invariably did, with a picture of Smith’s Oscar performance, the article describes how “a greasy weed of a man murmured his eerie ballad ‘Miss Misery,’ about a depressed alcoholic, on the same stage occupied minutes earlier by such commercial titans as Celine Dion and LeAnn Rimes.” The article goes on to say, “such delicious incongruity never would have happened if it weren’t for director Gus Van Sant, who plucked Smith from the hip hinterlands to grace his soundtrack to ‘Good Will Hunting.’”
XO,
with its impeccable production values and forcefulrock and roll arrangements, threatened to undermine this very “delicious incongruity,” perhaps accounting for the newfound emphasis on Smith’s personal life it seems to have triggered in the mainstream press.
A
Boston Globe
show review describes the “scraggly-haired” Smith, who “no one’s every going to confuse … with the happiest boy in the room,” and suggests that even as
XO
is a more optimistic record, “if you grasp what Smith’s singing, you hear the gritty imagery under the chiming chords and even-keeled tempos.” The vague shorthand “gritty” signifies barely anything if not fleshed out by some understanding of Smith’s popular image. And, once again, the suggestion that this “gritty imagery” is the part of Smith’s music that needs to be “grasped” swiftly dismisses the album’s remarkable musical achievement as something that needs to be overcome to get to the “real” nature of Smith’s songwriting.
By late 1998, the press seems to have grown frustrated and impatient with Smith’s unwillingness to accept the “singer/songwriter” tag—a frustration no doubt enhanced by the punked-up renditions of
XO
tunes that Smith was performing with Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss of Quasi as his backing band. In an
Irish Times
article previewing a December 6 show, Smith is quoted extensively as wanting to escape the “singer/songwriter” tag. The article retorts, “… thatseems unlikely. Smith is shy and self-effacing—and the songs cover the usual songwriter territory of alienation and self-doubt. The difference is that not every songwriter can so successfully transform such frustration into something of beauty.” It is often directly before or after a quote in which Smith rejects the “singer/songwriter” role that he is described as “shy,” “self-effacing,” “soft-spoken.” Even if he doesn’t see himself as a “singer/songwriter,” it is clear that
we all
do, and it is clear why we should.
A follow-up on
Yahoo! Launch
from October of 1998 repeats the deferrals of the earlier piece:
You can’t read about Elliott Smith without running across phrases like “reclusive, tortured artiste” and “sad, haunting songs.” As a result, there’s a prevailing public image of Smith as some kind of brooding and brokenhearted waif-man perfect in his misery, a writer of beautiful melancholy music but not exactly the type of guy you want manning the phones at Suicide Prevention.
Once again, Smith expresses his frustration at being painted as a “morose folk singer.” Once again, the writer responds incredulously:
Well, you’re probably thinking, you do play acoustic guitar and write lyrics like “Here’s thesilhouette/The face always turned away/The bleeding color gone to black/Dying like the day” (from “Oh Well, Okay”), sooo …
Indeed, as Smith’s music grew farther away from the “singer/songwriter” mold, his lyrics became a more common means of asserting that he
is,
in fact, a real-life “tortured singer-songwriter,” despite his protestations. An extensive feature in the January 1999 issue of
Spin
equates one of Smith’s song titles with his supposed suicide attempt:
Massaging a glass of beer, he seems happy, truly happy, which is not something a singer/songwriter so often linked with words such as “gloom” and “Garfunkel” is supposed to be. Happier than someone who sings about the
XO,
with its impeccable production values and forcefulrock and roll arrangements, threatened to undermine this very “delicious incongruity,” perhaps accounting for the newfound emphasis on Smith’s personal life it seems to have triggered in the mainstream press.
A
Boston Globe
show review describes the “scraggly-haired” Smith, who “no one’s every going to confuse … with the happiest boy in the room,” and suggests that even as
XO
is a more optimistic record, “if you grasp what Smith’s singing, you hear the gritty imagery under the chiming chords and even-keeled tempos.” The vague shorthand “gritty” signifies barely anything if not fleshed out by some understanding of Smith’s popular image. And, once again, the suggestion that this “gritty imagery” is the part of Smith’s music that needs to be “grasped” swiftly dismisses the album’s remarkable musical achievement as something that needs to be overcome to get to the “real” nature of Smith’s songwriting.
By late 1998, the press seems to have grown frustrated and impatient with Smith’s unwillingness to accept the “singer/songwriter” tag—a frustration no doubt enhanced by the punked-up renditions of
XO
tunes that Smith was performing with Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss of Quasi as his backing band. In an
Irish Times
article previewing a December 6 show, Smith is quoted extensively as wanting to escape the “singer/songwriter” tag. The article retorts, “… thatseems unlikely. Smith is shy and self-effacing—and the songs cover the usual songwriter territory of alienation and self-doubt. The difference is that not every songwriter can so successfully transform such frustration into something of beauty.” It is often directly before or after a quote in which Smith rejects the “singer/songwriter” role that he is described as “shy,” “self-effacing,” “soft-spoken.” Even if he doesn’t see himself as a “singer/songwriter,” it is clear that
we all
do, and it is clear why we should.
A follow-up on
Yahoo! Launch
from October of 1998 repeats the deferrals of the earlier piece:
You can’t read about Elliott Smith without running across phrases like “reclusive, tortured artiste” and “sad, haunting songs.” As a result, there’s a prevailing public image of Smith as some kind of brooding and brokenhearted waif-man perfect in his misery, a writer of beautiful melancholy music but not exactly the type of guy you want manning the phones at Suicide Prevention.
Once again, Smith expresses his frustration at being painted as a “morose folk singer.” Once again, the writer responds incredulously:
Well, you’re probably thinking, you do play acoustic guitar and write lyrics like “Here’s thesilhouette/The face always turned away/The bleeding color gone to black/Dying like the day” (from “Oh Well, Okay”), sooo …
Indeed, as Smith’s music grew farther away from the “singer/songwriter” mold, his lyrics became a more common means of asserting that he
is,
in fact, a real-life “tortured singer-songwriter,” despite his protestations. An extensive feature in the January 1999 issue of
Spin
equates one of Smith’s song titles with his supposed suicide attempt:
Massaging a glass of beer, he seems happy, truly happy, which is not something a singer/songwriter so often linked with words such as “gloom” and “Garfunkel” is supposed to be. Happier than someone who sings about the
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