The Humpty Dumpty Love Song

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the king’s horses,

And all the king’s men,

Couldn’t put Humpty together again.

On a whim today I decided to listen to some old compilation CDs a friend made for me years ago. Well, not for me, but for himself, and decided I should have them too. (They’re EWR CDs for those of you who know what I’m talking about.)

I’ve had this song for years and the past hour I find myself listening to “The Humpty Dumpty Love Song” by Travis on repeat. The narrative for the song isn’t as strong as the other song analysis I did, it’s more of a verse-by-verse, vignette-by-vignette piece, but no less cohesive. Perhaps it strikes a chord with me moreso now then it did when I first heard it, but I thought I would share some thoughts with you all.

The lyrics build off the childhood song, Humpty Dumpty, in a clever and touching extended metaphor. It begins sparsely, with a soft beat and an acoustic guitar riff, borrowing the first two lines from the nursery rhyme verbatim, evoking the mood of an intimate bedtime story.

All of the king’s horses

And all of the king’s men

Couldn’t pull my heart

Back together again

All of the physicians

And mathematicians too

And failed to stop my heart

From breaking in two

‘Cause all I need is you

I just need you

yeah, you got the glue

So I’m gonna give my heart to you

What always makes me take a breath is when I hear “my heart” instead of Humpty Dumpty. When I think of grown-up versions of nursery rhymes, I think of something like this—building on childhood lessons. We all know Humpty Dumpty fell off a wall, and nobody in the kingdom could put him back together. When told to a child, the story typically includes, but is in no way limited to: fancy china, glass vases, your little sister, etc. Then as one ages, one realises that none of that compares to the fragility of the human heart, which requires the most careful handling of all.

I had a premonition

a movie in my mind

confirming my suspicions

Of what I would find

It followed me to L.A.

Down to Mexico

Came in through the back door

At the start of the show

With the next verses, you can hear the strings begin to build, as if you’re slowly being lifted off the ground. The fluidity of the strings give it a floating, dreamy feeling, like you’re being transported into the place where this is happening, be it in a memory or in L.A. or in Mexico.

Still all I need is you

I just need you

Yeah, you got the glue

So I’m gonna give my heart to you

The addition of a regular beat comes in with the second “all I need is you,” the pulse of a heartbeat.

It was a perfect day

In a perfect way

You know something had to go

You left me high, you left me low

Now, as I lie in pieces

I wait for your return

the sun upon my forehead

It burns, baby, burns, baby, burns

The singer sounds so sheepish, like “everything was wonderful, I should have known it would all go wrong,” which I both loathe and empathize with. I am not going to pretend this is the most sophisticated songwriting, but there’s a very poignant simplicity to it, and borrowed phrases like “movie in my mind” and “burns baby burns” give it a more quotidian feeling—unpretentious, if you will. I love that image of lying in pieces, waiting for “you” to put him back together again. It’s no doubt Humpty Dumpty felt this as well, but put into the context of a song like this, it provides some fantastic double voicing (if you’re into dialogics like me).

An eye on all my horses

You’ve slept with all my men

I’m never gonna get it

Together again

These lines recall the nursery rhyme once again, only “all the horses” and “all the men” as different signifiers. There just little modifications–the lyrics are already so concise, and yet with switching one or two words “you’ve slept with all my men, I’m never gonna get it together again” resituates the whole song. I don’t think much of the lady the singer is pining for, but I do identify with him. To me he reverberates the helplessness of having no choice who he falls in love with, no matter how unworthy she is:

Still all I need is you

I just need you

Yeah, you got the glue

So I’m gonna give my heart to you

Yeah, you got the glue

There’s nothing I can do

Yeah, you got the glue

So I’m gonna give my heart to you

And every time the singer repeats “I just need you,” you can hear the ache in his voice—that’s all he wants. He can’t think of anyone else, and from his point of you only she has the “glue” to put him back together and make him happy again. But until that happens, he remains hopeless and heartbroken.

I disagree with much of this song on principle, but Travis wins on emotions for sure. For instance, I do think love is a choice—it just may not be the correct one. Perhaps you can’t choose who you are attracted to, but love implies some conscious emotional action, whereas infatuation may not.

Ka-BAAAM!

Okay, I rarely brag about my grades anymore, since I used to get stuff that looked like this:

But since transferring to the college, and anthropology, I’ve been doing so much better!

The reason I waited until today is because the professor from my killer course, The Ethnographic Imagination, initially gave me a B. This is a course I slaved over, there were about 200ish pages to read per session, and I did every single one of them plus went to all the recitation sections and handed in all the (very ambiguous) assignments. I know I aced the final exam, because it was a take-home one, and I actually READ all the books. As opposed to one of my friends, who I think missed the entirety of classes in March. So I was pretty steamed to get a B (if so, what did you have to do to get an A?) but I kept my mouth shut, figuring I’d weathered worse things in my life and the professor was just a hard-ass.

She emailed me a few weeks ago saying that with a computer glitch had messed up some of the grades and that after another review, she was changing my grade to an A. And today it finally showed up on my transcript! So hurrah!