look back on.
For a young man in his late 20s, he possessed a rare vulnerability, often pondering questions of romance, morality, existence and damn-near everything in between, with a wisdom that seemed unnaturally sound. During one conversation, when asked how he’d like to be remembered, he responded quietly, “As a good friend,” staring into the distance before continuing, “I don’t really need to be remembered. I hope the music’s remembered.” In another, he expanded on a similar question by stating, “I’d really rather that people not even think about me as a face or a name or a body, and just come and listen.”
Considering Buckley’s past, the workings of his emotional centre begin to unfold. Born Scott Moorhead, he had only met his father, the cultish folk singer Tim Buckley, once before his death. Raised by a single mother in California, his father’s absence followed him into adulthood when, in 1991, he made his public singing debut at a tribute concert for his father in Brooklyn, New York.
Consciously or not, Buckley’s music was rooted in this experience, a personal reckoning with his father’s death and an effort to fucking claw back a piece of himself. The then-25-year-old soon moved to Manhattan’s Lower East Side and began performing at Sin-é, a tiny cafe in the East Village. Like something out of a film, people began to flock to the cafe in droves, hoping to catch a glimpse of the young singer with the powerful goddamn voice. Attracting a crowd of record label executives, Buckley soon signed with Columbia and began work on his debut album, 1994’s Grace.
Grace is a stunning opus that holds a timeless resonance. Elements of progressive rock, folk, metal and jazz float through, establishing Buckley’s signature ability to fluctuate from a mournful ballad to a raucous wail in seconds. Lyrically, Buckley revealed his cards as a true poet. Each song, even its covers, is an intentional story of hope and pain, told through his unique lens, and each line holds the weight of his world. Listening now, Grace sounds like it was sung by someone who had already lived a staggering life, but also had so much more to give.
Heartbreak is a channel that runs across each track on Grace, whether that be romantic, familial or existential. ‘Mojo Pin’ holds allusions to drug use and ‘Eternal Life’ rages against injustice, while ‘Dream Brother’ scathes against Buckley’s abandonment by his father and the burden left on his mother. Romance plagues ‘Lover, You Should’ve Come Over’ and ‘So Real’, and is left behind on ‘Last Goodbye’. On an album filled with lines that perseverate like a wound in your mind, the defining one is sung in the album’s namesake.
Opening with the whimsical notes of an acoustic guitar, ‘Grace’ paints an image of the sky: “There’s the moon asking to stay,” Buckley sings in a hushed tone, “Long enough for the clouds to fly me away.” His voice already sounds like it’s soaring, stuck in a dream. But, he roots himself in reality with the lines that follow: “Oh, it’s my time coming, I’m not afraid / Afraid to die.”
The lines are haunting, of course, but in the context of when they were sung, Buckley was one to always be preoccupied with his own mortality, seemingly in awe of life itself and its fleeting at a moment’s notice. For him to make peace with a doomed possibility is a radical maturity. The last line solidifies this verse as one of his numerous great lyrics: “My fading voice sings of love.” “Love,” drawn out vocally to mimic the sensation of fading out of consciousness, becomes Grace’s defining emotion. Faced with death and left to mourn, Buckley chooses love among all else, and it is this choice that makes him so sensational.
The song continues to ponder life and death, contemplating what Buckley and his lover will both leave in their wake. In an interview with MuchMusic in 1994, Buckley expanded on the song’s meaning: “I always describe it as not fearing anything, anyone, any man, any woman, any war, any gun, any sling or arrow aimed at your heart by other people because there is somebody, finally, who loves you for real, and that you can achieve a real state of grace through somebody else’s love in you.” He concluded, “Grace is what matters, in anything, especially life, especially growth, tragedy, pain, love, death; about people, that’s what matters.”
Buckley’s memory is, understandably, often shrouded in tragedy. But, listening to the music he has left behind, even his saddest moments grasp onto the ideas of love and grace and their interchangeable nature. It is in this space that Buckley should be remembered.
