#Retrospect for life lyrics movie
#Retrospect for life lyrics full

The artist broods in isolation, spills imaginative power over a psychic wound, and emerges with something bold and fraught with angst. On one level, this is a satisfying, albeit typical, origin story. Later, he glanced up and saw the DivinylsвЂ™ music video for вЂњI Touch MyselfвЂќ on MTV and simply transcribed the image on the screen for a line in the song: вЂњShe was touching her face.вЂќ вЂњ The FreshmanвЂќ became the вЂњThe Freshmen,вЂќ expressing the vague sense of reckless innocence that he was straining to capture.

#Retrospect for life lyrics movie

Case in point: Writing the song from a cabin on Gull Lake near Kalamazoo, Mich., he cast his gaze on a VHS tape heвЂ™d rented the night before, a movie starring Marlon Brando and Matthew Broderick. But heвЂ™s also frank that not all the lyrical pieces of the puzzle fit together. In the song, the girlfriend dies by suicide - thereвЂ™s a line about how she took вЂњa weekвЂ™s worth of Valium and slept.вЂќ If he could do it over again, heвЂ™d cut that line, because it didnвЂ™t happen in real life. It just felt cathartic to release the lyric into the world as a way to half-admit my participation, because I struggled to process it.вЂќ And growing up in a very conservative Reform Christian home, I struggled with guilt. SheвЂ™d been seeing someone else, so none of us knew who the father was. The girl I was dating got pregnant, and she told me after the fact that sheвЂ™d had an abortion. I mean, at the time I was going through a crisis.

#Retrospect for life lyrics full

вЂњAs a songwriter, you kind of go where the muse takes you, and I found a phrase - вЂstop a babyвЂ™s breath, and a shoe full of riceвЂ™ - that grounded the song. вЂњI didnвЂ™t set out to write a song about abortion,вЂќ he said.

They struck platinum in 1997 with their first studio album, вЂњVillains,вЂќ which sold more than 3 million copies, powered mostly by their abortion-centered song, вЂњThe Freshmen.вЂќ I asked him why he penned a song about a topic that for decades seldom had anyone touched. I reached out to Brian Vander Ark, songwriter and lead vocalist for The Verve Pipe, a post-grunge band from East Lansing, Mich., that formed in 1991. They signaled a shift to a more expressive, more vulnerable emotional register and swerved away from masculinity as something daring and aggressive, successful and domineering. But granting that, itвЂ™s also true that these songs aimed to remake masculinity. On the one hand, this self-pity is, well, pathetic - men making abortion about them and whining about having to cede power. If you trace the thematic patterns in popular music from this time, you can see a constellation of songs - including вЂњPennyroyal TeaвЂќ (Nirvana, 1993), вЂњThe FreshmenвЂќ (The Verve Pipe, 1997), вЂњBrickвЂќ (Ben Folds Five, 1997), вЂњRetrospect for LifeвЂќ (Common, 1997), вЂњSlideвЂќ (Goo Goo Dolls, 1998), and вЂњWhat ItвЂ™s LikeвЂќ (Everlast, 1998) - that touch on a particularly unlikely topic: abortion. In fact, itвЂ™s become something of a running joke among millennials to dramatize their adult-aged realization that their generation-defining music was bleak as hell - and that it papered over cultural conflicts and psychic wounds with ebullience. Third Eye BlindвЂ™s вЂњSemi-Charmed LifeвЂќ took us, blithely unaware, on a speed-snorting bender, and вЂњJumperвЂќ wistfully wrestled with homophobia and suicidal ideation. The CranberriesвЂ™ вЂњZombieвЂќ subtly deplored terrorism in Northern Ireland. TLCвЂ™s вЂњWaterfallsвЂќ hinted at the AIDS epidemic. In Martina McBrideвЂ™s вЂњ Independence Day,вЂќ what seems like a frothy celebration of American patriotism actually masks a harrowing story, told through the eyes of a child whose mother burned her father alive to escape domestic violence.

Fraught topics were handled with a lyrical obliqueness. The music scene of the 1990s in many ways defies definition - itвЂ™s just too heterogeneous - but lyrics from this era do share a common feature: a tendency toward misdirection.