Oh boy the line, "When it was dark I called and you came When it was dark I saw shapes When I see stars I feel your hand And I see stars and I reel again" is making me sob uncontrollably
I grew up with Joanna. I was 9 when her first album came out. She has been a bigger influence on millennial song writers than she could ever get credit for and could well be the greatest song writer of the 2000's.
It’s amazing how you can listen to an album once when you’re young and have it mean nothing, then listen to it again a decade later and have it blow your mind
Yeah that's me man, me and my other friend listened to this all the time at like 15/16 but as teenage boys we had no idea what it meant. Looking it up 15-20 years later and listening to it for nostalgia's sake and the pleasure only to find out the true meaning of the song as an adult hit home - it hits like a truck all the more
"Babies lost in the womb were never touched by fear. They were never cold, never hungry, never alone and importantly always knew love" - Zöe Clark-Coates. Felt this kicked true with this masterpiece of song. Peace with you Joanna, and little runaway bunny x
I always picture the line " your eyes are green, your hair is gold, your hair is black, your eyes are blue" as an older woman who has passed away, meeting the child she never knew. And he is waiting for her.
For more than a year now, I have been absolutely unable to STAND this song. Not because it's bad, because it always, without fail, made me cry my eyes out. Tried listening to it again today and... wow, am I glad I did.
No one quite speaks to me the way she does. I can listen to so many other artists and enjoy their music, but I always come back to Joanna whenever I don't know what I'm in the mood for. She fills my soul.
Just went through a miscarriage at 16 weeks for a baby I deeply, desperately wanted. Through the grief and literal physical pain and the deep indignity of getting an abortion I didn’t want but am grateful for the compassionate healthcare I did receive, this song has been there with me. The devastation has been hard to put to words. I’ve lost a parent as a child and thought I knew pain, how how to cope with it-but in my loneliness now, I’m both miserable
I went through the same thing...Don't worry. It wasn't an abortion, it may have been the same procedure, but you didn't end your pregnancy, you didn't choose to end it. It just happens and we don't have control over it. I had a missed miscarriage pregnancy and had no symptoms for like a whole month. I had chosen to use the pills at home to be with my fiancee so we could keep the remains of our baby and bury them.
Just my little piece to add to the miscarriage interpretation - I believe the part about the bunny is a reference to or inspired by Mary Toft, a woman in the 1700s who claimed to have given birth to a litter of stillborn rabbits. She had a miscarriage after her reported fascination with the sighting of a rabbit and in her grief concocted a plan to try to rise out of poverty and never want for anything again. Part of the reason why she lost her baby was because she was a servant and was forced to work in the fields even while pregnant. She even managed to convince even the king's physicians that she was giving birth to rabbit parts, but was later discovered and thrown into jail for five years and was never able to have the baby she longed for.
7th hokage this is coming from the same artist that wrote the line “I’ve never seen such a terrible room! Gilded with the gold teeth of women who loved you!”
There’s also a boom called The Runaway Bunny by Wise Brown, which is about a baby bunny telling their mom that they are going to run and hide some place, and the mom going “I will find you”. And the baby bunny goes “but what if I ran ___and hid____” and the mom goes “I would still find you even if you ran ____ and hid ____” over and over again. It was popularized by the award winning play Wit which was made into a movie starring Emma Thompson about a woman who is a poetry professor who teaches a course in and is obsessed with John Donne and then gets ovarian cancer. Her whole approach to poetry has been clinical and her approach to her students was cold. One of her students is now her oncologist, and he is similarly cold. He is more concerned with learning about the cancer and how it responds to various treatments than with her suffering. Things go from bad to worse, and she ends up hovering on the edge of death when she is given a surprise visit by the professor who initially inspired her when she was in university. The professor offers to read her some Donne and she says gasps nooo. The professor sees a copy of The Runaway Bunny, (the dying woman’s favorite book from childhood) and offers to read that instead. She then reads several pages from the book and then pauses and says “how clever…a perfectly allegory of the soul. Wherever it runs, God finds it”. Joanna Newsom is so good that I believe she meant the several line allusion to be both to all of that, and to the woman who birthed the stillborn rabbits. Best songwriter around and it’s not close
I know this is a year late, but I just read your comment and I almost broke into tears. It's so cool that people find comfort in music. Hope you're doing fine.
It's strange. I returned here after another recent loss that broke the very core of me, just to find this old comment of mine. Hadn't seen your replies back then. Thank you, it kind of warmed my heart.
I'm envious I didn't get to see this live. I like her music but I wouldn't exactly be a fan but this part is one of my favorite parts of any song I've ever heard...like the second half of PDA by Interpol...just a moment where a good artist transitions into something completely epic
Growing up my mother often read the runaway bunny to me. I went back a few years ago crying over the message it sent as I had often wanted to run away from my parents and the household they created. The line where joanna quotes the book hurts harder than ever and never ceases to make me cry.
worst feeling in the world is begging the world to enjoy joanna just as much as you do and being ignored. She's too incredible to be ignored you fools!
Oh yeah, absolutely, THAT is the uncontested worst feeling in the world! Yup! You nailed it! Second to that is OBVIOUSLY being deprived the GLORY of being HONORED with a participation trophy, which is as UNACCEPTABLE and UNJUST a fate as the plight this composition highlighted, right?!?! OF COURSE, so PLEASE grant me the honor of heroically bestowing upon you THIS, most vital digital, symbolic "appreciation" trophy, CAUSE THIS, is what REALLY matters!! (P.S. next to not just ALL, but especially BLUE LIVES!! #self-sucking-support)
There are so many pockets of emotion in this song but the two lyrics that really land a critical hit on me are: 'Well I wish we could take every path, Could spend a hundred years adoring you' and 'Your eyes are green Your hair is gold Your hair is black Your eyes are blue' I absolutely love the way the second one captures the feeling of mourning over someone who never even took form... they are as much anything/everything as they are nothing. Joanna is incredible
The timeless emotional journey this song takes me on is unlike any other. Still makes me sob and experience emotions that have been laying low. It's been 7 years since I listened to this. Happy to still feel this way when hearing it.
I know, every time she sings the second “be at peace baby and be gone” I cried like a broken dam... like you can hear the pain in Joanna’s voice and how she’s reluctant to let go of the memory of her child which she either lost through a miscarriage or an abortion, but in order to move on with her life she has to say goodbye to that memory 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
music doesn't make me cry very often but i'm convinced half or more of newsom's discography has made me just sob at one point. it's like she has this very specific superpower, and it's to induce tears in people... addendum: a while ago this one hit me out of nowhere while i was on the bus so thanks for that, joanna
She is a genius.. I don’t know how anyone can create something so pure, so raw, so ambiguous, yet so deeply relatable as this. I was just rocking my newborn baby to sleep, and totally struck down by this track. My love to all mothers who've lost one on the way.
There never has to be one meaning to a song. The point is how we infer the meaning and internalize it, for ourselves. Such is the beauty of all art and especially music. This song gives so much to me, as someone who has recently suffered a great loss. That is what I adore- Newsom comforts me, she can comfort you.
she's incredible in concert. i've seen her three times in paris, and that can't understand all the words, but they get it, too. such a hushed and accute attention she demands.
one of my favourites. so incredibly raw and riveting. it manages to bring me to tears every time i listen to it, so i can’t even begin to imagine how she performs it live.
When performed live, this is one of the most perfect things in existence. The complete silence from the awed crowd is almost eerie, followed by the thunderous applause when she finishes.
A year ago today I lost mine. I never met him, but I knew him, and God I loved him. I still do, but over the year I've learnt to out that love somewhere good, and I've tried to give it to myself as well. Wherever you are, stay vigilant my love, one day we'll meet again ❤
I sometimes feel like the only person in the universe who feels so stongly for this music. I understand thats not true, but sometimes it doesn't feel real, as though it is merely a dream, and in the end, it is just joanna's music and I.
I live in the woods. This song evokes something in my soul, it's ineffable, but it feels like moonlight, love, and sadness in a glade. I just never understand how no one else knows it when there's so much forest and nature here.
I love this song so much. It really made me think about the older sister I never met, and the way her life and death affected my family, and myself even though our lifetimes never overlapped. Baby birch inspired me to write a song about her. This song really makes me think about how much I miss her. And how I can miss someone who I never met. The line "your eyes are green your hair is gold, you hair is black, your eyes are blue ." and "she ran, as they're liable to do" always make me tear up. Thank you, Baby Birch, for making me confront my feelings about this.
I will likely never be able to have children. I can't imagine what it must be like to lose a baby whether intentionally or not. But this song always hits me in my rawest spot and makes me sob for the baby I wish so desperately I could have.
the more i listen to her metaphors the more they seem like plain statements. i can't imagine this being about anything other than choosing not to have a baby, and knowing it was the right thing but feeling a deep loss and sadness none the less. i think to read anything more into it is sort of pointless. she's being super direct.
@@xiangxa9929 don't say that. this song was released nearly ten years ago, she's a wealthy, famous, successful married woman now. maybe it's simply the right time for her to have a kid now and it wasn't the right time then.
"i think to read anything more into it is sort of pointless." Relax. People find different meaning in lyrics and that's fine. It's not "pointless". To boil everything down to one interpretation and call everything else pointless doesn't sound very fun or nice.
Oh my god, this song. It feels like there is even too much emotion in it to listen to it often. It’s too much but at the same time it‘s so damn beautiful. Heartbreaking, whatever the exact story behind it is. Just the song itself. Heartbreaking and beautiful and truly a masterpiece. I’ve had this in my joanna playlist for _ages_ and for some reason always skipped it. Never again.
i hope she got the money for all these streams and adds...... Joanna Newsom is goddess supreme. This songs saved my life years ago. Her music is sacred. Again i hope she is getting every penny of these streams.
for the people who don't think that think this is about losing a baby(either through abortion or miscarriage), how do you explain the similar part in the song right after this, "On A Good Day"?
oh my goodness Have I ever heard such a heartbreaking song in my life I dont think so. This is the song for Baby Birch Though I will never know you And at the back of what we've done There is the knowledge of you And I had thought it'd be harder to do but I caught her and skinned her quick, held her there Kicking and mewling upended unspooling unsung and blue Told her wherever you go little runaway bunny I will find you And then she ran As they're liable to do Be at peace baby, and be gone
I was in a cabin in the woods with my family and I would fall asleep to her every night my parents asked who is that cat voiced girl youre listening to? I told them Joanna Newsom. They never understood. What a shame
Whether it is about an abortion or a miscarriage, it is about the loss of the idea of a child. she gives that child she will not raise a name. and she sings it over and over again in this song. it's what makes it so sad. she is singing an existence that never was, or that only was in her mind. and that is, over and over again, when she sings it in this song. with all of the cruelty of that lack and what caused it. "be at peace, baby, and be gone."
Actually, I'd say that, rather than being about a miscarriage, it talks about an abortion--"I hated to close the door on you /...and there is a barber who is cutting and cutting away at my only joy". Beautiful way of expressing profound sadness.
If you lose your pregnancy at a late stage, the procedure is a lot like an abortion, which is why, I think, the barber is cutting away at her 'only joy'.
@@King_of_carrot_flowers"And I had thought it'd be harder to do but I caught her and skinned her quick" Doesn't sound like a miscarriage to me. God forbid a woman has an abortion!
I think Joanna Newsom would want you to interpret the songs in anyway you'd like. I personally would like to think she'd want you to take what she says and turn it into your own personal experience. And as for this song.. I think she longs to be a mother. I'm a mother.. so I get a sense of urgency in caring for someone.
I just played this to my very manly, very dude bro doesn't cry at anything or show feelings because he's a heterosexual manly man flat mate and he actually had a wobbly bottom lip and misty eyes. That is the power of Joanna newsom
What a beautiful voice. I came to this song thinking it was about a her losing a child not by choice but it seems to be about abortion by choice. So sad.
My friend has PCOS and has been struggling to conceive for the past ten years, and she took a lot of comfort from this song. She interpreted the lyrics to herself, as her own body destroying any babies she could have possibly created. She’s also very pro-life. For me and a lot of other fans, I interpreted this to be about an abortion after a bitter end to a relationship. I love that this song can reach people with different beliefs and affect them the same way.
As to the comments regarding abortion vs giving a child away...couldn't the song just as easily be about someone who has decided to never have a child? That's the thing about a great and personal song, people are able to take the "meaning", and ascribe their own experiences to it.
@thatsamehawaiiankid Yeah that's about right, a journey of love and loss and (cliche alert!) coming of age. It's very hard to pin a single meaning to these songs, she has so much depth as a writer and singer.
@TheSuggly I think the abortion is the more likely, because of the way she speaks to the goose - doesn't want it's dregs, doesn't want a baby fussing all over her legs (or thereabouts), and that final, fantastic verse: she talks about the barber cutting her only joy (barbers used to be surgeons, and the verse mentions blacksmiths etc; this is not modern day imagery), and then she sings of skinning the live rabbit violently, its guts unspooling while it shrieks. That's no miscarriage!
huh, that's interesting! I always thought it was like "I dont want your dregs"(I dont want no damn gosling, relax! What I want is my little baby fussing on my legs---but she can't have that.)
But if you have a miscarriage late term, you do have to get a D&C, which is quite similar to an abortion, as you have to have the fetus surgically removed.
+Feed My Ego I dont think she is regretting it all. I think it represents an incredible mix of intricate emotions and the word "regret" doesnt cut it. It's sad but it's bittersweet. maybe there's some regret in there but I dont think it's that simple.... birch trees represent new beginnings and hope in a lot of mythologies... I dunno. I just hate to see people simplify this song too much because especially at the 3:30 mark it becomes strangely upbeat. all of her songs have so many layers, this one is no different! :'D
