#ANYWAYS the rest of the lyrics i dont think correlate to them well at all but these ones had my brain in a vice

[sawvhs]

saw (2004) dir. james wan // who are you? - ajj

[27-royal-teas]

YET !!! ANOTHER ANALYSIS!! And for good reason this time because people keep misinterpreting Pete’s work to be about Mikey and it makes me fucking PISSED can you not let pete have one thing in his goddamn life i get it its fine to have headcanons and opinions but PLEASE for the love of god please stop discrediting all of his hard work & good writing to be about a white boy he fucked back in ‘05 this CONSTANTLY happens with poc artists and it makes me mad to no end

yep, that’s right. today we’re talking about I Am My Own Muse. writing this essay i have listened to it a grand total of twenty three times 

i like this song a lot specifically because i do kind of relate to it a lot frequently i feel like smashing a guitar until i go insane but i dont have a guitar and i dont know how to play one regardless so. uh yeah

The thing about IAMOM is that it’s saying that in the TITLE. Hes his own muse. And obviously no one can take that away. sure , some of his songs might be inspired by someone, but in the long run, who do they come from? pete. romance songs might not be about anyone in particular. I know ive wrote songs that could be interpreted as romance, but they’re actually me talking to my younger self or my future self or my friend, and the point is, even though songs written by pete may seem like they were about someone that doesnt mean they are and you cant, you CANNOT discredit the fact that he is his own muse. just like the song title says.

The song begins with a BANGING orchestral arrangement. I think the intro to IAMOM is my favorite song intro on the album. It's just very well thought out and clearly carefully planned, and quite honestly I think patrick did an AMAZING job and I'd love to see him do a breakdown of the composition here because I am IMPRESSED. Not even to mention the vocals, he is on FIRE. anyway in the rest of this essay I’ll be interpreting the lyrics and tying them back to the central topic i just opened with: How Pete Is His Own Muse. 

The first verse is quiet, and it begins like this:

“Here i am, not sure you should take a chance

I like playing dumb, letting you figure me out

But i was faded in my own defense

So drop a bomb on the things we dreamed about”

I feel as though this verse is very clear. He isnt sure that the person he’s referring to should take a chance on him, should think that he is worth it, and he likes being able to be up to someone else’s interpretation with no outside influence. i do this frequently with strangers- i stay quiet so that they can make up their own idea in their head about me. They can figure me out themself, since i clearly cant figure myself out, and i think that’s the idea pete is really aiming for here. ‘So drop a bomb on all the things we dream about” can be referring to himself or someone else, but here let’s take it in the context that he’s discussing himself. This line is repeated in the second verse, so it’s clearly one of the main points that needed to be stated here; here he is saying to himself that (again, it’s that self sabotage) he should give it up, give it all up, it’s not worth it, destroy it all, drop a bomb on all our dreams because they aren’t going to happen. Taken together with the previous lines we can basically say that pete is saying that because he is leaving himself open to interpretation from the public, the things he truly meant to say are lost. And i think that’s the main thing here, especially with the title, and obviously im doing it myself, maybe this isnt what he meant at all, but i definitely do think it correlates along those lines to some degree. 

The chorus is repeated several times throughout the song (3 times to be specific) and it goes like this:

“Smash all the guitars ‘til we see all the stars

Oh got to throw this year away

We got to throw this year away like

A bad luck charm” 

And then that repeats twice. 

I think i can safely say everyone reading this right now has gone through the pandemic. I assume three year olds dont go on tumblr. The entire smfs album references 2020 and 2019 time and time again, most critically in What A Time To Be Alive, and it’s heavily present in this song too. “Got to throw this year away (like a bad luck charm)” vocalizes the wishes of pete and everyone else who wishes to cut those years out of their brains- pete has expressed in interviews how taxing the pandemic really was on his mental health, and i think that “smash all the guitars” could symbolize the frustration and pain he really felt in that time; destroying music (one of the main things he loves) until he can sink into that despair and just float away (“‘til we see all the stars”). Another way this can be interpreted is an act of rebellion (a lot of musical artists smash their guitars during shows, cough ryan ross cough) but i dont really think that that makes as much sense in this context. 

The next verse:

“The trumpets bring the angels but they never came

No one let them in ‘cause they didnt know my name

I know i keep my feelings so tucked away

Just another day spent hoping we dont fall apart

So drop a bomb on all the things we dreamed about”

Another very pete based verse (BECAUSE HE IS HIS OWN MUSE). This kind of links to Heaven’s Gate because it’s related to the same thing- not making it on the list, not feeling worthy of getting into heaven, because this sort of self deprecation is reflected throughout most of Fall Out Boy’s albums. I could give a million examples of this, but I don’t want to be here forever. “The trumpets bring the angels but they never came/ no one let them in ‘cause they didn’t know my name” sort of brings to mind the image of a person waiting to be carried away to something they’re not entirely sure they deserve, and they’re proven correct because no one ever came to carry them away, no one ever decided that they’d be on the list to get to heaven and the angels just went marching past and pete can hear their horns, know theyre there for people who deserve heaven much more than he does. How sad is that?

“I know i keep my feelings so tucked away/ just another day spent hoping we dont fall apart” carries the feeling of not wanting to be a burden with every emotion thought and expressed, even the good ones, and ‘we’ can be referring to himself, every single aspect of himself, hoping he doesn’t fall apart into shards of the stars his guitar is made up of. and then of course it’s the line about the bomb again, although this time it feels even more internalized and personal because it’s the second time he said it, and he dreams of getting into heaven but how can he make it up there if the angels themselves know he does not deserve to and so. drop a bomb on all the things we dreamed about, folks, because they aren’t going to happen. 

The bridge: 

“So let’s twist the knife again, twist the knife again

like we did last summer

So let’s twist the knife again, twist the knife again

Oh, i’m just trying to keep it together

But it gets a little harder when it never gets better I'm trying

To keep it together, to keep it together, oh”

To me this entire bridge just feels really deeply confessional and personal. Im going to start at the bottom because i like it the best. 

He’s trying. He’s trying so damn hard- to be optimistic, to be hopeful and stay full of happiness and love but it’s SO HARD when there’s no light at the end of the tunnel to motivate him. This is still talking about quarantine, i think; i remember i was in middle school at the time; they said that we would be back in two weeks. I remember i was grateful to get a break and time off. Then two weeks turned into two years and it got really, really hard to see an end to the pandemic. When things stop improving it gets harder and harder to keep it together when you can’t see the results of any of your actions, when you’re trying your best but it still gets you nowhere. Wouldn’t you stop trying? i know i would.

And let’s talk about “let’s twist the knife” just a little bit. “Last summer” might refer to the last album release, which is Mania (even though it was released in January). Another album cycle, another twist of the knife; another bit of words that pete has to pull out of himself like ribbons, and although he loves it, that’s his job, it still feels like dredging up all the pain again. So let’s twist the knife again, dig it in just a little deeper, just like we did before. 

So, yeah. Pete is his own muse and i truly do think that that is heavily reflected in this song, even this whole album. A lot of songs in smfs seem more him-centered, because he is the writer and he is talking about himself. So Good Right Now and What  A Time To Be Alive are especially good examples of this. 

And the interesting thing about the title is that it’s pulled from a Frida Kahlo quote, which goes like this: 

“I am my own muse. I am the subject I know best. I am the subject I want to better.”

And isn’t that just it? This whole album, it’s an album of self discovery and going back to your roots and staying current anyway. It’s patrick pulling pete out of his funk and getting him back in the game; it’s an exploration of a new style, a new fall out boy. And like a phoenix, every album they rise again, still the same but somehow completely brand new. The orchestral arrangements displayed in IAMOM and SMFS and LFTOS showcase this, the new feeling but still the same, something bettered, and I’m really, really happy with how far they’ve come not only in their expansion of music but also with themselves. And I feel like this song and this title- I Am My Own Muse- is really a stand up, it’s a show of how far they’ve come. Because they are the subject they know the best.