i know the end
This is my favorite song on the album and my favorite song of all time. It wasn’t always that way, though. When I first heard it, I was giving Punisher its first overall listen, years ago, and this song gave me a bit of whiplash. In comparison to the rest of the songs, most of which are really soft, especially Graceland Too, it is a faster, louder song, to say the least. It kind of jump-scared me a bit, actually, when I first heard it. But I’ve come a long way from thinking, “What is this? Let me turn this off” to thinking, “Okay, this is my favorite song that has ever been released on the planet. I want this to be engraved into my bloodstream, forever.” The reason I am so excited to review this song is because I think it gives that first impression to a lot of people - kind of scaring them. If you aren’t prepared to go from a super quiet, typical Phoebe song, to the most intense buildup, bridge, and journey through the song, it is a bit jarring. The song does a full one-eighty, and it is very metalinguistic. There are so many different genres just within the one song, and I think what is beautiful about it, especially being the closing track to the record, is that it covers all of the messages that are conveyed throughout the Punisher album, as well as all of the sounds that Punisher put out there, going from songs like Garden Song, a repetitive track that she made on an Ipad, of one simple melody on a loop, talking about things like killing Nazis in your yard, to Kyoto, an upbeat track, to songs with the saddest melodies like Savior Complex, that have real, deep romantic pains about relationships and the kind of melodic tunes they have are more instrumental and acoustic. This album, in all, goes to many different places, and what is so great about this song, in particular, is that it covers all of those places, and it is like a trailer of the album, in a way. It wasn’t a single - I think it would have been too off-putting to most people first hearing it. But once you have listened to the album, it is a perfect way to close it, because it is a short summary of everything you just heard. You start the album with a track that has hope, and looking at the future. Saying, “Im doing better than ever,” and talking about burying your past, burrowing it away. By the end of the album, she has an entirely, maybe more complex message. She is driving away from her past, finding a new home, a theme we hear in Chinese Satellite. (“I want to go home,”) It is a song about knowing you aren’t actually that much better, and you are tired of trying to find a place for yourself. It is saying, “It’s time to leave,” and I think of this album, as a whole, as a summary of her lifetime, painting the narrative of her timeline, and this is leaving us with the end. There is a major change to that one starting period of her life, represented by Garden Song, to leaving the album and leaving us.
I know the end was initially just a song called I Know because it was just the first half of the song. It was a slow outro type of song if we imagine the outro of a song being the entire track. It was about saying goodbye and leaving the album and this era of her life. The first half of the song sounds like it is about a couple breaking up, and the aspects that come with that: themes of leaving things the way they are, saying goodbye. That’s one way you can view this part of the song. It is a bit about tour, which makes sense because she wrote a lot of the album’s songs on tour. This track has a softer sound, in the beginning than other songs of hers, which is saying something. It is a ballad, and she was going to leave it at that, closing the album with a simple melody, because that is what she may feel most connected to, more instrumental, quiet songs. Again, this is Phoebe’s comfort zone, a ballad, because that may be what she feels more comfortable writing, and maybe even singing. She kept coming back to this song, kept working on it, and she decided to add something to it, she decided to change it. She didn’t want to leave us with another ballad, wanted to leave the listeners on both a high and low. She goes from the chorus into a crazy bridge, and it takes a while for the melody’s pace to pick up and change. A lot of people consider the first verses and choruses as the intro, even though it is not. Thematically, they are a part of the main song, and they are their own section. However, because it is a six-minute song, it does kind of feel like the intro to the main song, which is more fast-paced, a total flip and capsizing of the song. I think somebody I know didn’t even realize it was just one song, because of the difference between the first and second half of the song. I think the diversity of this song is amazing. I think Phoebe’s music is everything this song represents, and her character herself is, too. Both soft ballads and apocalyptic messages and literal screams. The song feels like a real catharsis as if all of the other songs were reflections and this is her letting out the pain for herself, not for the purpose of being heard, but because she needed to release her emotions, in the way she knows how.
I listened to an interview with Lucy Dacus recently, and she said that she thinks long songs are impressive, but not that impressive. If you can write a two-minute song where you say everything you need to say, it is just as impressive as writing a ten-minute song, where you are not able to make your message more concise and say all that you have to say. I think what makes a long song impressive is if it takes you places, not just the same repetitive song with a string of lyrics. Not to go on too much of a tangent, but I think about songs like All too well (10-minute version) by Taylor Swift, which came out last year. I expected it to have more bridges, and maybe do something more “I know the end” - esque, where it really takes you into a new direction, but that song is more of a repetition, that stays still. There are many different types of long songs, there are songs that can be even 20 minutes, usually in rock, where 10 minutes of it is a jam, and that is impressive, too. But what this type of long song does, and what makes it so special and impressive, is it is a six-minute song that constantly keeps the listener focused and it constantly changes and takes you to different places of the narrative of the song. She is telling multiple stories in this song - talking about tour and missing home, then home and missing tour, and never being content where you are. It begins with a self-reflection. The common human enigma of “why can’t I be happy with what I have, why do I always want something else,” that people are always stuck in. The next segment of the song, the next story, is about a breakup between a couple, a relationship that will end, going back to some themes from other songs, and maybe is more of a self-criticism, that we see in Savior Complex, of her being unable to keep a relationship alive, and her self sabotaging, a reflection of ICU, a bit. And then we get to the bridge - a faster tempo, building to something. It is hopeful, but with a minor tone that also bodes for something negative. And then she reflects on moving on and going forward. Wanting to believe there is more, which is akin to her message in Chinese Satellite. Only in this song, she is not just believing there is more, she is going to imagine a fictitious world that was in an apocalypse, and imagining what she would do. She is very enthralled in supernatural things happening, and things from the metaphysical universe coming down to earth and looking for more, for a new home, an origin. I think what this song does is it also reflects on people who want to have an origin story, a home, a place to always come back to, a safe haven if you will. Being on tour, you want to have this idea that even if you are happy now, you will have the comfort of going home to something familiar that you know. But what happens when the thing that you knew is gone, and you don’t have a place to call home. Phoebe said in an interview: “My grandparents lived in Northern California my whole life, and I’ve always kind of romanticized it, but, you know, they were always scattered around, and the home that they lived in is gone now. The idea that I even have something to go up to anymore is kind of fake.” That home is not necessarily a physical place anymore, that home is internal now. No matter what she is going through, she wants to know she has an origin place in her heart, where she was truly happy, that she can go back to whenever she needs to. I think home represents comfort, and coming back to familiarity and internal peace. Having a story that started somewhere.
The first thing people think of when they hear this song is that it is a depressing song. It is about longing for the end of the world. I think that people who are really content with their lives might find that really depressing, and I think people who are more discontent with how their life track has gone, are not willing to believe their life will be the same way it is now, for the rest of their lives. I think those people want to believe there is more out there and are searching for their home and themselves. Home means this place that you will be happy in for the rest of your life, to me. This state of mind, and a physical location. It’s both of those things. It’s wondering where your endgame is going to be. And if you haven’t found that place, you can only hope that you will keep driving until you find it. And I think that is what this song is really about. I think of this song as the most optimistic song. If you are happy in your life, of course, you don’t want the end to be near. If you are happy with the way the world is, if you have found that inner peace and your home, of course, you don’t want the end. But, if you haven’t, and you are discontent with your life or struggling, “The end is near,” starts to sound really good. It starts to sound like, “Maybe all of this will be behind me one day.” Maybe the end will be the end of everything I’ve been through, and maybe I’ll have a rebirth. Your life will be over, and you will be reborn, as a new spirit. This is obviously not literal and can be something that happens within your physical lifetime. It is metaphorically speaking. But the idea that you could have a rebirth and that you will find home and go there is something really optimistic, and I think that really highlights the difference between human beings and how they view the world. The idea of the world ending can be really scary, and to others, it is an optimistic thing. The world just represents this lifetime, the way people live, and all of our lives combined. But what if there is something more out there? What if there is something better, on the next corner? Isn’t that a beautiful idea? To me, “the end is near,” means the end of all suffering. Everything that has been hard about our lives, the end is near to it, and this won’t be forever. It reminds me of the line from Halloween, (“There’s a last time for everything,”) That may seem really scary to some people because it means maybe you will never be this happy or feel this good again, but maybe you will never be this sad again, maybe there is a last time to feeling a certain way. It’s how you want to read it. To me, these lines are kind of like this song. At first, they sound dark, but when you read more into them, they actually are very happy, optimistic, and positive. And there is also something to the fact that beauty can be seen in things that are not optimistic and are not being read into more. Maybe she is not making a deeper point, maybe “the end is near,” does not mean something hopeful. Maybe she is just extremely pessimistic and nihilistic. I think maybe we shouldn’t read into the song as a totally positive thing, either. Maybe it is cool to romanticize dark things. It is all about interpretation, the way you want to interpret this song. That’s what I think is so beautiful. You can read into it whatever you want. If you want to see darkness, that feels good sometimes. Just sitting with the darkness, thinking, “Yeah. Things are dark right now, and the end is near, and let’s just appreciate this time because it will not be forever,” that’s one way to look at this song. You could think all things good are going to go away eventually. You could think, maybe everything that were going through, the darkness, maybe it will be gone soon, and maybe the end of it is near. Maybe the pain will be over, and maybe we’ll have a next life that will be better. Anyone can see whatever they want in this song, and they can find whatever they relate to, whether it is hope, or not. Whatever resonates with their feelings. That’s what is beautiful about this song. It feels like a personal catharsis every time you listen to it. It makes me think, “Maybe something will change, maybe there will be a flip in the world, the same way this song just flipped.” Maybe it’s just a short concise reflection and narrative of what life is like. If your life is just this mundane cycle of just waking up and waiting to go back to sleep, you hope there will be an end to that cycle, that there is more to life than just living. If that is what the first two verses are, just a slow, repetitive cycle, something has to change, which is what the bridge represents, taking you to this moment where you let your past go in screams, and you have a rebirth. I love to think this song is a representation of life, and the segments of the song, like the verses and choruses, are just different parts of our lives that we find in different segments of time in our lives. It’s a beautiful thought, to think a song is a representation of life, and that there are just ups and downs and bridges and builds and rises and falls in all of our lives. It’s a song that represents life while talking about the end of life. The ingenuity of that blows me away.
“Somewhere in Germany, but I can’t place it, man I hate this part of Texas."
This is a reflection of being on tour. While she was touring, for her previous album, Stranger in the Alps, there was this moment where somebody in the crew said, “damn, I hate this part of Texas,” whenever they got off the tour bus, no matter where they were. She said she always remembered this joke that is always with her, representing being tired of wherever you are. It points out the feeling of hating tour, and then hating when you are home. It’s this cycle of wanting what you can’t have, and then once you have it, you are bummed out and want something else. So many people want to go to the places she gets to go on tour, and once she is there, she doesn’t even feel like she is experiencing it, she doesn’t even know where she is, because it’s all in the blur that is tour. It’s not just a silly line, either, that is just a joke. It is also a representation of the dissociation you get on tour, where all you want is to be home.
“Close my eyes, fantasize, three clicks and I’m home.”
This line is a bit of a reference to The Wizard of Oz, about traveling to all of these outlandish places while you are in a dream-like state, and she is talking about picturing being back home and feeling comfortable in that place. This is the first reference to home and this romanticized idea of it. Picturing being there, while she is on tour.
Bridgers: “Counting down the days until you get to go home, and then also clicks are like a military reference - going on tour is kind of like that. People leave unresolved social situations and then they don’t have to think about it. Like, you kind of do get to leave your life, so it does kind of feel like you’re kind of getting taken into an alternate reality.”
It also is this idea that in reality, you can click anything and you can get it. If you wanted, you could make a few clicks and get a plane ticket, but you know you can’t, so you just fantasize about being home instead.
“When I get back, I’ll lay around, then I’ll get up and lay back down. Romanticize a quiet life,”
And then she is already predicting what will happen when she does get back home. It is that feeling you get where you realize you’ve been waiting for that solitude of being back home, and peace and tranquility, while you’re doing so much all at once. When you are out somewhere and you are discontent with it after a few hours, you wish you were back home and comfortable. And then, when you do actually get back home, you don’t know what you are going to do with yourself, and you realize that peace and tranquility maybe lasts for a few hours, and then you wish you were back on the road, because at least you had a purpose, and now you don’t know what to do with yourself. You also don’t have the energy to do anything you said you would do when you got back.
Bridgers: “When you’re on tour, at least I do this, like, I’ll save recipes on Pinterest, and I’ll decide Im gonna garden now. I mean, I’ve been home for like over a year, and, I have no garden. I think it’s just that idea of romanticizing your life, and then when you get home, what you actually do is nothing what you fantasized about.”
I think this also goes back to the way she talked about “the garden life,” in Garden Song, on the first song on Punisher. She talks about how she is going to make this beautiful life for herself, but that’s actually a lot harder to accomplish when you are just so exhausted from what your life has been before you got home. And you try to do things, but you are just so tired, and not just because of the actual physical exhaustion, but there is a difference between that and mental exhaustion where you just can’t do anything, and you’re just incapable of achieving all of the things you really wanted to. It’s this really sad feeling, where you wanted to have this romanticized life, and it’s not what you imagined it to be, and it was just what was keeping you going, knowing you’d come back home. And now you are home and wish you were back on the road. It’s this really discontent feeling of constantly going in circles of wishing you were somewhere else, and dreaming of this home that you don’t really have, that one day you could achieve if you just had the energy for it. It’s this going back-and-forth feeling, and I think a lot of people live that way, this cycle we see in this line of “getting up and laying back down,” waiting for the cycle to break. You can romanticize a quiet life all you want, even if that is not your life at all, because what you want to do with your life doesn’t align with the quiet life, and that can be a real disappointing feeling. It provokes this question of, “Is it worth it?” Is it worth the romanticized quiet life to get rid of all the other things that make it the opposite of a quiet life? It’s kind of this back-and-forth thing, that all artists, even the most successful ones, have to face - what do you really want out of life? Would you rather do this, of live a normal life like normal people, and have the simplicity you lack? You could have all the things that would make your life “romanticizable,” even though some people could view life on tour as a romanticized thing. We romanticize what we dont have, and we want to be these grown adults, who, like she said, have a garden, take care of themselves, and have their life together, when in reality it’s very difficult to do when you are struggling with mental exhaustion and fatigue, and depression all the time.
“There’s no place like my room,”
A reference to “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.” A lot of people feel that their room is their tranquil place. If we think about the character of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, she wants to go home, and Phoebe is making a smaller ask, where all she wants is her room.
“But you had to go, I know, I know, I know.”
The chorus starts to go into her relationship.
Phoebe Bridgers: “I was breaking up with my drummer. We dated for a long time, and he brought this guitar line, and this, “I know, I know, I know…” Just kind of about breakup acceptance, and we write a lot of songs together. Over the course of literally 3 years, I just kind of continued to write to that really really sad melody, the first half of the song is just like…miserable.”
“Like a wave that crashed and melted on the shore.”
Possibly a reference to Moon Song, where she compares her relationship to water, (“You’re holding my like water in your hands…” “It’s nautical themed…”) There’s a real juxtaposition between how she referred to the relationship in that song as something she didn’t want to end, and wanting to stay together no matter what was against them, to this song, where she is more accepting that he has to go, and that it is time for her to do some self-care now that she is home. She needs to let go of escaping, which only works for a certain amount of time. You can escape with going on tour, as she said, but when she gets home, it’s not just a romanticized place; she actually has to face what she was escaping from on tour. In this case, it means having to let go of a relationship that we know meant a great deal to her, and she has to let it go. When she comes back home, she has to be conscious of what her life really is, and that is what the line I know, I know, I know, represents. A lot of people say that when they are admitting that they need to accept something, like what their lives are, and what they need to do, like responsible things, without really wanting to. You try to take care of yourself by romanticizing your life, and the responsibility comes with that, even though it can be painful. It is also a way for her to say she is more aware now. We go from that first line, of her saying she doesn’t even know where she is, to her need to know what is going on in her life back home, once she finally gets out of that dream-like state, as she comes back to her reality and accepts her life, which can be a really hard thing.
Her relationship came as a big burst of emotions, but it is eventually melting away from her, and she has to let it go and accept that that course of nature will take action eventually, and that can be a sad thing.
“Not even the burnouts are out here anymore.”
Burnouts are people who use drugs, or delinquents who are not adhering to societal norms, or people who are just hanging out on the beach, which she says she sees when she drives past the beach, referencing that wave crashing on the shore, again. If they aren’t even there anymore, you know the end is near. This is now going into the apocalypse theme, the more fictitious side of the song.
Phoebe Bridgers: “The song is obviously a lot about the apocalypse, and I just thought of different subsets of people that would be affected by it, and the kids who hang out every day, surfing, when they finally go, the kids who are there every single day, I feel like you finally know that stuff is going down.”
If the burnouts aren’t there, the people who are not adhering to social standards, you know that there is change in the air. That’s representative of the fact that she knows that her partner has to go, or maybe she is speaking of herself, too. That she has to go, and it’s time for change, the end of the cycle.
“And you had to go, I know, I know, I know. Out in the park, we watched the sunset, talking on a rusty swingset.”
We get into the second verse with this representation of what the breakup looked like. And it really paints an apocalyptic scene, which almost makes it sound a bit narcissistic of her as if the end of the world is reflected around this idea that her relationship is ending. It is representative of how when people are going through a breakup or any painful thing in their hearts, it can feel like the world is ending, like the apocalypse is here, and the end of the world is here. But it also just has a lot of imagery, painting this scene of her in the park watching the sunset, and the rusty swingset represents childhood and youth that has worn away, sitting in the sun unused for so long. It represents a very adult thing of a painful breakup, going from something bright, youthful, and full of fun, to something old and fading, which is what their relationship really is now. Having to move past your childhood and wake up into your adult life and having to move into the next phase of your life. Its also about this feeling of not wanting to go and do something, and wanting to just spend time at home, but knowing it is better for you to do something, so the swingset represents this middle ground of doing something with your life even though it isn’t being social or doing things that are good for you. It represents this sense of regret.
Phoebe Bridgers: “And then I remembered all these nights, I would cancel on my friends, and be like, “Im just gonna have a relaxing night in,” and then at like 9 pm, you realize that you wish you’d gone out, or something, so I would walk down from this apartment to the park next to it, and sit on the swings, and it made me feel like, at least I left my house.”
I feel like I really relate to that. Where you don’t want to go do something, and then you think you should have done it, so you do something else instead, and it’s more depressing than what you would have actually felt, had you just gone out and not canceled plans. Then again, self-reflection can be better.
“After a while, you went quiet. And I got mean. Im always pushing you away from me, but you come back with gravity.”
I think this line is really indicative of people who push people away when they’re just not content with themselves and it’s nothing personal. People say, “It’s not you, it’s me.” But in this case, it actually is that way. It’s not just a cliche of life, genuinely a lot of people push away people just because they hurt themselves, and cant take care of their own lives and their own relationships with themselves, let alone somebody else. It’s like rejection, but not because of the person, you are trying to reject all the things of your past that come with the past. And knowing that somebody is too good for you because they keep coming back no matter how awful you are to them is not just representing a romantic relationship, but it can also represent a relationship in a family. “When you get too close to people, you can treat them like your parents,” she said.
Phoebe: “When I get too close to people, I start to treat them like my parents, where you just say stuff to them that you don’t even realize is in you. I just feel like, yeah, you don’t even have to do that much to make up, sometimes, because both people want to make up, but you know you’re being a dick, and you don’t have to admit that you’re being a dick. You just kind of like float back into peace.”
And genuinely, your parents are probably the closest people to you, just because you are related, by blood. They’re the people who gave you life and sometimes those are the people you treat the harshest, and you kind of feel like, this is so unfair to them, that Im such a jerk to them because Im dealing with my own stuff. And Im taking it out on them because I know I can, and I know they’ll always come back to me, and that’s so unfair. I shouldn’t be given that luxury, of having somebody always there for me, no matter what I say or put them through, just because of love. That’s not fair, that you can be so harsh towards people. Sometimes you wish you could get a lesson to yourself, so you would treat people better, but, love doesn’t work like that. We see that in Graceland Too, where no matter what a person does, you will always be there for them. It’s kind of her feeling that firsthand in her own ways. I think Graceland Too specifically is a great juxtaposition; It’s all about being that person from the sidelines and reflecting on someone else’s life, which can ultimately be easier and can have a more positive outlook than reflecting on yourself. And when you do reflect on someone else, you can see yourself as a great person, because it is so easy to be good to people, who are not yourself. And I think when we see her reflecting on herself and how mean she says she feels about herself, I feel like it is really relatable.
“And when I call, you come home, a bird in your teeth.”
This idea of if you find someone who continues loving you, no matter how badly you treat them, it’s obviously something real. I think that can be one of the ultimate tests of love if somebody can stand by you no matter what you are going through internally, and what you put them through just as an outcome of your own personal grief and distress and depression. Going into that, it’s kind of like having a pet. They’re always going to be loyal to you, because you are the one who gave them love at some point, and you rescued them when they needed it, so now they are going to be there for you no matter what. So she goes back to that reference that she goes into a lot in the album Punisher, where she talks about the dog with the bird in their teeth - bringing something, a gift, even though it is unwanted by the owner. That can be said for their relationship; he is bringing her love even when she doesn’t deserve it, or see beauty in it. It’s this bad feeling of knowing that her breakup is more like a dog coming to you after they kill a bird, a person ready to come back to the relationship and show that they’ve changed even if they haven’t.
“So I’ve gotta go, I know, I know, I know.”
We get into the second chorus, and now it is not about you having to go; it’s kind of changing the story a little bit. As she is reflecting on the breakup, She is realizing it’s not her partner who had to go, it’s her, she needed to change, get away from this, and stop putting her loved one through the pain that is not their fault, but her own. So she has to go, and not just from the relationship, I think. I think this means she has to go and get out of the life she is currently living in. It’s not good for her, any more and she needs change. I think this song is ultimately about change, in all manners of the word, and just needing something new, and something to take away from the monotonous tone that your life has become.
“When the sirens sound, you’ll hide under the floor. But Im not gonna go down, with my hometown in a tornado.”
This next line is another reference to The Wizard of Oz, and being swept up in a tornado. But the difference here is she is not gonna go home and stay in the place she called home forever, but she is looking for a new place to call home because home wasn’t working out the way she expected it to. The person she wanted to be is not who she is, and that can be a feeling that provides a lot of grief and reflection. There is this line that says, “It’s okay that you are not the person you wanted to be,” but, it can be hard to actually believe that that is okay when you had so much hope for yourself. And you wound up waking up and realizing you are nowhere near the person you thought you would be, or who you wanted to be. And that can be a really painful thing to admit to yourself. There is the admittance again, and actually accepting your life with I know I know I know being repeated in the chorus. I think that is why the first half of the title of the song is I Know. Not just because I know the end means knowing what is coming and that you are at the end of your life, but it’s about this repetition of the lyric, and knowing you need to change, knowing you have to come to terms with your life.
“Im gonna chase it, I know, I know, I know. I gotta go now, I know, I know, I know…”
This song is also about fearlessness. Being unafraid of the change of the world, and while maybe everyone else is hiding out, trying to avoid change, and the world ending, she is going to chase it. Chase the storm, because at least it means emotion and change in the air. I think that is really indicative of who she is; she is going to follow the storm, and what it is going to provide her. It also represents a self-harm aspect; wanting to put yourself in dangerous situations because it may give you adrenaline or it may offer hope when it’s not a hopeful thing. If you are comparing yourself to normal people, you realize how wide the gap is between you and normal people, highlighted by your decisions. If you ask yourself, if there was an apocalypse, what would you do, and what you would do is see everyone else be normal and taking proper cover, and you would get in your car and drive straight towards the storm because that is the kind of person you are, you realize how different you are. There are alarms that tell you you have to hide and take care of yourself, and what she would do is put herself in danger because that is the kind of person that she is. And she knows that is who she is. She is coming to terms with the fact that if she chases the storm, her time might be up and she knows that. And she is still going to follow her instincts which may or may not be self-care instincts, but are just the ones she has. I think some people would be great at survival, and some people just don’t value it that much.
Phoebe Bridgers: “My friends that would be too scared to leave would be in bunkers, and I would drive up the 5 freeway, and, you know, go to a place that doesn’t exist.”
“Driving out, into the sun.”
So now we get into the bridge, which is probably my favorite part of the song. That’s where you hear the beat start to kick in, and you hear the violin go into this high-pitched sound that kind of just resonates this idea into your mind, that something is happening, and there is change in the air. Something is about to begin. to me, this bridge sounds and looks in my head like driving at top speed towards the sun, which she then says. It perfectly corresponds with the music. It is so symbolic, of the way the music sounds here. It reminds me of freedom, change, and purple-pink skies, and I just picture somebody driving at sunset. This song is great to hear at sunset, driving through some outskirts road surrounded by fields of nothingness that really paints this apocalyptic image in your head, and that is what I hear here. It’s such a great intro to the next half of the song, where now we are getting into the fictitious side of the song. It’s not about a relationship, it’s not about her on tour, it’s about picturing this fantasy world of the end of the world happening, and what that would look like. For her, it really does portray freedom, and driving out into nothingness. Maybe she doesn’t picture the apocalypse as something scary, just a place with no people and what looks like no existence at all, just emptiness and maybe that represents something she feels inside of herself. Maybe this longing for peace when you are on the road, and constantly surrounded by people all the time, and existence, you just want to get away from that, and be in a world where you are the only one there. Where there is nothing around you, and I think that is akin to people who long to go on hikes, or be in the middle of open wilderness with nothing around them. There is a real romanticization of being the only one around, especially after being kept up in a tour bus with people all around, Im sure that inspired this next section of this song. We know that also the apocalypse represents the end of the world, but there is also this beauty in the idea that she is driving towards the sun, and letting everything behind her go, and she goes into this nothingness that represents what she is feeling inside. This numbness that you are not trying to escape but chase, and live in for a bit. This dissociated world of numbness that can feel really good sometimes.
“Let the ultraviolet cover me up,”
The first line paints the image of beauty and nature in freedom, and this line represents the self-harm image, or putting yourself in a place of danger, where there are harmful UV radiation beams, now that the earth’s ozone layer has depleted, if we’re in this apocalyptic fantasy world. That is what scientists say would happen if the ozone layer completely depletes because of all the human pollution and human carbon footprint. If that caused nature’s natural path to break, because of human existence, then that is what the apocalypse is: a result of human beings’ imprint on the environment, and what would happen if the environment can no longer hold itself up, and everything breaks. That’s what this change is: it’s a change from the symbiotic relationship we have with Earth, and suddenly it breaking. I think the Earth breaking and losing its ozone layer, its surface level, represents what people feel when they internally are breaking, and they have had enough of being constantly polluted by everything in the earth, the same way the actual earth feels. If you feel like your insides have now been so beat up and taken advantage of, the same way a lot of people can speculate the earth feels after all this time of human overconsumption and pollution, finally there being a break, and that’s what the apocalypse really is: this internal breaking where the earth just can’t handle it anymore, and everything is breaking, and it means change is here, whatever that change is. There is going to be one, and I think the apocalypse to Phoebe is an internal reflection. If the earth represents who she is, then the apocalypse represents a break, her no longer able to take the pain and suffering she has gone through all these years. If that surface layer that keeps you afloat finally snaps, and you can no longer keep this fake smile on your face, and your cheeks are finally too tired of turning red and faking smiles (as she says in the song Nothing New) There is going to be a break and you have no more of that surface layer protecting you and absolving you of the pain that is deep inside of you, and it is just kind of diving into that ocean of pain, and letting it hit you. Allowing the pain to wash over you because you have had enough and you can’t take anymore, can’t take pretending that everything is fine anymore, which is what a lot of people feel the earth may come to. That is what “Let the ultraviolet cover me up,” means.
“Went looking for a creation myth, ended up with a pair of cracked lips.”
I think this next idea is like how she talked about in Chinese Satellite, how for so long she has been trying to find her faith and see what everyone else sees in religion, and how it constantly just doesn’t let her in, in a way. She feels like she has been banging on the windows, wanting to be let in, trying to find her faith and her belief system, and she just can’t be let in, and it can be a really disappointing feeling. It represents how so many people say, maybe I should just take that leap, and start to find my faith, but she just can’t do it. A lot of people think you can find your home, and find your peace and internal clarity when you finally start to believe and start to find your faith, and for some people, it is a lot harder to accomplish that and to actually let belief in when your whole life you have been hearing all of these things that make you against that belief. When a lot of bad things happen to you, it’s hard to have faith and belief that everything happens for a reason, belief that there is someone looking out for you, because something it feels too cruel, or it feels too good to be true. It’s hard to believe in good when you’ve been let down a lot, and I think that’s what she kind of means. But also, the creation myth idea hints that maybe she has a story, too, an origin somewhere, a place where she was created. But, like she said, it’s kind of this fake thing, and it’s not real anymore. She sees that because sometimes the most beautiful things get burnt away, and nothing can last forever. That kind of altered her belief system. It is this meeting of realism and the horrible truth of life, with this beautiful, romanticizable idea of belief and that there is more out there. It is like looking up at the sun and trying to feel something, and all you get instead is your body fighting against it by giving you cracked lips, essentially. It is a representation of her trying to look up and reach for belief and instead, her body just rejects it. I feel like there is such a juxtaposition between this idea of divine power and all of the greater beings in the universe, highlighting how weak and mortal humans are, because all they get from the sun is a pair of cracked lips.
Phoebe Bridgers: “I want the hero’s journey or the origin story, but Im super super white, and every time I go into the sun, it’s just like poison. So I think driving out into the sun and like, you know, like Icarus stuff. Like, and then you just get scorched.”
“Windows down, scream along, to some America first rap country song.”
And then we go back to the more realistic idea of just driving and looking for the sun and looking for hope. You get this sense of dissociation and out-of-body feeling, when you are driving, because you have been doing something for so long that it comes naturally and you don’t have to think about what you are doing anymore, and you are just speeding fast. You let all of the adrenaline from going fast and from looking up at the sun get to you, and for a second you feel like you are in a movie, or more so you feel like you are a little stronger and invincible, and this totally free person, even though you are just a person driving your car. This idea of windows down, screaming along to a song, makes you feel just this short and concise, and condensed version of freedom and independence all in just a second when you are listening to some music you really like. She talks about this specific music being her own internal battle, this kind of idea of loving these artists who are actually screwed up people, and questioning why you like the content that they put out. It symbolizes human beings and how flawed we are, and how we can love people even when they have so many things that are messed up, and what they created is so beautiful you can’t help but love it, and that can be seen in all relationships between human beings, and kind of this idea that even people who are considered bad and wrongful all have good sides to them and can create beautiful things that other people can appreciate. it’s this idea that nobody is bad, entirely. And that is what she is insinuating with this line. Also, some self-reflection is that she is not perfect, and she can’t be totally ethical all the time, either. That now that there is an apocalypse and nothing matters, she can allow herself to like or listen to whatever she wants. Some of my favorite creations are by people who are extremely not good people who have done horrible things in the world, and that’s kind of a disappointing feeling when you find out that something you love was created by someone who has done other things that you hate, and its this question of if you can separate art and the creator. And sometimes you just have to, because you can’t rid yourself of everything that brings you joy.
Phoebe Bridgers: “Pop-country radio has always been close to my heart because my grandparents listen to it, my mom listens to it, but ever since the election, it made me realize, I mean I think this is the root of white privilege, where Im like, “A lot of this stuff is racist!” even though, it’s so fucked up. And even though there is no place for me in the pop-country radio world, I know like a bunch of Toby Keith songs, and fuck Toby Keith! But when Im alone in my car, trying to stay awake especially, Ill turn on pop-country, and Im like, “Oh I actually do know all these lyrics.””
“A slaughterhouse, an outlet mall, slot machines, fear of God.”
I think here she is naming four things that she hates about the world, four things that she is trying to let go of. These are things that are on the earth that are kind of all man-made, and all damaging, and she is kind of listing all of these things that she hates. Maybe also a representation of a few of the songs on Punisher. I think this is when she starts to reflect on her life, and if Punisher is a representation of her life and her life’s story, a slaughterhouse makes me think of Kyoto, in a very twisted way, because it’s talking about murdering someone and murdering an innocent person who has actually done you no wrong. That’s kind of what a slaughterhouse is. An outlet mall reminds me of how she likes to go to CVS and all of these boring mundane chain places because they are good places to hide in plain sight when she was having a panic attack or things like that, and that is a representation of that line from Punisher. And then you’ve got slot machines, which makes me think of games in general that are man-made (and we know she hates games). They can make you lose bets, kind of like how she was talking about the game at dodgers stadium in the song Halloween. So we are going in literally chronological order, and then we hear “fear of God,” which is an obvious Chinese Satellite reference, and how it is not that she necessarily has a fear of God, but she has a fear that she will never have belief, which she longs for so badly and so desperately, and she hates the fact that she has that at all. Or fear of anything so powerful or so strong, and I think these are literal representations of her songs and tracklist, and I think that is so ingenious of her. It’s also going from really mundane and basic things to the most incomprehensible things about the world, all in a short sentence or verse.
“Windows down, heater on, big bolts of lightning hanging low. Over the coast, everyone’s convinced, it’s a government drone, or an alien spaceship.”
Her continually driving with the windows down, which she keeps repeating in this bridge, which continually represents the wind in her hair, and feeling this sort of freedom she didn’t have before now that everything else is breaking, she can, too. How nothing really matters, and she can do whatever she wants, even if it is damaging to the environment hence damaging to herself, because we have come to terms with the fact that this song represents the earth as her personal self and her own life. So windows down, heater on, is something they tell you not to do because you are wasting the heater, which is bad for the environment. But at this point, nothing matters because it is the apocalypse, so she can do things that feel good even if they aren’t great for her. Then you’ve got a painting of a real apocalyptic idea. There is a big bolt of lightning hanging low, which represents a different type of God, like the weapon of Zeus in Greek Mythology. It really paints this dystopian world, for a second. Lightening is way too close, and you know you are chasing possibly death and the end of the world by going closer and closer to the low-hanging bolts of lightning. it is also a reference to the Space X Launch she saw, which she mentions in the next line. This is talking about how people search for the supernatural even in basic things that are human-created because they are so desperate for something to change, or something awe-inspiring, or even something really different and abnormal happening. And so, people will take sides, and so you have the controversy of the conspiracy theorists or the super realists, and she kind of feels like she is between those two things, but she has this hope for something amazing happening, and to her, something amazing would be if that were a spaceship and were not just a man-made thing, something unnatural but something also so surreal coming to earth with the apocalypse upon her. This represents the opposing sides of the way the earth is constantly fighting with each other, whether they want to believe in something, or they don’t.
Phoebe Bridgers: “One time when I was driving up, I saw a Space X Launch, that nobody told me was happening. I pulled over and opened, like, the internet, nothing said anything, but a couple people on Instagram were like, “It’s an alien invasion.” And then I found out it was Space X and I was stoked for them, but I was also disappointed that it wasn’t aliens.
“Either way, we’re not alone. I’ll find a new place to be from.”
Now we get to my favorite lines of the whole song. It brings me so much joy to hear her say these lyrics. I mean, how comforting is this line, if you sit back and let that hit your heart. either way, no matter what we are arguing about or what we believe, there is no denying that were not alone, and that were not the only ones here. And, whether that means there are so many other beings out there who have hearts and souls besides us, or there are truly aliens. It can be read that way, that we’re literally not alone, but also, no matter who you are arguing with, and that goes back to that first lyric section, talking about the breakup, no matter what is going on, we are not alone, and we do not have to suffer alone. The idea of an apocalypse is that this is happening to everyone. Everyone is feeling the same thing, and we have this sense of comradery, this sense of allyship because we are all aligned with the same story when in our lives, we feel like we are the only ones suffering, and we are the only ones feeling this sense of pain. For the first time, you have validation, and you know everyone is going through this, and we are all coming together in pain. I think that is what that means. In the music video, it is interesting that the line of the song is the same, but she mouths, “Either way, I’m not alone.” And I think this makes it clear that even though she is letting the audience know that this is for all of us to hear, she has to remind herself, “No, me personally, I am not alone. I’m not the only one who is breaking, right now.” And that is a really important thing to remember. Loneliness can be one of the most devastating things to come to terms with, and sometimes you have to remind yourself that you are never entirely alone. I love that she reminds us of that. And then she says, “I’ll find a new place to be from.” It’s the first sense of real hope. Maybe it’s not on this planet, but she will find a place to be from, an origin story, a creation myth, all of those things that she said she can’t find, she believes one day she will find again. Even if home is just an internal place of peace, even if it means finding your chosen family, your friends, the people who make you feel alive and like you’re not alone. You will find your place of comfort, and it’s this idea that just because you came from one place, it doesn’t mean that that has to be your place at the end of the day. You can choose your home, and you can choose your origin story. You can recreate your life, have a rebirth, and choose the place of your rebirth. I think that is a really positive outlook, and it is hope. This is proof that she is finding her own faith in her music.
“A haunted house, with a picket fence, to float around and ghost my friends.”
This is my favorite line. This super major contrast and the juxtaposition between something that is super suburban and ideal and utopian idea of the classic, perfect house, with the picket fence that almost makes the house look like it is perfect, and I think this represents how we as humans can paint ourselves over with a mask, kind of like what she talks about in Halloween. How we can make ourselves look like these utopian figures when really we are full of the ghosts of our pasts and just battling them. It’s scary inside, and we are all just broken hinges and crumbling apart doors, but we can cover that up, as we have that power. We don’t always know it when we are breaking inside. It paints this image of a girl (Phoebe) putting on a fake smile to cover up all of her darkness and skeletons in her closet, and all of the suffering that she is really feeling inside. I think sometimes the people who are going through the most have the most positive exteriors because it is what they learned they have to do. To put on a good show and a fake smile, and really sell it, because they’ve always had to. And they’ve never actually been okay. And obviously, we have the ghost idea from Stranger in the Alps, which she loves to come back to, in this line. That really correlates with her new theme of skeletons in Punisher. And, of course, “to float around and ghost my friends,” has a double meaning. Obviously, ghosting your friends is something people do when they are not okay themselves and would rather be alone and self-isolated because they do not want to hurt more people, so a lot of people who really suffer just ghost everyone in their lives, because it is easier to let go of your loved ones, and not respond and not make an effort to continue your connection because you don’t want to burden them with your pain. So ghosting your friends is a term for not burdening people with your problems. And floating around represents this dissociated state where you are not even in your body and you can’t possibly communicate with other people like a normal person because you aren’t a normal person.
“No, Im not afraid to disappear.”
It brings us to this deep and controversial idea regarding the fear of death. There is a stark contrast between the people who are terrified of death more than anything and wish for immortality, and then there are the people who long for that day, and then there are the people in between. There is such a contrast within the fear of death, and in this case, disappearing represents that. That is an explanation for why she is chasing the storm, chasing the apocalypse, and putting herself in a place of isolation, because she is not afraid to disappear and float away in a state of dissociation, it is not a scary thought to her. It baffles me that people do fear death because it seems like the most peaceful thing, like floating away, and just disappearing in a peaceful way. Like Phoebe, I don’t understand the fear in that. I think death is only scary to those who are so content and in love with their lives and don’t want change. But what about the people who are discontent? It does seem like a hopeful thing, and I don’t mean to be completely nihilistic and pessimistic, but it seems like the next chapter. You can be content with your life and also not be afraid of death. Those two can coincide, but let’s just live in the moment now, and not be afraid of the future and what is to come. No one is immortal, and that is a good thing. Immortality scares me a lot more than death does. Phoebe thinks of it as being at peace with the world. You can choose the way you live your life and choose not to fear the future, and live in the present. Not being afraid of the next day, but focusing on what you can do today. It is a real state of peace that comes with understanding it won’t always be this way no matter how good or bad it is. It’s just coming to terms with the fact that everything has an expiration date at some point, and whenever that end comes it will be okay. I don’t think it’s apathetic to think this way, I think it’s contentment with death, and with life.
“The billboard said ‘the end is near.’”
Phoebe Bridgers: “I did see a billboard that said, “the end is near,” and, uh, lots of like, aborted fetuses, on the 5 freeway, and you’re like, who are they giving billboards to? But then, like, you know, the kind of whimsical - its like, really nothing in that verse has been whimsical yet, and then the idea - like even the haunted house with a picket fence, it’s like, I see it, and I want it, and then you turn around and the world is gone, and that’s kind of the one fiction.”
It’s this totally perfect depiction of the apocalypse and the end of the world, actually taking heed of the signs you see on the highway, and accepting the end is near, and that is a truth for everyone. The end is near can be referring to a lot of things: life, the good things in it, and the bad things. Whatever you choose to let that line mean to you, that is the reality. I choose to look at that in both an optimistic and pessimistic way. It’s both, its this middle ground, where you understand that all of the good things will come to an end, but all the bad things will too at some point, and that’s totally fine, and the end is near is something we all need to accept. It’s also a reference to the signs that humans created, that you see on the highway. It reiterates the fact that we all know what the world will come to eventually.
“I turned around, there was nothing there, yeah, I guess the end is here.”
She takes it away from the end is near, as she goes into the future with this lyric. She is saying, if I turned around, and the whole world is gone, I guess the end is here. Again, she repeats this so many times, because it is this hopeful thing. Maybe the end is finally here. She as a person has been waiting for this for so long, and maybe it’s finally happening to her. She pictures the future, her old self, seeing her life behind her, as it disappears, and she is not afraid of that. She keeps repeating this, and finally, she has her catharsis moment, where she just lets all of the pain and her past go in screams. Seeing this moment live is a total catharsis, and it feels like you enter this apocalyptic universe for a second. You hear Phoebe absolutely screaming, and you are in a stadium surrounded by other people screaming with you, everyone is coping with their own thing, trying to let go of something with their screams, and there is something so cathartic about screaming, and it feels like such a peaceful sound.
Phoebe Bridgers: “I was like, I really wanna scream at the end of this record. And so I worked back from that and brought meaning to it. But, I thought it was fun to be like, the end is near, of the album.”
“The end is here. The end is here. The end is…”
This is just pure yelling, and not even finishing the sentence, because it proves that it is the end. is actually here, now, and it portrays dying and the world actually ending in this super depressing and dark way, but there is also something so beautifully relieving about it. It feels like a release of pain, at the same time. And that is what the screams represent to me. Right when it begins to end, she screams again, and when it does subside, it all fades away, and it does paint this image of everything in life fading away, and suddenly she is breathing her last few breaths of air, and it represents the end of this album, the end of this period of her life, and it sounds so eerie. It’s like she is giving her final call to the world. And that concludes this song. It is the most beautiful song, it is such a special song to me.
It feels like a breath of fresh air, it feels like honesty, openness, and screams need to be heard, and everyone needs to scream like this at some point, I really believe it. It reminds me of the parallel to the line in Graceland too, “she knows she lived through it, to get to this moment,” I imagine the sensation Phoebe must feel as she screams this lyric, every night, “The end is near, the end is here.” There is so much depth in that.