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Songs I Probably Shouldn’t Listen To #24
Song: Cornerstone
Artist: Arctic Monkeys
Album: Humbug
Key Lyric:
Thought I saw you in the battleship
But it was only a look a like
She was nothing but a vision trick
Under the warning light
She was close, close enough to be your ghost
Commentary:
I’ve liked the Arctic Monkeys ever since they blew up on the internet. Some people branded them as generic dude rock, but I thought they offered a refreshing take on the genre. I’ve also always admired Alex Turner’s knack for crafting stories within his songs.
This song is a perfect example of creating a rich narrative within a song. In an interview with Uncut magazine, Alex Turner described this as a love song about going to different pubs and meeting different girls that just remind him of the one he’s trying to forget. The song goes onto describe different situations where the narrator encounters different girls with uncanny resemblances to the one, and it concludes with his ex’s sister. It’s a very sad subject but the lyrical wordplay keeps the perspective very tongue in cheek. You can’t really take it seriously if he sings about wandering up to a stranger “And kissed who ever was sitting there”.
Still, I can relate to this song because no matter where I am, I always think there’s the possibility of running into her at any given moment. It doesn’t even matter that she may hundreds of miles away at this point, it’s just that our shared memories in this city are enough to keep me second guessing if I see someone similar in the corner of my eye. I don’t know if we’ll ever see each other again or how long I’ll keep up this charade of seeing her ghost in this city.
