Melbourne singer-songwriter-guitarist Courtney Barnett's 2016 Grammy nomination for Best New Artist propelled the Australian indie darling to a global stage, where she will hopefully stay (she lost to Meghan Trainor, but I doubt that the loss is crimping her style). This month, she released a music video for "Elevator Operator", the first track from her critically acclaimed debut album Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit (2015).
As The Rolling Stone's Jon Dolan notes, the album's title indexes Barnett's much-lauded talent: "No one is better than Barnett at crafting unforgettable songs from seemingly mundane subject matter". "Elevator Operator" certainly works in the same vein as many of her other singles, turning an everyday observation into a (casually lyrical) statement about more hallowed subject matter (in this case, youth, mortality and ambition). It is, however, the only song in the album that doesn't rely on autobiographical material:
"Elevator Operator is a story I wrote about a friend that likes to go to the top of this building to enjoy the view. One day he got into the elevator with this lady, and she freaked out because she thought he was going up to the roof to kill himself. He told me the story, and it seemed to be such a crazy kind of story to me, just a crazy situation. She must have assumed that something was wrong with him, because he was young and had scruffy hair or something – I don’t know."
Courtney Barnett, NBHAP
With her trademark deadpan delivery and rambling lyrics, Barnett turns herself into a third-person narrator (with a good eye for detail) for this scenario, voicing the said lady wittily in the track's chorus:
"Don't jump little boy, don't jump off that roofYou've got your whole life ahead of you, you're still in your youthI'd give anything to have skin like you"
Lyrics: Genius
The song's lyrics don't go beyond the narrative's reveal (when the elevator operator explains that he's not actually suicidal - "I think you're projecting the way that you're feeling/ I'm not suicidal, just idling insignificantly"). Instead, Barnett amps up her guitars and repeats the chorus twice at the end, emphasizing the lady's (mistaken) attempt at intervening to save someone's life, and leaving the listener to wonder about what's really going on in her head instead.
