IM Bits...

The following IM conversation took place between 10:00 and 10:45 Wednesday morning between me and my friend Sussanah. Why? No one knows.

Suss -- Let me tell you what I DON'T like about "You're Beautiful."

Me -- haha, everything

Suss -- No. I don't like the first "My life is brilliant. Because it always just sounds like he messed up and started the song too early. why did he include that part?

Me -- i think he probs thought it makes a stupid song that much grittier.

Suss -- Mabes he just really wanted to emphasize how brilliant his life is.

Me -- Mabes he just really wanted to emphasize how brilliant his life is.

Suss -- Or maybe, since Brits often say something is "brilliant" when they mean it's "great," maybe he is trying to say his life is still great even without her. An assertion which, as we all know, rings quite hollow.

Me -- that could possibly be it, but at the same time, the song seams to be about his struggle with the fact that he sees a woman he thinks he is in love with, but can never have, so the term brilliant in this case may be used in a sarcastic tone, to denote how truly horrible it is living without sed woman.

Suss -- Exactly. I think, though, that his struggle is with the fact that he is seeing his EX-girlfriend as she travels on the subway with "another man." He realizes how much he misses her and how UN-brilliant his life is and how UN-pure his love is.
Also, she can see from his face that he's "fucking high" (or "flying high" in the radio edit), so there is his guilt over her seeing him in such a state.

Me -- maybe so, maybe so... to me though, the way he talks of the situation, as a standard day in a modern city, to me it seems to be one of those situations, where you see someone and you make great eye contact, and it seems as if your in love, sadly there with someone else, and in a situation where you would never be able to truly talk, and its gone. Though this situation is lower stakes this way, making it much harder to write a love song this way. I agree with your theory, only i thing the "fucking high" and "Double brilliant" are used in a sarcastic manor to truly get across how miserable he is without her.

Suss -- Interesting interpretation. However, I saw the artist himself on the Oprah program explaining that his motivation for the song came from seeing a former lover on the subway and exchanging a glance with her. In that glance, he explained, "a lifetime passed between us." He is a true poet.

Me -- A real master of the language, and the meaning behind words themselves. Alas, I didnt see this Oprah program, so in truth I could be projecting my own sagas onto a song; however, isnt that the greatest measure of a song, when it fits every humans own struggles while remaining cathartic for the writer?

Suss -- Indeed. Indeed.

Me -- hogwash... i just dropped my pipe into my tea...

Suss -- Blast!

Me -- Uch... its running down the table onto my leg, and burning me, and my houndstooth trousers

Suss -- Ring for your manservant Octavius!

Me -- I rang, I rang... he is so slow, he has completely "checked out" since he qualified for the national bochi ball team. Its like his head is someplace else.

Suss -- It's so hard to find good help in Beresfordshire these days.

Me -- good help, please, i would settle for any help at all, hold on octavios just got here... so nice for him to show... uch hes carrying his bachi balls with him, how does he expect to clean me and the table with those bacci balls in his hands... anyway, how is your manor.

Suss -- Exquisite! We just had all the chandeliers polished! It took an ARMY of Chinese toddlers (they're the only ones whose hands are small enough to reach into the crevices between all the sharp pieces of glass) to get it all done, but they look magnificent! Although Consuela told me a severed pinky fell out of one of them the other day as she was changing out the lamp oil...

Me -- casualties of having a job is what i would say to those tiny chinese child babys

Suss -- Oh, the babies are back on a boat to Shanghai, having gotten their fill of our country's pre-educational and cultural opportunities. Exchange programs are magnificent, aren't they?

Me -- Exchange programs are brilliant.