‘Elevator Operator’: The true story behind Courtney Barnett’s classic
When Courtney Barnett emerged in the mid-2010s with her wordy brand of slacker rock, people hailed the Melbourne singer-songwriter as one of the next big stars of lyrical indie, and immediate comparisons were drawn between her and the cult heroes of decades past such as Stephen Malkmus and David Berman. Full of humour but also brimming with real emotions and relatability, songs from her first releases like ‘History Eraser’ and ‘Avant Gardener’ were praised for how the Australian managed to rattle off such verbose diatribes.
There was plenty of hype surrounding the release of her debut album in 2015, and when it arrived, all of the expectations were lived up to. Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit is an album that people often see as defining an indie renaissance in 2015, and the amount of similarly inclined songwriters that emerged following the album’s release only goes to demonstrate just how impactful and influential she had managed to become in a short space of time.
Its brilliance was noticeable from the very first song, ‘Elevator Operator’, a darkly humorous tale based on a true story relayed to her by a friend. In the very first line, which comes in instantly, we’re introduced to the song’s protagonist: “Oliver Paul, 20 years old/thick head of hair, worries he’s going bald,” and Barnett depicts him as a misfit who is feeling disenchanted with his situation in life.
Working a dead-end job (“feeling sick at the sight of his computer”) and sporting a bedraggled appearance (“he’s dropping soy-linseed Vegemite crumbs everywhere”), Oliver seems to have given up on life, and his decision to not go into work that day and instead build Coke can pyramids in the park then leads him to head to the rooftops of the Nicholas Building – a business centre located in central Melbourne.
When he encounters an older woman in the elevator, she believes that he’s heading to the roof to hurl himself off the edge due to how she perceives his dishevelled look, and urges him, “don’t jump, little boy, don’t jump off that roof / you’ve got your whole life ahead of you, you’re still in your youth”. However, we later learn that he simply goes to the top of the building to enjoy the view and get away from the mundanity of life, telling her, “I come up here for perception and clarity / I like to imagine I’m playing SimCity”.
Barnett explained that these were based on real events in an interview with music blog Nothing But Hope And Passion after the release of the album, stating: “He told me the story, and it seemed to be such a crazy kind of story to me, just a crazy situation. She must have assumed that something was wrong with him, because he was young and had scruffy hair or something – I don’t know.”
She felt it was the perfect song to open the album due to how instantly impactful it is, and how it introduces the listener to her storytelling style with a sense of immediacy. “It’s the only song that isn’t about me and my feelings, but about someone else’s,” she explained, “And the lyrics come in straight away, right in your face. It seemed like a good way to set the tone for the album.”
Oliver Paul is now at least 30 years old, and while Barnett has never given us a follow-up story on how his life is unfolding, I wonder if he still goes up to the roof of the Nicholas Building to gain “perception and clarity”.
