Brooke Patterson
Mr. White
English III
12 January 2013

Save Me From Myself

Have you ever wondered what the story is behind your favorite song? Or why the artist decided to even write those lyrics down on paper, and turn it into the music you listen to? I know for one, I constantly think of those things and what exactly the lyrics mean. This has a lot to do with who wrote the song and the type of music they play. Mariana’s Trench, for example, wrote the song called “Say Anything”, which holds many different meanings and includes a variety of emotions. From sad, to angry and even pleading.  These are all expressed throughout the way the lyrics are delivered and how the artists sing them.

The artist, or should I say artists, of Mariana’s Trench have a very close relationship and share everything together. Things like heartbreak, depression, addiction, and happiness. The band mostly centers around its lead singer, guitar player, and song writer: Josh Ramsay. All songs on all three of their albums are written by Josh and all have the same variety of meaning in them. The meanings may be hidden between the lines or just put straight out in the open but are always there. Those meanings are:  Josh’s depression, his self-harm, and his addiction. Ramsay’s heroin addiction started at the young age of sixteen where he was addicted for two years until his band mates helped him out of it. That addiction also led to his self-harm and on into his depression. In “Say Anything”, Josh puts it in the open by writing ‘I cut myself so I could feel something I know is not a lie/ That one stings a little’, obviously representing his ongoing self-harm issues. He also puts his depression issues into the song with the lyrics ‘Hurts the same when nobody knows/I guess that's just how it goes/And I won't say anything at all’ The other band members- Matt Webb, Mike Ayley and Ian Casselman- also suffer from the same life issues.

In “Say Anything”, specifically as a song, reveals Josh’s mix of anger, sadness, and heartbreak. The song starts out slowly, with a few strums of an acoustic guitar then surges into a combination of drum hits and electric guitar beats. Ramsay also sings the first few lyrics with a soft and light tone, but as soon as the beat picks up his voice becomes angry and pleading. This can easily show Josh’s sudden anger toward the person he’s singing about. His voice changes in different parts of the song; when the lyrics sound pleading he has a hurt behind his voice. It’s almost like he could break down at any moment. Especially at the part where he sings ‘Please, there’s a better bit of me to see yet/ cause you haven’t seen any of my best/ You know I hate myself without you now’ you can easily hear the desperation in his voice and the emotions in his words. He clearly wants the people he is addressing to give him a chance to prove himself and show his best side.

I relate to this song more than any other I have ever heard; I have been through two of the three things Josh has been through and I feel like I really connect with him through his music, and through the way he let’s his emotions just over take him. It feels like he expresses so much in such a short amount of time. All of the lyrics express the way I have felt in the past and present. But the one lyric that does it in for me is, ‘I'm shaking like I shook before/Never ever getting better off/and I can only watch/This is where I stopped before/Not another piece of me/I always slip away from…’ It tells how, when I’m confronted with being alone and forgotten I’ll shake from the inside out and I’ll never recover and nothing can make it better. All I can do is stand by and watch as my wall come crumbling down at the same place I was before. I can’t make it any farther. It’s like it’s taking another part of me away and even though I try to rebuild from it, it never works. It slips out of my grasp.

“Say Anything” was possibly chosen as the title because of the silence and loneliness the writer feels within himself. He’s reaching out to that person to say anything at all to let him know where they stand and where they’re at. There’s nothing but silence and yet he keeps begging and begging for just a little hint. I relate completely to this in so many ways. I feel like a lot of the time I can be screaming at the top of my lungs but everyone that is supposed to care about me just keeps walking in the same direction without so much as a side-glance. Like this lyric, ‘I don't expect but try me/And you will always find me here/This is where I scream from.’ That’s exactly what I get out of the title; you’re just drowning within yourself with no one to throw you a lifeline.

The big idea in this song is to get someone you care about to give you another chance at something you’ve messed up on and explain how deep the situation has driven you to the brink of insanity. It’s like someone can take everything from that person and that person will still find a thought of that someone in every little thing even though it’s all been stripped away, ‘You can take it all away and I'll miss/There's a little bit of you in all this/And you can say you only think you know” .

In conclusion, there are many things that contribute to the songs meaning from the delivery of the music to the actual lyrics and on to the lead singer’s emotions embedded in his voice.  Whether it seems like it or not there is a deeper meaning behind every song and every artist. From the depressed sides to the most heartwarming ones, each song can cause a different kind of sensation within every one of us. All you have to do is listen and keep your mind wide open.