Life’s heartaches are many but the resolutions produce new and helpful experiences. We find hope, strength, and people who help us survive the next inevitable setback. Bruce Springsteen has written many songs about people struggling in forgotten towns with unrealized dreams. With that said, it’s fitting he collaborates with Brandon Flowers of The Killers on a re-recording of “Dustland”. A song about winning and losing those battles. To me, it’s a powerful message of growth through turmoil. The message is hammered home with a story of his parents and bearing witness to their struggles while facing his own. Join me in this edition of Lyric Shrink where I hope to provide a psychological perspective on the lyrics of “Dustland” from The Killers and Bruce Springsteen.
Opening Verse
A Dustland fairytale beginning
With just another white trash county kiss
In ’61, long brown hair and foolish eyes
He looked just like you’d want him to
Some kind of slick chrome American prince
A blue jean serenade
Moon River what’d you do to me
I don’t believe you
In true Springsteen fashion, “Dustland” sets the stage for two star-crossed lovers living in a rural area. These are archetypal figures very much in the Jungian style.
Carl Jung believed these archetypes were the basis for human personality. They’re primordial and passed down through the collective unconscious and our genes. Indeed, archetypes are found throughout classic literature. The benefit to us is we get a vision of classic American figures in just a few lines from Brandon. I’m betting you can already picture these two young adults in your minds. Perhaps they look like your parents or grandparents. And you can see them on the hood of a muscle car with the boy singing to his girl. The last line, “I don’t believe you” seems to suggest she’s in love but hesitant.
Chorus
Saw Cinderella in a party dress but
She was looking for a nightgown
I saw the devil wrapping up his hands
He’s getting ready for the showdown
I saw the minute that I turned away
I got my money on a pawn tonight
The chorus suggests an outside observer of the subjects of the song. Cinderella is ready for bed, she’s done partying. A possible reference to putting away adolescence and stepping into adulthood.
Unfortunately, her life change is causing a rift because the devil is preparing for a fight. Our observer is worried about a long-shot bet he has on a lowly pawn going up against the Devil himself. Erik Erikson developed a theory of psychoanalysis based on stages of development. Each stage is a fight between opposing forces. For example, the stage our song subjects find themselves in is Intimacy vs. Isolation. This stage is the struggle to solidify your base of friends and romantic partners. To be able to share your life and build trust with others is the goal. The polar opposite would be to live in paranoid isolation. Cinderella is moving on past the superficiality of the ball and ready to settle down with her prince. On the other hand, the prince is hung up and still battling demons. Our onlooker isn’t so sure he’s gonna win.
Verse 2
The change came in disguise of revelation, set his soul on fire
She said she’d always knew he’d come around
And the decades disappear like sinking ships, but we persevere
God gives us hope, but we still fear what we don’t know
The mind is poison
Castles in the sky sit stranded vandalized
We’re drawbridges closing
Lo and behold, our American Prince has turned his life around. Cinderella seemingly always had faith that he would.
With anxiety ever-present, Brandon notes it came at a price. Indeed, anxiety is by definition the fear of the unknown. We aren’t so much afraid of the snake itself but rather what the snake might do, how will we react. This anxiety is functional because it helps us to anticipate threats, think of solutions, and perhaps avoid dangerous situations. But prolonged anxiety is poisonous as Brandon suggests. Noteworthy is that Brandon switches to we instead of talking about the subjects individually.
Doing research on “Dustland”, I came across a message board post indicating Brandon wrote this song in relation to his father’s issues with alcohol and subsequent sobriety upon conversion to the Mormon faith. According to Brandon, he was merely 5 years old when this occurred. Perhaps the anxiety is that his father will relapse and the dreams they have as a family will be like abandoned castles? Each family member would likely withdraw into isolation.
Saw Cinderella in a party dress
But she was looking for a nightgown
I saw the devil wrapping up his hands
He’s getting ready for the showdown
I saw the ending when they turned the page
I threw my money and I ran away
Straight to the valley of the great divide
The second chorus adds a twist. The showdown has finished, the pawn won, the winner gives up his money and runs away.
So what makes him run? He’s seen how the story ends and it doesn’t end well or as expected. It’s as if Rudy gets carried off the field and then gets hit by a bus a month later. Early on, Brandon mentions a fairytale but there’s no fairytale ending for us or him. In my research of the song, I came across a story in Deseret News about the inspiration for the song. As a matter of fact, Brandon wrote it while his mother endured terminal brain cancer. Additionally, Brandon sent out a tweet with some information on his collaboration with Bruce Springsteen in re-recording the song. The tweet offers us a glimpse into what inspired “Dustland” and Brandon’s reflections on his parent’s struggle and what made him run to the valley of the great divide, Vegas, described in the bridge.
Out here the good girls die
And the sky won’t snow
Out here the bird don’t sing
Out here the field don’t grow
Out here the bell don’t ring
Out here the bell don’t ring
Out here the good girls die
With this exchange, Brandon conveys a sense of isolation, lack of growth, and perhaps even anger with his mother’s fate.
In addition to his raw emotion, I find it interesting how he repeats the line about the bell. It’s almost like a boxing match and the Devil is wrapping up his hands in preparation. Brandon is running away in hopes that he won’t have to hear the bell ring. He can go on forever and not have to deal with the pain. Erik Erikson’s final stage of life is integrity versus despair. Subsequently, it occurs in the twilight years of life when we’ll all be facing our own mortality. The bell has to ring sometime and we may go the distance, but death always wins. Brandon is dealing with this struggle early in life because his mother passes when he’s 40 and she’s 64. I think writing “Dustland” has helped Brandon resolve this struggle as evidenced by this quote,
“It was an attempt to understand my dad, who is sometimes a mystery to me,” Flowers wrote on Twitter. “To grieve for my mother. To acknowledge their sacrifices and maybe even catch a glimpse of just how strong love needs to be to make it in this world. It was my therapy. It was cathartic.”
Now Cinderella don’t you go to sleep
It’s such a bitter form of refuge
Why don’t you know the kingdom’s under siege
And everybody needs you
Is there still magic in the midnight sun
Or did you leave it back in sixty-one
In the cadence of a young man’s eyes
Out where the dreams all hide
The strings and music soar in this outro verse. There’s pleading in Brandon’s voice for our princess to hang on and for some kind of hope.
Maybe it lies within the fairytale in the beginning? That boy in a rural town looking for his princess who would one day save his life while giving up hers. The young man and his dreams do in fact, live on. Brandon lives on. Alternatively, as the story progresses, the princess sleeps. The same could be said about us. Of course, we don’t want to fall into despair in that final stage of life, we want to leave a legacy. Hopefully, that legacy will be one with friends, family, stories, and perhaps songs that live on long after our story has ended.
For information on The Killers, please visit thekillersmusic.com