#124, "Let's Get Lost," Elliott Smith (2004)

150 Favorite Songs: #124, “Let's Get Lost,” Elliott Smith (2004)

Speaking strictly as a fan of the man's work, one of the things that makes me saddest about Elliott Smith's death is that I think he was on the verge of recording the best music of his career when he killed himself. “Let's Get Lost” is my favorite song from From A Basement On A Hill, because it's all of the things that Elliott Smith ever did best in a single package. It's sad, contemplative, mournful and hopeful all at the same time. He's fucked up here, of course—pushed away his true love, and left wandering—but he knows that where he's eventually headed, he won't go there alone. It's not “I'll get lost,” it's “let's get lost.”

There are some things I want from music that it's hard to get. Elliott Smith's music always meant a lot to me because he plays the bad guy so well. The character in “Let's Get Lost,” or “Twilight,” or any number of his other songs—he's as much the unrepentant villain as any character David Mamet or Greg Dulli ever opted to make a protagonist. But Smith is even-handed and non-judgmental in his songwriting in a way that, I think, a lot of storytellers could benefit from. He never condemns this character, but he also never asks you to pity this guy. It's not an early Nine Inch Nails song or something, where the guy's a jerk and the implication is that we're supposed to blame the world for turning him that way. But it's also not a cautionary tale, or a caricature. It's something a lot more honest: a quick look at a flawed person, dealing with some consequences (and avoiding others).

Because whoever it is he's getting lost with (“I don't really care / who follows me there”), he won't be alone. And at the points in my life when I really related to this song, that knowledge—that you could get somewhere with someone else, if you weren't too picky—was empowering. You play the lovesick role, but you know you're not resigned to it. The fact that you have the power to change it means that you don't have to. (Rhett Miller is good at writing like this, too, but his characters are more sympathetic because his music is more upbeat, generally.)

When I was compiling the list of songs for this project, I included a bunch of songs that I loved at one point, but which I hadn't listened to in ages and which I wasn't sure still meant anything to me. “Let's Get Lost” is one that I don't put on very often these days, and it doesn't make me feel very much—but it sounds like a memory of some tough times that I got through okay, and I like to hear that, too. I wish he'd stuck around to write more songs like it.