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xie_xie_xie (xie_xie_xie) wrote in qaf_music, @ 2008-12-07 14:52:00

Life is a game, and true love is a trophy...
So, the other day I was listening to the song "Poses" by Rufus Wainwright. This is the song that plays when Brian doesn't buy the roses in Season Two. And it got me thinking...

That song tells us very plainly what that scene means: that Brian is full of shit. He loves Justin but can't get over his own "image," his pose, and do something that would mean a lot to Justin because it would seem too conventional, romantic, expected, whatever. Without that song, there would be several possible interpretations of that scene: that Brian doesn't really love Justin that much, that Brian has a genuine rebellious streak that makes it impossible for him to do anything so banal as buy his lover roses, that Brian doesn't understand what the roses would have meant to Justin. All those things are perfectly reasonable conclusions to draw from that scene, but the lyrics of that song pretty much points a neon flashing arrow to its meaning: Brian's attitude is a pose, and that's bad.

A second example of this is the scene in 507 when Brian and Justin meet each other in the street, exchange painfully stilted small talk, and then walk in different directions. The scene ends with the song "You Are My Sunshine" by Stine J:

The other night dear
while I lay sleeping
I dreamt I held you in my arms
When I awoke dear
I was mistaken
So I hung my head and cried
You are my sunshine
My only sunshine
You make me happy
When skies are gray
You'll never know dear
How much I love you
Please don't take my sunshine away

Without the song, it's not all that clear what's going on inside Brian's head. Is he really "getting on with his life," as he says in 501? Did he make the best decision for both of them, to go along with Justin's decision without arguing it, to not say the words that might have changed things, such as answering Justin's question, "Then why are we still doing this?"

But with the song? "You'll never know, dear, how much I love you..." becomes a tragic statement. Justin will never know not because Brian doesn't love him but because Brian will never tell him. And Brian isn't moving on, or over it; he doesn't want to lose his "sunshine," and he's dreaming he didn't -- an interpretation that is particularly resonant because of Brian's Justin hallucinations/fantasies in early Season 3, the other time Justin left him.

Sometimes the lyrics don't precisely lock us into an interpretation, but they certainly are part of what I'd use to understand what's happening in a scene/arc/episode. For instance, it took me several viewings of 220 to notice the lyrics of the song at the Rage party, Kim English's "Everyday," and how they reflected on the episode, their relationship, etc. Once I did, I wondered how I'd ever missed it:

I got my health
I got my strength
I'm in my right mind
I still have breath so I got hope
And love is on my side
And where I go I know I need not look behind me
He keeps me safe
And this is something he does everyday

Same thing with Suzanne Palmer's "Show Me" in the recap of the Rage party in 301:

You got to show me that you love me
Show me that you still love me
Throughout the years, all through the tears
I still love you
Show me that you love me, too

Some songs have a huge impact on a scene, but it's not because of their words. The two Sigur Ross songs used in the show don't even have intelligible words: "The Nothing Song" that plays during the lookalike hustler scene in 301, and "Svefn-g-englar" in the scene in 202 where Brian and Justin make love for the first time since the bashing. Those songs are all about the mood, the tone, the feeling, but not putting hard and fast words on an interpretation.

But other songs have some influence on a scene's meaning, or relate to it, without the lyrics really changing it in any fundamental way. "Save the Last Dance for Me" is like that. The prom dance really wouldn't have been any more or less meaningful with a different song, as long as the song wasn't absolutely discordant with the overall positive mood of the scene. I know some people think it was a sort of commentary on the open relationship issue, and perhaps it was, but that doesn't really change the scene: Brian shows up. He wants to make Justin happy. He shows, clear as day, that he does love Justin. He's happy. Justin is happy. They're in love. Brian is open and vulnerable in a way we've never seen him.

The song doesn't change any of that. It would take a LOT for any song to change that, or no song -- watching the scene with the sound off doesn't really make much of a difference in how the scene "reads."

Of course, there are tons of gray areas here. I'd argue that my first two examples, however, aren't in one. I think "Poses" and "You Are My Sunshine" tell us bluntly what those scenes are about, what's going on in Brian's enigmatic mind.

I'd love to hear other examples you can think of where the lyrics to a song really nail an interpretation down for you, and also those where the song, lyrically or musically, contributes to the interpretation in some way.

There is a list of all the songs here, if you need a reminder.