sailorstkwrning

I came up with a theory a few months back, just before he made the "it's about blowjobs!" comment, and then after that comment, I let it go. Or at least I tried to. But really every time the song came up in rotation on my iPod, I kind of had the same reaction: This song is a mess. It makes no goddamn narrative sense whatsoever. What the fuck, Brendon Urie?

I'm going to discuss my theory in a minute, but first, the text, taken directly from their website:

( the official lyrics )

My theory, which I will be the first to admit is possibly a little (or a lot) cracktastic, is that "go down on me" was not about blowjobs at all, but rather, an echo of Ryan's "Hey moon, please forget to fall down/Hey moon, don't you go down" from Northern Downpour, where "going down" = "screwing up", falling, failing, etc. I based this theory on the way Brendon had previously echoed Ryan's metaphors, specifically the concept of "summer" migrating between Folking Around ("summer lasted longer, longer than we two") and When the Day Met the Night ("When the sun found the moon/She was drinking tea in a garden/Under the green umbrella trees/In the middle of summer").

I also thought there were two implied/unstated "you"s in the song - the one that fell down, AND the one that had to bear a heavy load unexpectedly. And the second one appeared apparently randomly in a conversation withe first one, as an aside inserted literally mid-verse.

Tangentially, I didn't (and don't) think it's too much of a stretch to read the first implied "you" in the song as Ryan (and the "going down" as his various extracurricular transgressions); the second "you" I had taken to be Spencer, having to contend with the band split and associated fall out.

Then this weekend I was discussing "fuck you" songs in general and this song in particular with someone I shall call the First Mate, and she had a TOTALLY DIFFERENT explanation which made a whole lot more sense than mine. She agreed that there were two "yous", but in a different way; she saw two speakers within the song, like so:

( neatly arranged dialogue )

In this interpretation, "go down on me" would be about blowjobs, though whether they are literal, metaphorical or both, is, of course, open to question. We did, however, conclude that the "I'm done sucking your dick, Ryan Ross" message was pretty clear and unambiguous.

I did play "Change" for her as well. She was most unimpressed and had no interpretive thoughts, on the grounds that she couldn't understand half the lyrics, it sounded like it had been recorded in bar/at the bottom of a well, and also what she could understand was something about cats? Maybe? It did not rate very high on the "fuck you" song scale, that is for sure.