Preface: I fully encourage people to make their own meanings to songs. They are no less valid than the artist’s original intention. As such, I try and make my lyrics vaguely vague where possible.
If you’re reading this you very likely read the article on my previous single “He Doesn’t Deserve You”. If not here’s a quick recap:
I wrote an EP at university about the most dysfunctional couple, who were still in love with each other despite the insults and the violence they would constantly hurl at each other. For the sake of ease we’ll call them Stuart and Carol after Kenny’s parents from south park, but they can be any gender you like. “He Doesn’t Deserve You” is my second released single, but the final song on the EP that deals with the fall out from the couple breaking up and deals with the jealousy and obsession of Stuart in his pathetic attempts to convince Carol to come back to him after she finds someone else. “A History of Violence” was the song before “He Doesn’t Deserve You” on the EP, but has been released later due to production stuff I’ll get in to in this post. Savvy?
Great.
A History of Violence as previously stated is a song I wrote at University born out of my love for sad relationships in media like Placebo’s “Pierrot the Clown” and the book “Junk” by Melvin Burgess. All these stories we find that resonate with us whether you have a crippling heroin addiction or not. You can always substitute heroin for some other degenerative addiction you might have. I love finding characters that are not meant to be written as a hero despite being the protagonist, like Kenny Gabriel in Greg Keen’s “Soho” series or any character from Chuck Palahniuk. It adds a relatable level that can make you feel safe knowing these fictional characters can go through worse than you could ever dread to happen and still come out knowing that life goes on. It’s like that head space you get into when someone you know dies and you just stand in tescos surrounded by people who didn’t even know that person. like everyone is there own universe and one of your stars just faded away and became a gap inside you, but the parallel universe next to you is just trying to decide whether they want chicken and mushroom or a bombay bad boy. They’re unaware that light in your life ever even existed.
That’s the mood I tried to create with this song. That monotony of just going through the motions while your world implodes little by little. This is represented in the repetition of the song. The bass is the same riff throughout, the synths are just playing 2 chords and the rhythm guitar is playing the same 4 chords over the top. Letting the rhythm guitar ring out creates a distance between them that makes them feel like something is changing, but it’s the same damn chords. You're still waking up, eating, fucking, shitting and buying the same microwave dinner you bought last week before sleeping and going through it all again. Of course, this could be a little dull for a song so there are some extra bits.
There’s the funky guitar bit that comes in on the intros and choruses. This to me is to represent how dangerously carefree you can get in these states. Where you start saying “fuck it. It probably doesn’t matter” and start taking risks from being extra snarky around friends to walking down dangerous alleys home at night because you just can’t find it in yourself to care anymore. I consider this funky bit as dangerous because…well it’s kinda funky. How often do you get funk in goth? It was a big side step for me as a guitar player to even come up with this line, it’s really just not my style, but I’m happy with how it worked here. Another dangerous part for me in this song is the solos. I genuinely hate playing guitar solos. They’re fun to noodle with when I’m bored, but on songs they can be really self indulgent and just kind of fill space. Don’t get me wrong I appreciate a nice one when I hear it, I just don’t like playing them. So, to make this more interesting I switch up the keys I played the solo in from Harmonic in the intro solo to standard minor in the end one.
Yes I hate playing solos, but stuck 2 in to this song. But it was for story purposes.
The intro solo is inspired by raga music and the intro to “Killing an Arab” by The Cure. It’s hostile and lets you know going into this that you are not going to have a good time listening to this song. It’s like a challenge on whether you’re prepared to even listen to something like this. As if the 5 minute song length wasn’t bad enough. This reflects to the couples turmoil in the relationship and backed up with some audio underneath of genuine parents fighting I found online. The final solo goes over the outro music putting the song in a more western friendly frame as the right thing for the relationship happens. With the vocals trying to bargain “I know there’s always more” it all starts to fade away into the silence of a dead relationship.
Lyrically, I had just discovered the Burroughs method. A method I won’t shut up about to anyone who ever struggles with lyric writing. It’s a great technique for writers block (and you can find my previous article right here). For this song I used the Burroughs method along with some other lines I had lined up throughout my many lyric books, mix and matching them as I saw fit. For the Burroughs method I copy and pasted several poems I found online that I liked and a few more of my own that I felt fit the mood. I copied out any phrases that I particularly liked like “Naked fetish urges” or “Firm Innocence” and added a few extra words to make them fit around the phrases I already had. e.g I had the line “You pin the tears against my cheeks like insects” (inspired by “pin and mount me like a butterfly” from The Smith’s Reel Around the Fountain) and realised it rhymed with innocence and followed the pinned eyes metaphor to make something better than I could possibly have come up with by myself. That’s how I wrote everything besides the chorus, which I free formed over the music Damon Albarn style.
Some fun production notes is that a lot of the drums are copy and pasted, which really plays in to the monotonous hypnotic theme of the song. James Feist recorded this song for me and practically insisted that I got a real drummer in for them and knowing Jordan Harris was a bit of a beast he seemed like a perfect candidate. The guitars were all recorded at home on a focusrite. James also suggested rerecording the guitars live, but we agreed they weren’t really recorded that badly, plus I couldn’t be bothered to relearn the solo. But I did have to rerecord the rhythm guitar due to timing issues….just not live. So technically it took me roughly 2 years to write this song. My favourite thing about this song is the pitch shifted vocals in the chorus that I believe are a 3rd up. This was me ripping off “Disintegration” by The Cure, which is let’s face it their best album and song and a massive inspiration in the composition of the song.
