Lyrically Speaking: Examining ‘Tears in the Typing Pool’ by Broadcast
Some songwriters thrive in their directness. They sprinkle secrets and specificities about their own relationships and experiences into their lyrics, or they find favour with audiences through their ability to put into words a feeling that others struggle to convey. Broadcast vocalist Trish Keenan took a slightly different approach. Though her writing style may have seemed direct in its short, simplistic style, the meaning of her words was often shrouded by peculiar phrasing and a “less is more” approach.
Nowhere is this clearer than on Broadcast’s signature track, the dreamy ‘Tears in the Typing Pool’, which is as inscrutable as its title suggests. The song featured on the band’s third full-length offering, Tender Buttons, and has proven to be one of the most enduring entries into their catalogue. ‘Tears in the Typing Pool’ is sparse in every sense of the word – Keenan keeps her melancholic musings to a minimum and accompanies them with a lonely guitar and the occasional wavering synths.
As Keenan affords listeners so few words, each one feels deliberately picked and placed to drive the meaning of the song. “Succumb to the line,” she begins, “the finishing time.” From the opening word, there’s immediately a sense that Keenan has been resisting something for a long time, trying not to succumb to an inevitable outcome. There’s also a sense that she’s been putting in a lot of effort to do so, with a nod to a “long distance runner”.
Though the finishing time is in sight, Keenan finds herself stopping on the corner. “But I won’t give up, although I’ve stopped too,” she shrugs. Her words seem to flit between definitive and hesitant, as if she can’t quite bring herself to cross the finishing line. The ambiguity of her lyrics so far gives us no clues as to what she’s been struggling with for so long, yet she can’t quite bring herself to the end, but the chorus clears things up ever so slightly.
“Before the end of you and me,” Keenan laments, “The patchwork explains, the land is unchanged.” It becomes slightly clearer that Keenan is addressing the end of a relationship, one that she has been resisting and upholding for a while now. The patchwork that charts their romance shows that nothing has changed and perhaps nothing will, still, she remains in limbo.
Her indecision is only emphasised by the quaint vocalisations that follow. “Do-do, do-do,” she repeats as if allowing herself to think the situation over one final time. By the time Keenan reaches her second verse, it seems as if she’s reaching a more concrete decision. Her metaphors of choice are no longer hesitant, running from something and stopping at corners. Instead, she picks out images that are completely black and white.
“Interpret the rooms,” she sings, “My tears in the typing pool.” The latter half of the line, which gives the song its title, is a particularly poignant image. It evokes the hard work of a secretary with the phrase “typing pool,” as if Keenan has been the administrator for their relationship, but its meaning extends beyond literal. The word “pool” implies that Keenan’s tears are so plentiful that she could swim in them, taking the melancholy of the song up a notch.
Continuing with her administrative imagery, Keenan sings, “The letters are sighing, the ink is still drying, I told you the truth, and now I sigh too.” She has penned her final letter to this person, inscribing the truth in black and white, but as she watches the ink sinking into the paper, she can’t help but sigh. Even when her words are at their most declarative, there’s a feeling that she’s hesitant to let them tumble from her mouth at the risk they come to fruition.
Her chorus is more declarative on its second run-through, too. She no longer finds herself “before” the end of her relationship but turning the page on it. “Across that white plain,” she sings, extending the metaphor of the page even further, “the land is unchanged”. As she reiterates this fact, unchanged itself compared to the rest of the chorus, there’s a feeling that this end is inevitable. No matter how much Keenan strives not to succumb to it, her attempts are futile.
Despite her attempts to reconcile the relationship or to come to terms with its end, Keenan ends the song in almost the exact same position she started it in. “Do-do, do-do-do,” she sings, either mournfully or contemplatively. It’s impossible to tell, as she layers a slightly more optimistic delivery of the vocalisations over a downtrodden one. Perhaps the ambiguity is the point of it all.
‘Tears in the Typing Pool’ is a tale of indecision, of the inevitable end of a relationship and the longing to resist it. But at the same time, the beauty of the song is that it could be something else entirely. Broadcast harbour feelings with their words and instrumentation, creating wistful melancholy through echoes and fuzz, but they allow her lyrics the space to breathe. ‘Tears in the Typing Pool’ is undeniably melancholic and reflective, but the specifics of those feelings are left entirely up to the listener.
