This will be a short post, but I may expand on it later. I was just listening to a song called “Early to the Party” by Andy Shauf, and I am simply awestruck at the simple beauty of a number of lines in the song.

The chorus goes like this:

Bird on the wall
Catch her calling all the shots
Catch her tying you in knots
Won’t let you leave

The orchestration of the music is haunting, but it is the delivery of the simple, yet evocative lyric that makes this song wondrous.

The chorus is a response to the protagonist of the song recognizing that they are in a bad relationship.

What happened to manners
I guess he’s had a few
He’s talking shit
He never thinks of you
So bite your lip and watch him walk off with his friends
Leaving you all alone once again

Yet, the protagonist can’t leave. They are trapped and, on some level, refuse to believe that the bird is within. On some level, the song is in conversation with a number of texts that use the bird metaphor. You could easily see Nora from A Doll’s House right before the big party or Minnie Foster from Susan Glaspell’s “Trifles” who also feels powerless to leave.

Unlike both of those women, who eventually escape, the protagonist in Shauf’s song still hasn’t found the path by the end of the song which comes to an end with a slight shift in the final lyric, “Never lets you leave.”

This finality is often what leads to the drastic measures taken by our other trapped birds. You think it is the bird that has you trapped, but you are the trapped bird, and “never” will not stand.

I love these lyrics. Both nonsensical, and eminently powerful all at once. There is something very touching about this style of writing and one I hope to someday capture.