#60, "Say Yes," Elliott Smith (1997)

150 Favorite Songs: #60, "Say Yes," Elliott Smith (1997)

"Say Yes" is the most Elliott Smith love song there is. Which is to say, it's devastating at the same time its hopeful, and it took me a really long time to be able to listen to it again after he died. Up there is the studio version from the record, but here’s the recording of it is that means the most to me. It's from a show he played in Austin a few months before he plunged a knife into his chest, at a club called The Steamboat. My friend Andrew taped it on his mini DAT machine, which they let him plug into the soundboard.

I had only recently started listening to Elliott Smith’s music when the show was announced, and Stephen Malkmus was playing at another club that same night, but I thought that I should see Elliott Smith play, since my interest in Malkmus was waning and I was really starting to love Smith's songs. I didn't know much about his emotional state, which both before and especially after his death had been a subject of a lot of mythologizing.

There's something you can hear—most prominently at the part in the recording, about a minute in, when he loses the words to the song, but also throughout the entire performance—that I had never experienced at a show before. It became abundantly clear to me, and I think most everyone else at The Steamboat that night, that he wasn't there for us, at least not in the way that performers are usually there for the audience who bought tickets to see them. We were there for him. We were there to support this guy because we loved his music and it meant so much to us and it was really clear he wasn't okay. He was losing the words to his songs, declining requests because the songs were "a long time ago," ending his encore with “Blackbird,” because who can forget Beatles songs? It was the most intense feeling of connection between audience (I don't know the capacity at Steamboat, but the room was very small) and performer that I have ever felt, and I've seen a whole lot of brilliant performers play in people's living rooms. But watching Elliott Smith fall apart a little bit, in front of a room full of people who didn't know him but loved him, and being a part of that, is something I'm very glad I got to witness, even though it all ended so badly.

All of that is tied up in "Say Yes" for me, which is why it took me years to be able to hear it again without thinking about the connection—from my perspective, it seemed like such a straight line—between him playing "Say Yes" that night while he seemed so fragile and then going back home, playing a few more shows, and killing himself in the most impossibly brutal fashion I can imagine. How much must you hate yourself to do it with a knife to the chest?

It's a weird, hard thing to think about. Elliott Smith, that night and after, reminded me of more than one of the people I am close to, people who've wanted to hurt themselves for reasons that aren't easily romanticized, that don't make it sound sexy or cool, just make a person sound tired and vulnerable and so unhappy. I didn't listen to his music for a long time after that. But his songs are so good, and it's clear that he suffered for them, so why would you cut them out?

I started listening to "Say Yes" again when I found a cover of the song by Ben Folds. Folds is a good songwriter, too, and he's written his share of affecting songs. But he's a goofball. That’s his persona, and it fits him. I think hearing Ben Folds play "Say Yes" got me paying attention to the knowing sense of humor that Elliott Smith has in that song, and others, and it made me appreciate him as more than the tragic figure I'd painted him as in my head. Because "Say Yes," like I said at the beginning—it’s the most Elliott Smith-y love song ever. And he was a bright guy and he knew what his persona was, if not as an Indie Rock Sensation than as a person, and it was the Constantly Unhappy Guy. And so when he wrote a love song, he wrote one that was basically this: "I'm happy, because most of the time I am so painfully miserable and full of deep, abiding unhappiness, and I have that to compare this to. And because, at least for one morning, she hasn't yet left me, I am experiencing something that is different from all of the unhappiness that I will describe for the majority of the song, and it won't be long before that's where I end up again. But right now, I am in love." And I have to think that he didn't just write that song because that was what he felt all the time—though he may have felt that—but also because if that's what everyone expects of you, it's funny to give it to them.

By the time I saw Elliott Smith, he was less good at giving people what they expected. I really wish he were still around; I have never been the sort of person to mourn rock star deaths hard, but his really hit me. It still does, sometimes. But I'm glad that I can still listen to his music. There's so much going on in it, and it's a better legacy than most people get.