“Thank you, friends. Wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.”
There was a point where I was convinced that Alex Chilton was singing this song sarcastically; after all, I reasoned, the rest of Third/Sister Lovers, the album it comes from, is a damaged and bitter and scared thing, and this is something else entirely; if it’s not sarcastic, then it felt out of step with everything and I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Years later – More than a decade after I first heard the album and was confused by this song as much as I loved it (It’s got a great melody, after all, and there’s something about the “Do Do“s of the backing vocals that makes you want to sing along; there’s also no denying that Chilton is rocking his preacher mode when he performs it here, with the “I said all!”s), I’ve come around to it. It’s not sarcasm, and it’s not out of place. It’s a survivor’s song, and one filled with surprised gratitude that he really has made it through all of the badness and the weirdness and everything in between. Sure, there’s some showmanship and insincerity in there, but that’s a result of everything else that’s gone on; the core of the song, though, is exactly what it says it is: Someone thanking those important to him for reasons he doesn’t necessarily understand, for all the things they did that matter in ways that he doesn’t necessarily understand. Years later, I can understand that feeling just a little bit more.
Happy Thanksgiving, world. And thank you, friends.