THE SOUND OF FAILURE

"We have some friends whose father was dying of cancer - I say "was" because it (the cancer and his death) dragged on agonizingly for over a year - and they (our friends) were becoming, understandably, weary of being forced to be upbeat... And I remember hearing a comment once about how annoying it was, to them, to have to hear this gratingly jubilant fake enthusiasm (usually hokey hyped-up pop groups like Black Eyed Peas, Destiny's Child, Ashlee Simpson, Hillary Duff, etc.) blasting out of the "Muzak" systems virtually everywhere they went. To them this cheerleader-type assault was really only effective if you didn't actually have any real psychic stress... And they felt that it was, surprisingly, helpful to them to try to understand their fears and their sadness - as opposed to pretending that it's "all good."

And, you see, this is true insight... finally we know it's okay to have a troubled mind, it's okay to fail...

And so this song (which was written in the car on the way up to New York from Oklahoma while I drove and Steven played battery powered keyboard and computer) is about a young girl whose best friend has died, and everywhere she goes (like the friends I mentioned earlier) she must endure the empty optimism of the inexperienced. She wants to know, since it has arrived, what is despair, what is hope, what is failure... And what is in the darkness??

The line in the song, "so go tell Britney and go tell Gwen" is obviously a reference back to my friends and their Muzak incident... meaning, "Yeah, go tell Britney Spears and Gwen Stefani that their energy and their Prom Queen smiles only go to prove that they don't empathize with my sadness." I believe, in the song, that Britney and Gwen could be thought of as this grieving girl's less mature friends... and that she's not trying to go against them, she just doesn't want to pretend that she understands what she doesn't really understand - what death is... what despair is... what existential fear is... She doesn't know, but she's starting to find out..."

WAYNE COYNE

No supe porque de pronto esta canción me hizo llorar, me hizo quererla escuchar siempre, sin parar, me trajo aire en los pulmones, me trajo un abrazo de consuelo. Era eso. Aunque las porristas sigan animando a su equipo, aunque el sol siga brillando, aunque la risa este en los labios de todos a punto de salir, el sigue muerto, ella seguirá triste. Dile a las Britneys y a las Gwen que ella no esta tratando de entender, solo quiere abrazar la pena. Ni las palabras ni un una copa de helado en el Bravissimo, ni las lindas canciones, ni las bromas, ni las fiestas, ni el alcohol podrá borrar el acto y remediar el hecho de que ya no está. Solo se que El sonido del Fracaso vino en el momento preciso hasta mi...