Dave Matthews Band won the fan vote for the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame this year by gaining over 1 million votes. The band will not be inducted into the hall this year, the first time the fan-favorite has been bypassed by the selection committee. I wish this was an isolated slight, but Dave Matthews Band has been the target of undeserved critical ire for some time[1][2][3][4]. It seems all ultra-successful artists attract more than their fair share of criticism, but DMB seems to have been the target more than more than their fair share. Most of these criticisms seem to be some form of ‘I hate their fans so I hate them’, ‘their music all sounds the same’, ‘their fans think they are good but they’re not’, all thoroughly fallacious and reasonless arguments. Art is certainly in the eye of the beholder, but the ‘I just don’t like it’ criticisms have no value and should not contribute to the calculus of Hall of Fame selection. By objective measures, DMB are technically talented musicians, have compiled an expansive catalog of work, have had generation topping success in pop music, and do not have a derivative sound. Some critics state that Matthews’ lyrics are unartful but I suspect these critics have not listened beyond the mainstream love ballads like ‘Crash into me’ or ‘Crush’. There is actually a lot of poetry to be found in Matthews’ lyrics if one chooses to step out of the critical groupthink and really listen.
I will focus on the poetry of their early works, “Remember Two Things” and “Under the Table and Dreaming”, their first album and their first major studio album respectively. All of these lyrics are written by Dave Matthews who was in his early 20’s at the time. The first thing I will note is a common theme of mortality among the songs on these albums:
- “Ants Marching”
- “Lights down, you up and die”
- “Tripping Billies”
- “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die”
- “One Sweet World”
- “And here I will rest in peace”
- “Seek Up”
- “Right, wrong, weak, strong, Ashes to ashes all fall down”
- “For soon we will all find our lives swept away”
- “What Would You Say”
- “A lifetime’s passed you by”
- “Everyone goes in the end”
- “Rhyme & Reason”
- “I’m as good as dead”
- “Until I’m six feet underground”
- “Lying cold in my grave”
- “Typical Situation”
- “It all comes down to nothing”
- “Dancing Nancies”
- “Could I have been anyone other than me?”
- “Warehouse”
- “End of tunnel, TV sets, Spot in the middle, Static fade, statistical bit, And soon I’ll fade away”
- “Bags packed on a plane, Hopefully to heaven, yeah”
- “#34”
- “Soon we move through the flood and we fade away”
How many 23-year-olds do you know who contemplate mortality at all, let alone write two full albums of lyrics stringing it as a running theme throughout? These mortal thoughts punctuate a diverse collection of themes and ideas while adding a certain urgency. These are not signs of a lazy pop jingle writer, but of a rare and soulful poet who happens to be able to sing whilst playing guitar in a unique and difficult to mimic rhythm/lead hybrid style. You should acknowledge Matthews as a once in a generation talent whether you ‘like’ his music or not.
Like any true poet, many of Matthews’ writings have complexity and layered symbolism that result in a unique and personal interpretation by each consumer. I will share my interpretation of ‘Seek Up’, a song from DMB’s first album, “Remember Two Things”. First, the title, ‘Seek Up’, refers to summoning the motivation to do something selfless. I will walk through the lyrics to justify this interpretation and find additional meaning.
Sometimes I feel like I’m falling
Fall back again, …
This passage has a double meaning, first, ‘falling’ is a metaphor for a feeling of being out of control, the second is the act of falling back after ‘seeking up’ the motivation to take some selfless action but ultimately failing.
Oh, life it seems a struggle between
What we see what we do
I’m not going to change my ways
Just to please you or appease you
The struggle here is that we notice the many injustices in the world yet we spend most of our time and resources for selfish interests. Who is the ‘you’ here that ‘I’ will not ‘please’ or ‘appease’? Society? God? His own conscience?
Look at this crowd, five billion proud
Willing to punch it out
Right, wrong, weak, strong
Ashes to ashes all fall down
The human population of Earth at the time of his writing was approximately 5 billion. Here he states that humanity is willing to take action collectively to right some wrong, contrasting what we actually do when we act individually. He evokes some more ‘fall back’ rationalization by stating the equal mortality of the righteous and sinful among us. The use of lyrics from the “Ring Around the Rosie” nursery rhyme and its connection to the Bubonic Plague underscores the apparent randomness and arbitrary nature of mortality.
A bit of an aside here, I want to stress that rationalization is not rational although it shares the same root. Rationalization is the employment of fallacy and reason to come to sometimes false or at least flawed conclusions. We are too often presented with incomplete or non-quantifiable evidence and are forced into inductive reasoning requiring significant extrapolation. In these instances we are tempted to fill in these evidence holes with our preconceived biases allowing us to form whatever conclusion we desire. Rationalization is the evil twin of reason and must be checked vigilantly lest we find ourselves biased beyond repair. Aside complete.
Look around about this round
About this merry-go-round and around
If at all God’s gaze upon us falls
It’s with a mischievous grin, look at him
‘This round’ and ‘this merry-go-round’ are references to the Earth. He asks here in plainer words, ‘If there is a God, is he toying with us by challenging us with such an imperfect world?’. Yet more ‘fall back’ rationalization, why try if it is all just a game?
Forget about the reasons and
The treasons we are seeking
Forget about the notion that
Our emotions can be swept away
Forget about being guilty
We are innocent instead
For soon we will all find our lives swept away
This, a refrain, drives home our internal struggle between what we know we should do and what we ultimately do. The ‘reasons’ are the good intentions based on our understanding of what is right and just, while the ‘treasons’ are the selfish actions we take instead. Our emotions drive both these righteous thoughts and these selfish actions and neither can be suppressed. ‘Fall back’ rationalization says, ‘Don’t feel guilty because right or wrong, we will all die anyway’.
Look at me in my fancy car
And my bank account
Oh, how I wish I could take it all down
To my grave, God knows I’d save and save
Take a look again, …
The things we’ve all collected
Well, in the end, it piles up so tall
To one big nothing, one big nothing at all
Here he is questioning a lifetime of selfish action asking what was the point and can he seek up meaning in more selfless action. Next, is a second iteration of the refrain with a twist, replacing:
Forget about the notion that
Our emotions can be swept away
Forget about being guilty
We are innocent instead
with:
Forget about the notion that
your emotions can be wept away, kept at bay
Forget about being guilty
I am innocent instead
This time the seek up emotions are stronger but are again subsumed, falling back with more rationalizations. Now we have finally built up quite emotionally to the chorus:
You seek up an emotion
And our cup is overflowing
You seek up an emotion
Sometimes your well is dry
You seek up a big monster
For him to fight your wars for you
But when he finds his way to you, the devils not
Going–ha, ha
Sometimes when we ‘seek up’ we want to act but are overwhelmed while other times we do not have the will to commit the resources to the cause. The ‘big monster’ is all of the rationalizations, deflections, and deceits we allow and employ when we are on the advantageous side of an unjust reality. But, the day will come when we are the ones on the short side of injustice and this ‘devils not going’.
Sit awhile with TV’s hungry child
Big belly swelled
Oh, for a price of a coke or a smoke
I could keep alive those hungry eyes
We have all seen those pathos-laden appeals on late-night television asking for small amounts of money to feed obviously needy children and most of us, more often than not, have ignored these pleas.
Take a look at me, what you see in me
Mirror look at me
Face it all, face it all again
This passage really speaks to me. He is looking into his soul, ‘Why do I see these things and do nothing?’. The pathos here is thick, I feel the emotions welling up in me as I write, arresting a potential tear. I just stepped aside to donate to ‘Action Against Hunger’, my first ever to this cause. Sometimes when we ‘seek up’ we do take action before we ‘fall back again’. This reminds me that when I was a small child, my parents sponsored a hungry child in Africa through small monthly donations. His name was Edgar. We would get an occasional photo of Edgar in the mail and a short message saying how he was doing and how thankful he was for the assistance. My parents did this without the help of a world-class Grammy-winning recording artist spurring them on. They were always much better at seeking up than I have proven to be and for that Mom and Dad, Thank you.
Next, comes another largely unaltered pass through the refrain and the chorus but with one intriguing modification:
Intentions are not wicked, don’t be tricked into thinking so
I can see two very different ways to interpret this lyric. He could be saying that selfishness is just a manifestation of the human instinct of self-preservation and it is just another ‘fall back’ rationalization. The other interpretation is that these ‘intentions’ are the selfless justice driven intentions that we ‘seek up’ and that our rationalizations trick us into suppressing. Recall ‘God’s mischievous grin’, perhaps his was not a game at all, but rather a lesson that could only be taught through tough love. I prefer this latter interpretation, and I will strive to do more seeking up resulting in less falling back and more selfless action.
The song closes repeating ‘Fall back again’, an acknowledgment that we are human, we are flawed, and we will struggle. The real sin is when we stop struggling. I hope this cold analysis inspires you to seek up and take action for some kind of justice. If not, take an earnest listen to the band’s warm music and perhaps that will be more persuasive. If you do choose to listen and are not familiar with the band’s work, there are many(mostly live, some acoustic) renditions to choose from. The original album version may not be the best but it does convey a sweet authenticity in Matthews’ younger less confident vocals. Oh, and one more thing, tell the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame selection committee that they really stepped in it and to get it right next year!