366 Songs 155: Stupidity Tries

This just in from the “Lovely little pop songs that sometimes get lost in the reputation of their creators” department. 2000’s Figure 8 is, looking back on it, a strange album for Elliott Smith; it’s the only one, for example, that doesn’t include a cuss word anywhere on it, and also the one where he’s at his most obviously “produced,” for want of a better way to put it. Because of that, I’ve tended to think of it in my head as his “pop” album, which both is – It was created with the intent of “crossing over” and building on the success of XO, after all – and isn’t – Smith was never really not pop, if you listen to his music and hear his influences and obvious gift for melody – true.

Nonetheless, “Stupidity Tries” is a great pop song, one that mixes subtle arrangement (At 1:11, the lovely use of horns, softening the moment even though there aren’t any horns anywhere else in the song, and get replaced with pedal steel when the moment recurs at 2:21; the strings that provide structure and grace, lifting from the guitars at 3:23 and take the song home from there) and wonderfully… Smithian lyrics (“The enemy/is within/Don’t confuse/me with him”) to come up with something that could only be more delicious if it didn’t fade out at the end. I mean, seriously people: You can even hear it finish really quietly before the fade’s done. You couldn’t just have let that happen…?

Also lovely: Smith’s live versions of the song, which ditch the more elaborate orchestration for something more Beatles-rocking-out-y: