LYRICS: THE BEAR

Shit in the woods! Our first single (and title track) from the new album is ‘The Bear’. Since the lyric video went online I’ve had a pile of people ask me to explain the song, which seems like a reasonable request but each time I try, I quickly get stuck. As I sing in it; “I don’t even understand what I wrote to myself.” So do I even know what the flip I’m singing about?

Here are the lyrics and at the bottom I’ll attempt to explain them.

‘The Bear’ by Chris T-T

I could be wrong, I could be right
Well done John, marvellous insight
You think buying and selling your soul would be better
Well picture me giving a damn… whatever
A note I wrote is floating right in front of my face
Now it says “Joan Rivers and Louis CK”
Now it says “Billie Holiday and Orson Welles”
I don’t even understand what I wrote to myself

You wanna lead the people
But you bleed the people
You don’t feed the people
But you’re gonna need the people

You need some gumption to fight that bear
You need some gumption to fight that bear
You need a slingshot to kill that thing
And then an over big enough to roast him in
I may be a king in winter
I’m still a king.

So Lenny Henry said when he was a chef
Feed your critics with the dish that is your second best
Save your best food for the people who love you
And spit on anybody if they think they’re above you.
Oooh, you gotta carry that weight
Bow your head, embrace your fate
Joan says to Louie in the dressing room
It doesn’t get better… but you do.

You wanna lead the people
But you bleed the people
We believe the people
We the people will free the people

You need some gumption to fight that bear
You need some gumption to fight that bear
You need a slingshot to kill that thing
And then an over big enough to roast him in
I may be a king in winter
I may be a king in winter
I’m still a king.

Don’t fuck with the people
Don’t fuck with the people
Don’t fuck with the people
Don’t fuck with the people

You need some gumption to fight that bear
You need some gumption to fight that bear
You need a slingshot to kill that thing
And then an over big enough to roast him in
I may be a king in winter
I may be a king in winter
I may be a king in winter
I’m still a king.

 

‘The Bear’ is about grasping for inspiration at a moment of lowest ebb. So if you take it on a ‘universal’ (big picture) level, it can be The People on the cusp of beginning their uprising against the powers that be. But on a completely personal level, it can be someone like me addressing my own failures – an internal “get over it!” narrative. Somewhere in between those two scenarios lies the truth which is (I guess) about finding an inspirational hook to give you strength in adversity, and/or wisdom in experience.

The quotes are all basically real. I started off trying to write ‘The Bear’ entirely out of infamous lines from other songs (so there are a few in there) but that collapsed because I couldn’t resist sarcastically responding to Lydon’s PIL quote in the first two lines.

That chorus line “You need some gumption to fight that bear.” is from Chicago radio show This American Life episode #474 Back To School; it was said about teachers who work in tough schools, who keep going back day-after-day despite it being incredibly hard. The analogy has been coming back to me whenever I think about stoicism, failure or survival.

Joan Rivers is the veteran comic, giving advice to the (fictionalised version of) a younger (though still veteran) comic Louis CK, in a real episode from season 2 of his Louie TV show (one of the greatest TV shows ever made in my opinion). On the show, after she gives him this advice in the dressing room, ‘Louie’ and Joan go off for a one night stand – which connects them vaguely to Billie Holiday and Orson Welles who also had a brief fling (allegedly transactional). And it’s true that I saw this bullshit I’d written down in my songwriting notebook and couldn’t remember what I was trying to convey to myself. As I say, a low ebb.

Though musically I love that ‘The Bear’ is lead single from the album, lyrically it drops you into the ‘story’ without having had a more optimistic set-up. On the album, ‘The Bear’ is track 2. Opening song ‘1994’ addresses people who might be in a similar place in life to this, yet they/we are dealing with it far more optimistically – mainly by partying shit out of life, like when we were kids. Which is obviously a great solution. So I think ‘The Bear’ seems darker when it’s taken away from the song before it. Mind you, song 3 on the album is darker still.

And there we are: it’s only writing this now that I face the horrible possibility that I wrote a midlife crisis record while I’m still in my 30s. Fuck.