“So jealous”: the song Courtney Barnett wishes she had written
She may not know it, but Courtney Barnett is the envy of many musicians. Such is her muted and humble disposition; she carries herself with the appropriate level of effusiveness to depict the middle-of-the-road songwriter, but the reality is anything but. She’s a fierce storyteller and compelling guitar player who has built up a catalogue of songs that countless musicians would be happy to boast.
She’s positively unique while capturing glimpses of classic influence for sharp-eared fans to pick out. Whether it’s Neil Young, Bob Dylan or Patti Smith, there are traces of the legends in Barnett’s work. Regardless of their cultural impact, all artists have that golden goose of a song they wish they could accredit their name to. While every musician in the world would unanimously like to take ‘Like A Rolling Stone’, it’s almost too perfect to even begin considering a world where that doesn’t belong to Dylan.
For Barnett, the song she wishes she had written is an unsurprisingly modest grunge number by The Lemonheads. She said to Interview magazine, “I like them a lot. I was a bit late to discovering them, as with everything else. I bought a copy of The Hotel Sessions last year and re-discovered how good that shit is—especially ‘Paid to Smile’.”
Adding, “I was just so jealous of ‘Being Around’ and wished I had written it, so I started singing it at shows, regrettably having to announce it as a cover. Plus, we used to do a band version of ‘Shame About Ray’ because it’s just fun to play. So, yeah, I guess they are important.”
It’s a suitably playful song that fits Barnett’s mood-straddling disposition. Somewhere between abstract and human, hilarious and heartfelt, it captures the essence of everyday life on top of a noodly melody that welcomes the sort of sprawling daydream imagination we’ve come accustomed to in Barnett’s work.
It’s a track that wouldn’t be out of place on Barnett’s debut album, Sometimes I Just Sit And Think And Sometimes I Just Sit, with its whimsical storytelling of the relatively mundane and playful melodies that give light to brief thoughts of existential darkness.
Something Barnett isn’t credited with as an artist is her versatility. In 2023, she wrote the original score for a documentary film about her life, a move that took her emotional navel-gazing to another level. Through sparse guitar melodies and airy synths, she fluctuates between a series of tender emotions but without the use of her trademark lyricism, which ultimately took her songwriting abilities to another level.
But to achieve that feat, she leaned on the works of another idol. Referencing Neil Young’s soundtrack for Jim Jarmusch’s western-themed film Dead Man, Barnett said, “I love how improvised this record sounds, but also how sure of itself it sounds at the same time,” she concluded while talking to Line Of Best Fit about Young’s work. “There’s such a confident, open energy. The music feels so open to the world around it, like it’s soaking everything in and turning that into sound.”
