I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and the longer I’ve sat with it the more uncomfortable I feel about the lyrics in Thirteenth Step.
I’ve loved the music on the album ever since I first heard it, and A Perfect Circle have been one of my favourite bands since I was a teenager. But the older I get, the more I hear a cruelty and vindictiveness in Maynard’s lyrics on this album.
In the context of the album’s theme of addiction and recovery, the lyrics of songs like The Outsider don’t sit comfortably with me. It’s something I’ve noticed more and more with Maynard’s lyrics in general: they’re often about his disappointment in other people, his judgement of them. On an album about addiction and recovery, there doesn’t feel like there’s much empathy or compassion.
I think I’m falling out of love with Thirteenth Step.
Thanks for this response, it was thought-provoking and I wanted to take the time to reply to you properly.
First, I’m glad The Outsider holds meaning for you. My discomfort with the song, and the album in general, is down to the way those words resonate with me, and that’s based on my experiences. If you’ve been in a place where you’ve experienced someone you care about self-destructing, then I’m sorry you went through that. It’s horrible. Processing that is very personal and there isn’t a wrong way to do it.
I picked The Outsider as an example in my original post because it’s a clear representation of the theme of disdain I feel is present in the entire album. Again, I understand this is a concept album and I shouldn’t jump to the conclusion that this represents Maynard’s real opinions, but I have a hard time separating him as a person from the narrator in this album because this isn’t the only place Maynard has expressed such opinions. I remember interviews he gave around the time Thirteenth Step came out where he went into the meaning behind some of the songs, and he was very direct about them being about his disappointment in other people. Whether the subjects of these songs are real or imagined, I don’t know, but either way it doesn’t sit right with me.
It’s not just on this album: a lot of Maynard’s lyrics have similar themes. For example, I love the music in Passive, but the lyrics again are written from the perspective of someone angry and frustrated that other people don’t meet up to their standards. Aenema is pretty misanthropic in general. In Hooker With a Penis he pushes back against his critics with “all you know about me is what I sold you”, but all he’s selling me is a contrarian provocateur. Whether there’s a deeper self-reflection hidden between the lines of his words almost feels irrelevant: I’m believing who he’s showing me, and it puts me off.
Thank you for your response. I know it’s difficult to convey tone, so I hope my wall of text didn’t come off as lecturing, as it was not my intent. As you say, it’s all in the eye (or ear, in this case) of the audience, and any interpretation can be as personally truthful as any other. I’m just offering some different ways the song has spoken to me over the past few years as an alternative.
For what it’s worth, my interpretation is not born out of my lived experience matching the narrator’s, but rather that self-destructive individual. Had a crash out some years ago which resulted in a period of hospitalization, and this song was an expression of what I feared my support system were thinking when I leaned on them.
Ultimately though, if Maynard’s misanthropy (and for all my talk about separating art and artist, I’ll agree that homie DEFINITELY has some misanthropic sentiment) is not something you can get over, I totally get it. As I alluded to earlier, I think Mel Gibson is a great actor and director. I also will never support another project he’s involved in because of who he has revealed himself to be. J.k. Rowling is another that falls in this camp.
For me though, Maynard being a mean lil troll doesn’t raise the same amount of bile in my throat as folks of that ilk. I remind myself that I’ve written lots of things that don’t reflect the totality of my perspective on a given subject, including juvenalia which boils down to “everyone is an asshole except me”. A lot of them are journal entries, some of them are exercises in fiction. In either case, I was trying to exorcise myself of thoughts and feelings I wasn’t happy having rattle around my head, so I got them out onto paper where they could wither in the light.
Again, not saying that this is at all what is happening with Maynard. I’m clearly living in relative ignorance of his intent and the wider context surrounding his lyrics, and I absolutely don’t mean any of this to say “I’m right and you’re wrong”.