Another new Waterparks album is out! It seems like all I ever post on this blog is about Waterparks, but that is because I hate keeping up with a blog. Whatever. This new album is titled Intellectual Property, and it’s a very fun listen teeming with some pretty messy, dark, and complicated themes.
That’s what I find interesting about this album, is that on the surface it seems very simple and straightforward—especially after how dense, both thematically and musically, Greatest Hits was. Even going in to writing this I was thinking that, although I’d had ideas swirling around in my head over the past several months while listening to it. But when I really started to sit down with the lyrics and analyze them, see how they play together and build on each other as the album’s storyline progresses (because, in my opinion, this is absolutely a concept album), I started really appreciating the craft that went into the construction of the album and its themes.
I think it’s cool that it works as a pretty light, fun, catchy listen if that’s all you’re wanting out of your music (which is definitely me most of the time), but also offers more depth if you’re willing to actually examine what’s being said.
Please note that, like with my previous album analyses for Fandom and Greatest Hits, while I am friends with the band you should not take this as being the 100% correct interpretation of the album—it really is just my own thoughts and analysis of things based on listening to it. Maybe I’m wrong! Maybe I’m not! Who knows? Either way, good album.
So anyway, here is my analysis of Intellectual Property.
1. St*rfucker – I love this instrumental, it’s so sparkly and dizzying and I think that perfectly hits at the emotion of this song, which to me is about still having that butterflies-in-your-stomach sort of feeling about a person, while you’re also spiraling. Right off the bat, we’re hitting at one of the big thematic elements of the album, which is this cycle you’re stuck in (you love writing about cycles it seems). Obviously evident in the chorus of “It’s been a pleasure / It’s nice to meet you,” saying bye to one relationship while greeting the next. (And I don’t think it’s a coincidence using the word “pleasure” as a double entendre here.) Also starting off with the religious trauma wrapped around sexuality with “Jesus Christ won’t text me back,” which is a really simple and quick line but gets at the lack of clarity about how you should be living your life in conjunction with your religious upbringing, and if Jesus is ghosting you too, then is that even a relationship worth pursuing? A relationship has to be a two-way street, with both people putting into it and getting something from it, as we’ll come to learn throughout the course of the album. This album tells the story of a relationship (maybe relationship should be in quotes), but what I find interesting is starting it at this moment, at the ending of one rather than the beginning of a new one.
2. Real Super Dark – Continuing the story, this is post-breakup, continuing the spiral. Letting those dark thoughts in your mind take over. Maybe it’s a stretch but I doubt that it’s a coincidence the acronym for Real Super Dark, RSD, is the same as Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, which is described as “when you experience severe emotional pain because of a failure or feeling rejected.” The relationship falling apart, feeling rejected, leading to all this anger and hurt. Even when things are pretty objectively successful, your brain can only see the negatives—your friends and fans wanting you dead, feeling alienated while standing on a stage in front of thousands of people, being overloaded with emotion and freaking out, etc. This also gets at something I’ll talk about later in the “story,” but the performance aspect of the lyrics drive at the anger and maybe shame and frustration of having to get on stage and perform songs every night that are written about a person you aren’t involved with anymore.
3. Funeral Grey – Now tour’s over, getting some downtime (do you ever have downtime though?) and meeting this new girl somewhere. I think this is one of the most straightforward songs on the album, especially because it’s written is such a storytelling sort of way, and that makes it a lot of fun. It still does get at the themes you’re building, though—“baptized in my spit” bringing back the religious guilt, both in replacing religious iconography with something sexual, but also in the exploration of dropping your relationship with God for something else. When a person is baptized, they’re surrendering themselves to God and putting their faith in Him, so switching that to being baptized by this girl, well…I think it is obvious what that means. Dedicating yourself entirely to her, and in the most “blasphemous” way possible. Also brings back the “Call me, beep me” lyrical motif that was in the previous song and harkens back to “Jesus Christ won’t text me back” to reiterate this theme of communication in a relationship, and how too much of it can drive a person crazy but so can too little of it. Both scenarios can result in the deterioration of a relationship.
4. Brainwashed – The next phase of the relationship is always the honeymoon phase, where you’re both absolutely infatuated with each other. A lot of the time it goes hand-in-hand with sexual exploration since you’re both still so new to each other and things are a bit more loose and fun. “Shocked at the words coming from my tongue / A language that I’m not familiar” drives at both main themes of the album, with you talking more explicitly and expressing your actual desires, which religion usually urges you NOT to do—and, obviously, expressing yourself ties into the idea of communication. This is also where the one-sidedness of the relationship starts to develop (like Jesus not texting back in track 1), with “I’m see-through, need you” being shorthand from previous albums for becoming completely open with a person—and maybe this time around, the girl is not reciprocating that level of see-throughness. But then we jump from that right into “Everything’s clean except for my thoughts / Thinking about me getting you off,” so maybe for the time being it’s okay that the deeper connection isn’t there cause y’all are having fun. Although in verse 2 things continue worsening, with your entire day being ruined if you don’t get a text back from her. I think this is where we most clearly see the idea of the album’s title, Intellectual Property—on the wordplay level of how she’s taking up real estate in your mind, but also in how you want to be “owned” by her and vice versa. This can be a good thing, but it can also be taken to bad extremes, which I think is demonstrated by “The syndrome feels Stockholm.” And then “Symmetrical feelings / Match best when we’re staring at the ceiling” brings it all back around to the fact that you connect best during/after sex. And lastly, you start to reiterate that this is “freaking you out,” just like in RSD.
5. 2 Best Friends – This is where we continue seeing how the lack of connection is starting to get to you. “I could pick your body in a lineup” talking about how great your sexual connection is, but then the entire rest of the song is about how insecure you are in the relationship. You’re sick of waiting to hear from her and need to distract your mind in order to stop yourself from spiraling. You do this by going and hanging out with your friends, but even that isn’t enough to totally clear your head. You then try to distract yourself by hooking up with other people, like you know this girl is doing since you’re not in a real relationship, but that doesn’t work either because you’ve got deeper feelings for her (“I kissed a couple people but they taste wrong”). Which probably goes hand-in-hand with what you were raised to believe, which is that couples should always be monogamous, so casually seeing anyone at all let alone multiple people simultaneously does not come naturally.
6. End of the Water (Feel) – Next phase is you losing faith in this relationship like you lost faith in God. Not only does she ghost you, but you’ve started ghosting her too. “Make plans and let ’em fall through / I can’t even call you / Let alone call you mine.” It also drives home the point that this girl really is not looking for a serious relationship with “I can be nonchalant / If that’s what you really want.” It’s also where you begin questioning yourself, wondering if it’s worthwhile investing yourself in another person (or God)—“We can’t take back what we never gave / And that distance keeps us safe”—if you never did that, you’d never really get hurt. But also “Nobody told me that safe is so lonely.” You crave a deep, real connection—you don’t want nonchalant. I think this is where we continue the idea of being someone’s “property”—you want to feel like you belong to them. You also continue using religious language here when you’re pleading with her in the chorus, saying “If you believe me, I could be your truth.” This won’t work unless you both believe in (aka commit to) each other.
7. Self-Sabotage – Things have gotten even worse now that you’ve pleaded your case, tried to get a deeper commitment and it didn’t work. You’re still seeing each other, but now you’re purposefully distancing yourself from her so that you don’t feel as bad when it inevitably ends (which you also will talk about later). You’ll be the worst version of yourself in order to make her not want to be with you at all, and then you can end things and move on with your life, which is the best case scenario if this is all the relationship is going to be anyway (another thing you’ll describe in Closer). Despite all this, even though you know it’s you self-sabotaging the relationship, you still can’t help but feel bitter about what’s happening. It’s just a way of trying to spare yourself future pain even though what you’re doing now hurts too.
8. Ritual – To me this song’s kind of Self-Sabotage’s partner. “Ritual” as a word obviously has a religious bent, but also sort of an occult one too? Combined with the musical tone of the song, I think it’s clear we’re on the more Satanic side of rituals here. But this is where the spiraling that we started with in St*rfucker starts in the new relationship—dark thoughts are creeping up, and this sabotaging of the relationship is your ritual, it’s what you do every time. But you also shift some blame to the girl, telling her that “With all the things you don’t say, I’m living fucking betrayed”—whether this is more literal like “not texting,” or more personal like “not saying you love me,” the meaning is the same: you’re not getting back what you’re putting in to this relationship. If you’re not getting emotional fulfillment from this, then is it worth pursuing? “Sleeping with my clothes on / In case shit goes wrong” is you preparing to bounce if (and let’s be real, it’s more like when) this relationship ends.
9. Fuck About It – We’re finally at the very end of the relationship. What started as being sex-focused in a fun way because it was so new and interesting is now sex-focused in a hollow way. You already knew it back in Brainwashed with the “Symmetrical feelings” line, but now it’s clear that the only thing that works well between you is the sex, and that was maybe all she was ever interested in (which will maybe result in you claiming she’s just a starfucker, not interested in getting to actually know you). “You don’t seem to like it when we talk” bringing us back to the theme about lack of communication in the relationship, and “Give me three days alone” also bringing us back to your feeling of alienation and needing space from this person even though you want to be closer to them at the same time. You also get back to the subject of ignoring each other’s texts, except now your reason for not communicating is because you know it will only result in an argument. To tie this back into the theme of religious guilt, “We can fuck about it later if you want / It’s all we ever really do when something’s wrong” kind of gets at the fact that maybe you tried to “fix” your problems with religion and your self-image by replacing them with sex, which did not really work. There’s power in breaking out of one bad habit/mindset, but it can be equally debilitating if you then immediately fully dedicate yourself to something or someone else (baptized in her spit) without working on yourself and figuring yourself out to pursue your own happiness outside of your relationship with another figure, whether that’s God or it’s a person you’re dating.
10. Closer – Here’s where you’re getting into that self-reflection that you’re needing, now that the relationship is totally done. This is the end, your final bid to get her to commit. You realize that all the sabotaging you did pushed her even farther away than she already was (“I got my space but what’d I pay for you?”), and you realize that’s not what you wanted, not really. You really do care about her, and you wanted to love her fully, but due to her lack of commitment and your own faults, you were never able to. “I need you closer / Or I need it over”—this is it, you either need her to make a commitment and you can work on your problems or you need it to end, because this isn’t healthy for either of you. “I sabotage and break my own heart just in case” is you realizing the cycle you always find yourself in and why these relationships never really pan out. Was she always distant, or was it you who created the distance in the first place?
11. A Night Out On Earth – First off I gotta say this song is just so cool and fun. It’s so fluid, so cinematic. Starting at 2:29 is maybe my favorite run on the album, and the chorus hitting at 2:41 is one of the coolest things musically you’ve ever done, to me. “Am I missing out / Am I having fun” gets at the duality of relationships here—if you’re in a committed relationship, are you missing out on sleeping with other people? But if you’re sleeping around casually, are you actually enjoying it? “Now Jesus hates my guts, it’s getting personal”—you’ve been “living in sin” for so long now, is there any way to salvage this religious relationship? Do you even want to? I don’t think this song offers any real answers to that, which feels very true to life. It’s messy and complicated (as is the structure in this song, in a really exhilarating way). Maybe if you “drive back home to Texas” and to your childhood room, you can reset things and do it right this time. Really, even though this is the end of the album, you’re still questioning everything about your relationship to religion—are you gonna go to Hell because of the way you live your life? If you’re unhappy, maybe that’s a sign. But if you’re not happy living the other way either, what does that mean? And I think this ambiguity is brought up in a really interesting way when you bring up your birthday and your star sign, Capricorn—the goat. Traditionally a symbol of the devil! Is that a sign that you’re doomed? Or does it not matter because none of that stuff matters? There are no simple answers here, just like how none of us have simple answers about how we should best live our lives. But what this song also gets at is what I was hinting toward in RSD about the performance—obviously, it’s titled the same as your previous tour, and you talk about “Now if I ever feel jealous / I just turn it into lyrics and I fuckin sell it / And now when I get depressed and make songs / I turn pain into rent and sing along.” All the extreme emotion freaking you out gets channeled into music, putting all your flaws and insecurities into songs that people then listen to. “I wear my red flags like a cape” meaning you put the worst parts of you on display in your music, but having to then also put on some bravado with it because you’re supposed to be a fun performer that people enjoy and are inspired by. The rest of this portion continues that sense of toxic bravado, and ends with “The glove don’t fit, but I wear it anyway”—this super confident person isn’t you, not really, but you have to put on a performance anyway. That ties back into the themes of Greatest Hits, about splitting yourself into different personas to fulfill different emotional needs—whether it’s for fans, or for girlfriends, or for friends, or for family, or for God—and you bring that back around here with “If it was up to me, no one I know / Would know anyone I know / Cause everyone I know / Knows another me / It’s getting hard to keep track / Of everything I keep locked behind my back.” In the end, all these feelings are channeled back into these various personas, and you’re performing to everyone every day in different ways, the tour never ends—it’s just another night out on earth.