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 TITLE: Ernest and Mabel ARTIST: Carmen Grant LENGTH: 3:18 GENRE: Indie folk, alt-country, American Primitivism
Carmen Grant has proven to us time and again that she has no problem hitting the music scene full force, in a flurry of emotion and red hair, as she releases hit after hit. Just for a quick flashback, let's remember when we first met Carmen Grant: She released an EP titled "Pet" almost immediately after she was discovered, which went triple platinum is the charts before Carmen disappeared from the music world for a little bit, only to come back with "Not Going to Lie," which blogger and music critic Honor Wynter gave a 4/5 and said that the highlight of the song was "the entire song." But, of course, Carmen Grant disappeared from us again until several months later when she came back with "Stop Looking," which had 240,000 downloads in it's first week, and has been wildly successful ever since. Carmen's fans assumed that Carmen would be disappearing for several months again after Stop Looking, but she has surprised everybody by sticking around a little bit longer to give us another new single titled "Ernest and Mabel."
The song, of course, is another emotional rollercoaster that Carmen has decided to take her listeners on as she tells us about one of her past relationships. Fans have learned from Carmen's other songs, and from the little bits that she's let people know, that she does not have a great track record with men. "Not Going to Lie" tells the story about how she's broken up with a man, but wants to remain fuck buddies with him. "Stop Looking" is about how she's looking for love again after the man that she was in love with left her. And more recently, she let her fans know that her short relationship with Neil Williamette, metal band Acts of Hate's drummer, ended suddenly. Yes, Carmen Grant was dating the drummer for a metal band. No surprise why that didn't work out.This new song, however, doesn't seem to be related to Carmen and Neil's recent breakup. This new song tells a new story of heartbreak.
Throughout the song, Carmen speaks directly to her lover. Her voice is serene and almost happy, as if she's completely accepted this situation that she and her lover are in and she's no longer upset by it anymore. The music of the song has no dramatic twists or turns in it. It stays serene and happy as well with her, the whole song one big ode to accepting the things that you cannot change. When Carmen begins the sing, her first line is, "Got your little secret, no, I will not tell" and already the listener knows that nothing good is going to come from this situation that Carmen is singing about. Carmen Grant and secrets? That can never be good. The second line, she reveals to the listeners that she and her lover are in a highway motel while her lover is sobering up. Beautiful scene, right? Pure romance. The more Carmen goes on to describe what is going on, the more the lines between "dirty hook-up" and "pathetic hook-up" get blurred. The man begs for Carmen to stay with him in the highway hotel and sing to him, but instead Carmen dances around in her underwear to turn him on, making it obvious that while to the man, this relationship is for the companionship and possibly the love he feels towards her, for Carmen it's all about the sex - making this the second song Carmen has released about wanting a relationship just for sex. The chorus of the song is, "And if you weren't so old, I'd probably keep you / If you weren't so old, I'd tell my friends / But I don't think your wife would like my friends." Woah. Brand new insight into the relationship, and it's delivered by Carmen so nonchalantly. If the listeners were rooting for this relationship to work out, they are going to be sourly disappointed now. The listener knows now that this man is much older than Carmen - and judging by the fact that Carmen is only twenty-one years old and how much she seems to rely on the judgement of her friends on who she should date, it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that this relationship Carmen is singing about happened when she was much younger - possibly even when she was sixteen or seventeen. Yet nothing that she is singing seems to upset her all that greatly, almost as if she didn't understand the magnitude of sleeping with a married man - another sign that this situation took place when she was much younger - or that she just simply does not care about what happens to the man she's with and his wife. "I've got a hit for every day of the week / I gave you something of mine that was so sweet / That I've been holding on to since I was sixteen," Carmen continues in the third verse, the new information coming in that Carmen has lost her virginity to this married man. Even with this information, Carmen still seems very nonchalant about the whole situation, making the listeners think that maybe she's trying to hide all her shame and regret about how she lost her virginity and hooking up with this married man.
It's odd to think about Carmen Grant, who has such a lovable and adorable character, feel regret. It has always been said that music is how musicians show their true selves, and in Carmen Grant's case, that is certainly the truth. Perhaps Carmen's child-like and innocent personality is just a ruse to cover all the pain that she feels over her past. Something to think about, yeah?
Anyway, Carmen goes on to sing, "I'll call you Ernest, and you call me Mabel / You passed out, so I flicked through cable / And I stole your gold watch off the bedside table." Yeah, Carmen is definitely not the innocent little redhead that she has tried to make us believe she is, and she's trying to show us that through her own depiction of herself in this song. Carmen repeats the chorus twice before letting out a small chant of, "Ernest Hemingway and Mabel Normand / Ernest Hemingway and Mabel Normand" and then repeating the chorus twice more before the song ends. Ernest Hemingway was the author of several famous books such as A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, and The Old Man and the Sea. Mabel Normand was a famous comedic silent film actress who appeared in several films with Charlie Chaplin, and later going on to write silent films. It is normal for people to use the names of famous people when checking into a motel - especially seedy ones - if they do not want anybody to know that they were there, so that explains why they used the fake names. But also the personalities of their two aliases say a bit about the person who chose them. Ernest Hemingway was a manly man, but with several disabilities that were kept unknown to the public until he killed himself later in life. Mabel Normand was beautiful and funny woman, but had her name attached to many scandals and rumors. Carmen's Ernest had his secrets - most of them involving Carmen herself. And Carmen is like Mabel in the way that although she's a friendly, beautiful girl, she's made horrible decisions that will always haunt her for the rest of her life. The names that they chose to represent themselves during their meetings were not coincidental.
Got your little secret, no, I will not tell
You're trying to sober up in the highway motel
And my hands are covered with your smell
You begged me to stay and sing you a song
I dance dirty for you because it turns you on
And I'm a little redhead with white pants on
And if you weren't so old, I'd probably keep you
If you weren't so old, I'd tell my friends
But I don't think your wife would like my friends
I've got a hit for every day of the week
I gave you something of mine that was so sweet
That I've been holding on to since I was sixteen
I'll call you Ernest, and you call me Mabel
You passed out, so I flicked through cable
And I stole your gold watch off the bed side table
And if you weren't so old, I'd probably keep you
If you weren't so old, I'd tell my friends
But I don't think your wife would like my friends
And if you weren't so old, I'd probably keep you
If you weren't so old, I'd tell my friends
But I don't think your wife would like my friends
Ernest Hemingway and Mabel Normand
Ernest Hemingway and Mabel Normand
And if you weren't so old, I'd probably keep you
If you weren't so old, I'd tell my friends
But I don't think your wife would like my friends
And if you weren't so old, I'd probably keep you
If you weren't so old, I'd tell my friends
But I don't think your wife would like my friendsSOUNDS LIKE:
M. Ward - The First Time I Ran Away
TITLE: Mercury ARTIST: Carmen Grant LENGTH: 3:58 GENRE: Alternative rock, dream pop, acoustic
Carmen wastes no time immediately going into a slower, dream pop sound as she reminisces - again - about her past. The song is short and simple, like much of Carmen's work, feeding off of the drug-use themes and shoegazing feel to create of a scene of young adulthood in Carmen's life. The act that Carmen is talking about in the song - driving out to an abandoned school's parking lot to get high - is obviously one that has happened before, and the repetition of the few lines in the song shows that it was an ongoing occurrence. The lines "And it's like you said / I would've turned up dead in the car" is Carmen saying that if somebody hadn't of stopped her, she probably would have stayed in her car for the rest of her life, getting high. The song has a very teenager-y feel to it, expressing the sort of "teenager ideals" of wanting to just sit around and get high all the time, added with the almost-drowsy sounding instrumentals and Carmen's soft, tired voice, definitely gives the song a feeling that all of these events took place a few years ago, and that Carmen is a different person now than she was then.
Although the song is a shorter song, which not much meat to it, it's another example of Carmen using her debut album to show a side of her that before the public has never gotten to see. Even with only a few singles out, and a generally well-received EP, Carmen Grant's personality has become a known identity, and perhaps it more famous than her music itself - which has only done mediocrily well in the past few months that Carmen Grant has been in the music scene. But her fans will enjoy knowing this piece of her past, as well as the other pieces that she slowly reveals over time in her album, and maybe by the end, her fans will feel like they know Carmen as how she truly is, and not just as a musician anymore.
And it's like you said,
I would've turned up dead in the car
And it's like you said,
I would've turned up dead in the car
Want to go get high?
Mercury is parked outside
Want to take me to
The parking lot of the old high school?
Want to go get high?
Mercury is parked outside
Want to take me to
The parking lot of the old high school?
And it's like you said,
I would've turned up dead in the car
And it's like you said,
I would've turned up dead in the car
And it's like you said,
I would've turned up dead in the car
And it's like you said,
I would've turned up dead in the car
And it's like you said,
I would've turned up dead in the carSOUNDS LIKE:
Mazzy Star - Cry, Cry
TITLE: Not Going to Lie ARTIST: Carmen Grant LENGTH: 3:45 GENRE: Indie rock, folk rock, blues rock
Carmen's first single off of her upcoming debut album, Speak Soft, is Not Going to Lie, a song that she wrote a few years ago after a rough breakup. The song talks about the aftermath of her breakup, and how, even though they were no longer in a relationship anymore, she still wanted to continue to sexual relationship they had. Carmen felt that this was something that a lot of people could relate to. In the first few lines of her song, she sings to her ex, as if they were in the same room together, explaining to him that the situation that they are not in is very complicated and she needs to get away. She goes on to sing that she's "not going to smile at all the shit that's happened," talking, of course, about their dead relationship, and that she doesn't want to be friends. She finishes the two verse by singing, "Just take off your clothes and get into my bed." It's obvious that, while Carmen's wants out of the relationship are now purely sexual, the ex still wants some sort of romantic relationship between them. In the third verse, she talks about "the press." One interpretation on that line could be the literal press, as in perhaps Carmen once dated a famous person, and the media was constantly trying to figure out how their relationship was. Another interpretation, and one that was been considered the true one for most people, is that what Carmen calls "the press" is actually just the people who are trying to know everything about Carmen and her ex, even though that information should only be strictly between she and them. With social media/websites on the rise, and people able to see who is in a relationship with who in just a few seconds, its easy to feel like you're being pressed and interviewed for information about your love life now. We also learn in the third verse that Carmen either broke up with her ex, or was definitely the reason for their breakup. The very last verse of the song is the verse that brings everything together. Carmen seems to be speaking very sternly to her ex as she explains that she doesn't need to explain anything to them because they are no longer dating, and that her ex no longer has any sway over what she does and what she thinks. At the last line, we see a glimpse of the Carmen that we've grown to love, where she mentions that instead of dealing with all the crap that her ex is throwing her way, she's just going to drink all day instead.
From the very beginning of the song, we know that this is not going to be a fun song. Carmen Grant, although being known in some group because of her bouncy, colorful personality, tends to write very emotional songs. Not Going to Lie is not different from the other ones in that aspect. The song starts with a slow jazz feeling to it, a piano starting the song off, and then a saxophone joining in to truly give the song the "jazz club" type feeling. When Carmen starts to sing, her voice is low and sultry. Even though the song is about not wanting to be romantic with a person anymore, she still sounds like she's trying to seduce him, almost as if the whole song were one big tease. A soft drum keeps the beat throughout the song. In the second verse, her voice gains some confidence, getting a little bit louder, and then going back to her original low voice. This continues throughout the song, as if she gets up the confidence to take her ex back, and then backs away from it. Because of her voice, many people can walk away with different interpretations of the song: Is she denying her ex a romantic relationship because he doesn't deserve one, or is she denying him one because she is teasing him and only wants sex? Was it really her fault that they broke up, or was it something that he did, and not everybody knows that? Of course, the listener will probably never know the answers to these questions, so the song is completely up to how that certain listener wants to interpret it. In the very last verse, Carmen's voice finally grows much more confident than ever before. All the instruments speed up their pace, the sax playing a much more upbeat tune than before as the song takes on less of a jazz club feeling and more of a musical theatre feeling. The whole last verse develops the feeling of Carmen really telling her ex off before she sings her last line, and all of the instruments go back to their original tune. The sudden change back to the slow tune could make the listeners have a few other questions: Was the sudden change because she only had enough confidence to tell him off just that once, or was it because she immediately regretting telling him off like that? Or maybe it goes back to the relaxed feeling because she truly is more relaxed now that she's gotten him out of her hair? Who knows. That's only up to the listeners to decide.
I'm not going to lie
Not going to make up my mind tonight
I'm not going to pretend
I cleared out of town so I could clear my head
I'm not going to smile at all the shit that's happened
It's going to take a while
I don't want to be your friend
Just take off your clothes and get into my bed
And the press is after you
Jumping over fences just to see who's cool
And now I stand accused
I put a hole in your heart
And then I fed it to you
I'm not going to think
About all the shit you want me to think
I'm not going to say
Who I spent my time with yesterday
I'm not going to choose
In the end, either way, I still lose
I'm not going to
I was thinking about drinking my way through the daySOUNDS LIKE:
Cat Power - Lived in Bars
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