Bright Eyes - “A Perfect Sonnet”
In the wake of my previous relationships, listening to Bright Eyes was always comforting to me. Especially in his earlier, more ragged years, Conor Oberst practically strove write the perfect soundtrack to a breakup. I guess it’s both unfortunate and ironic that I can’t listen to Bright Eyes to ease the discomfort and pain of my most recent breakup, since we spent so much time together listening to and talking about Bright Eyes. My only solace can be found in “A Perfect Sonnet” from the 1999 Every Day and Every Night EP. It was one of the few Oberst songs that my ex-girlfriend actively claimed to dislike.
Part of me wants to think that the reason she disliked it so vehemently was that she knew it was exactly the kind of song that I would write when she, as she undoubtedly knew she would, eventually left me. In “A Perfect Sonnet,” Oberst actually describes the process of writing such a song — the kind which he himself grew famous singing — and indicting the same unnamed lover who forced him to write it:
But once you knew a girl and you named her Lover
And danced with her in kitchens through the greenest summer
But autumn came, She disappeared
You can’t remember where she said she was going to
But you know that she’s gone ‘cause she left you a song
That you don’t want to singI couldn’t have said it better myself.
Also, has anyone picked up on the similarities, both lyrically and musically, between this song and The Antlers’ “Two?” There is something about that slowly building two-chord progression that resonates with me deeply.
weird, i listened to this song specifically yesterday after having not listened to bright eyes in a very very long time.
