The song that helped turn Courtney Barnett’s poetry into music
Hidden in between slacker guitars and blunt vocal tones, Courtney Barnett shines brightest in her lyricism. Her eloquent rambles encapsulate all the insecurities, anxieties and mundanities of modern life and, accordingly, she has become the voice of a generation.
Though her lyrics seem to tumble out effortlessly, often feeling as if we’re just catching up with her over coffee, there’s a natural poetic flair to her writing. She often juxtaposes specific, everyday imagery with philosophical contemplation, delivered in simple but dense language.
In the opening moments of ‘Kim’s Caravan’, for example, she declares, “I see a dead seal on the beach, the old man says he’s already saved it three times this week, guess it just wants to die, I would wanna die too, with people putting oil into my air, but to be fair I’ve done my share, guess everybody’s got their different point of view.” From the image of a dead seal, she devolves into discussions of pollution, accountability, and differing ways of thinking.
This ability to poetically flit between mundane and mammoth themes pervades her catalogue, so it’s no surprise that her first endeavours into writing came in the form of poetry. Speaking with NPR, Barnett once explained how Paul Kelly and the Messengers’ ‘To Her Door’ inspired her to turn her poetry into lyrics. When Barnett was in tenth grade, her English teacher set the class a task to analyse the track: “We had to go through the lyrics and figure out what every word meant, and why he used this word instead of that word and, you know, descriptive [language].”
The Australian singer-songwriter recalls the experience being a “bit of a moment” for her: “I’d been writing poetry and playing guitar and stuff up until then, but I think it just hit a different level because there were so many familiar Australian locations and a lot of it was just so familiar. So maybe it connected a lot more.”
A young Barnett found particular inspiration in the specifics of the song. While the teacher pointed out narratives and methods of writing, she was particularly intrigued by Kelly’s reference to “the buttery” in the second verse. Not knowing what the phrase referred to at first, she found out that it was a rehab in Sydney.
Sparking an interest in the intricacies of poetic songwriting, she explained, “[I liked] learning what little parts of the songs were, which you might otherwise just brush off.” This certainly seems to be an element that Barnett incorporated into her own discography, which is littered with specific images and references, each of them more than worthy of close analysis.
Barnett concluded that when she heard the track, it “probably opened up seeing stories in a different way and how they can develop. Such a simple little story can have so much impact when it’s drawn out.” It started a “snowball of change”, which led to her current cult indie status and her tangled, rambly, but always exquisite songwriting.
