busy being make believe

how to act when you’re being applauded demonstrated by alex turner (x)

Arctic Monkeys - March 2005 Photos by Hedi Slimane

Songwriters are not poets. Or songs are not poems, I should say. In fact, songs are often bad poems. Take the music away and what you’re left with is often an awkward piece of creative writing full of lumpy syllables, cheesy rhymes, exhausted cliches and mixed metaphors. But of all those writing lyrics today, Turner is among the most poetic. His use of internal rhyme exists to be admired and envied. And where some songwriters are never able to get beyond the drama of their own lives and diaries, Turner is more than capable of sidestepping his own experience and producing telling little mini-dramas populated by keenly observed characters. The song Only Ones Who Know is typical of this second-person approach, a wistful lament on lost chances and wrong choices. For someone so young Turner can be surprisingly cheerless when it comes to interpersonal relationships. In his world, every romance seems destined to become an icing-sugar bride and groom found in the bottom of the dishwasher.

— Simon Armitage

Elle Brazil Shoot I