37. Dirty Projectors - “Keep Your Name”

This song is a masterpiece. It reminds me of the post-modern equivalent of some pathos-infused Shakespearean dialogue. It has a literary tint that perfectly captures the emotion-filled poetry of the final back and forth exchange between two splitting lovers. There’s heartache and tragedy veiled beneath pitch-shifted vocals and a scatter-plot of swelling, staggering, and bursting instrumentals. It’s seamlessly classic and futuristic, which is an impressive feat to accomplish without unraveling into absurdity. You can tell that its content has bubbled up from the raw and authentic bedrock of autobiographical experience. The emotion is tangible, calling out to any tinge of reciprocation that exists within the listener’s own smoldering past of relational ashes. It’s inspired by the honesty of love, of knowing someone so well that you can eviscerate them just as easily as you would sacrifice anything and everything for them.

Nowhere is this more apparent then when he states “what I want from art is truth, what you want is fame”. It’s the final nail in the coffin. It goes all in – reaching out, digging in, and pulling up from the roots. It’s the point of no return. He’s finally said what was always off limits. What he always felt and knew to exist below the surface of their relationship, but never had the courage to say – or rather what he always managed to cover up with a facade of contentment and happiness and an array of excuses. It’s the fissure that finally splits them apart, like two spinning bodies letting go of each other in space. From this point forward they’ll forever be drifting apart, never to truly know each other again.