Track 28: She's Leaving You - MJ Lenderman
Though you know what is implied when your room is free...
MJ Lenderman writes songs like short stories where whole novels can exist in your imagination. She’s Leaving You could be about a lot of things - infidelity, a midlife crisis, a nasty breakup and the reeling that comes after, the party you throw to put it behind you, the hangover that accompanies it - and it can also somehow be about all those things simultaneously.
Are we to take literally when Lenderman sings:
Go rent a Ferrari and sing the blues /
Believe that Clapton was the second coming.
If so, that sounds like a boomer trying to cling to his fragile masculinity as his marriage dissolves. To me, Lenderman is drawing a line to any kind of pathetic attempt at male ego to recover from being left behind.
And the chorus is a reminder that there is a piper to pay at the end of the day. “It falls apart,” Lenderman sings. “We all got work to do.” Las Vegas holidays eventually end, and you find yourself back at work. The fantasy comes to an end. The rental Ferrari gets returned. Clapton turns out to be a right-wing anti vax Tory asshole. None of it matters. She’s not leaving you. She’s already left. And no matter what you’ve done to try to move on, you eventually need to deal with reality.
It falls apart. We all got work to do. Back to the grind. Bring on the guitar solo with shades of Pavement and Built to Still. Rock on.
Click here for the Infinite Mixtape on Spotify.
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