Trainwreck

Do you ever have that experience with a song where-- the first time you hear it, it leaves you completely unphased-- and the second and third and fourth and fifth time you hear it, you're similarly untouched--- but around the twentieth time, you're struck by the lyrics, and around the thirtieth time you're touched deep down by the melody, and the fiftieth time, it runs through you like marrow in your bones? This song by Glen Phillips, "Trainwreck," is like that for me. I first heard this song on a burned cd that someone gave me back in high-school-- a simple, slow, sad song, and it floated past me as an afterthought. But as I've listened to this song, again and again and again over the last six years... I'm consistently arrested by the combination of the melody and story and the winding imagery of the lyrics. It's accompanied so many of my nostalgic, pensive moments-- I hear it now, and it feels like a part of me, of my stories, of my history. It's in the fabric.


She looked just like a train wreck
That could've been avoided
In a third world country
By a long stretch of farmland
Where the waters had run high
And the topsoil down the river
So that next year there would be no crops. . .

She was as desperate as a salesman
At a company that's folding
But they haven't told the staff yet
That they're bankrupt and backordered
And they're funneling the pensions
To the CEO's back pocket
So in one week they'll have nothing

I miss you girl. I hope you're fine
Good luck, love
Or goodbye
Goodbye

She's the girl from central casting
Always played the sweet young orphan
Or the girl with the heart of gold
But she got her SAG card pulled
And turns tricks now on Cahuenga
She tells herself it's research
For her next greatest role

I miss you girl, I hope you're fine
Good luck, love
Or goodbye
Goodbye

She'll call you up just to hear you say she's fine
Then she's gone away
And you know there's only one more time
You'll hear about her again

Well it's life informing art informing life again
Like every stupid kid
That thinks that they're the first in pain
The first to rip themselves apart
The first to try and live without a heart

I miss you girl, I hope you're fine
Good luck, love
Or goodbye
I want to see your face, even hear your lies
Good luck, girl
Or goodbye
Goodbye