Tom Zoellner is a tenured Professor of English at Chapman University, the author of numerous distinguished works of non-fiction, and an editor-at-large of the Los Angeles Review of Books. Professor Zoellner has graciously consented to briefly withdraw his critical gaze from high art and cast an eye for SPIN at pop and rock lyrics.
Of all the hyperboles surrounding pledges of love, none may be more common than the one promising fidelity all the way to the grave and the one by which we have most reason to be suspicious. When Prince insisted “I would die 4 u” without even taking the time to properly spell one-syllable words, we might forgive the listener for not deleting her dating apps just yet. But the reach for a proper yardstick — even if unfathomable — to define the extent of one’s temporary passion has antecedents in Western culture as least as old as the famous wedding vows in the 1559 Anglican Book of Common Prayer: “to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part; according to God’s holy ordinance, and thereto I plight thee my troth.”
When it comes to plighting those troths, few do it better these days than Billie Elish, who opens her composition “Birds of a Feather” with an image of decomposition:
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I want you to stay
‘Til I’m in the grave
‘Til I rot away, dead and buried
‘Til I’m in the casket you carry
This gets our attention, though we might have reason to question her originality, in the same way that experienced moviegoers might roll their eyes at yet another depiction of an upset character vomiting to demonstrate the height of the stakes.
Such is the visual shorthand of the unoriginal director. Not to mention that a pledge to stay with someone until they serve as the pallbearer — perhaps made without the beloved’s assent — may cause them to edge away slightly or find themselves with unexpected plans after all next Friday, sorry about that, we’ll get together some other time.
In this way, Billie Eilish provides a bunny-boiling echo of Bonnie Tyler who insisted in 1983’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart” to a possibly terrified listener that “forever is going to start tonight” and that her “falling apart” and nightly routine of crying is now over thanks to the soon-to-be-lover’s gentle ministrations and that they’re both “living in a powder keg.” Um, okay. Maybe we should at least go on another dinner date before talking about that?
Eilish goes further in this quasi-suicidal pledge when she gives the equivalent of a “do not resuscitate” order. “And if I’m turning blue, please don’t save me,” she says, with the insinuation that the listener should think exactly as she. It’s in the very title of the song — birds of a feather — who are going to fly into a truck’s windshield together. Right?
We are left to believe that the object of Eilish’s fatal attraction may not feel quite as macabre as she about their partnership.
But you’re so full of shit, uh
Tell me it’s a bit, oh
Say you don’t see it, your mind’s polluted
Say you wanna quit, don’t be stupid
And I don’t know what I’m crying for
I don’t think I could love you more
In other words, you’d better get on board this train to Death Station, buddy. Can’t you see how in love with you that I am? Here we have the extreme version of the oldest dilemma of coupledom — the unequal level of affection, or at the very least, different methods of communication as to the nature of that affection.
The frustration Eilish feels is also not without precedent in the Western canon, though perhaps not quite as hackneyed as a movie protagonist blowing chunks at a troubling sight. Leave it to that sunny cynic Dorothy Parker for putting it this way in the 1926 poem “Love Song.”
My love runs by like a day in June,
And he makes no friends of sorrows.
He’ll tread his galloping rigadoon
In the pathway of the morrows.
He’ll live his days where the sunbeams start,
Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
My own dear love, he is all my heart,—
And I wish somebody’d shoot him.
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