Misrecognitions: The Posies--"Pay You Back in Time"

I posted the lyrics to The Posies song "Pay You Back in Time" for more than just altruistic reasons, although I certainly do want to spread the word about the band I consider to be one of the best out there. I first read about them on Wilson and Alroy's review page years ago when I was trying to broaden my musical horizons. I dug the songs of theirs I could get a hold of at the time, but it took a few years (and exposure to "Amazing Disgrace," which is the best album I know of) to really get to know The Posies. I couldn't agree more with what W & A say about "Amazing Disgrace," it is a 15-track tour de force in every respect. Anyway, I do want to promote The Posies, especially since they are so criminally underrecognized, but really you will see me return to them over and over again because I just can't help wanting to write about their work. I find it incredibly compelling, especially the "inscrutable lyrics are loaded with poetic allusions and head-spinning wordplay" that W & A give the nod to.

Speaking of "Amazing Disgrace," I believe that "Pay You Back in Time" is a demo that The Posies recorded during (or in and around) the recording sessions for "Amazing Disgrace." ("At Least, At Last," the compilation it can be found on dates it in the 1993-1994 time period, which is after "Frosting on the Beater" and quite a bit before "Amazing Disgrace," and there are lots of tracks from the latter on it such as "Daily Mutilation," "World," "Throwaway," "Everybody is a F*cking Liar," and "Fight It.") Anyway, the "academic" details of dating the recording aside, the interesting thing about this track, as its title suggests, is that it is about debt, and more particularly, the position of being in debt to someone and the attempt to get out of it. In a lot of ways this makes it the sister song to "Please Return It," which is also primarily concerned with being in an unbalanced relationship with another person.

What is particularly interesting about "Pay You Back in Time" (PYBT) is the way that the ambiguity of the very last line in the very last verse (not counting the refrain)throws the meaning of the rest of the song into doubt. The line, which is really quite stunning, is as follows: "All those lies that I told you, they must have been true." The song is torn between the potential ways of resolving the contradiction expressed by those "lies" turning out to be true.

The situation captured by the song is one of a fundamental misrecognition wherein what had seemed to be a pack of lies turns out to be the truth, but the question is, whose lies, and what is being misrecognized?

The song begins with the speaker (I guess I should say singer, but I'm so used to writing about literature, poetry in particular, the I'll stick with speaker) proclaiming that he never got to tell his side of the story because he lost contact with the person he is addressing (some former beloved judging by the reference to "love" in the second verse). The reason for this communication breakdown seems to be that other people were telling lies about the speaker and his intentions concerning whatever mysterious transgression or debt that needs to be paid back:


Well, they never let you know;
All they filled [you in with] was blanks.
As the distance and time will show,
All they protected you from was my thanks.
And you never took the call
That I placed to explain it,
Explain it all.

The most straightforward reading of the song's final line takes it as a reference to this initial situation. When the speaker first promised to pay the debt back, to make good on it, we can assume that all those people said that he never really had any intention of doing so. The claim that "I'll pay you back in time" may have been branded a lie, but by the end of the song when everyone but the speaker has abandoned this figure (the beloved debt-collector), it turns out to be true.

Now, this explanation is a pretty good one, and the story it tells is plenty interesting, especially with the devastating lines littered about the song, such as this one describing the sense of being in someone's debt: "Well, they say it never rests, like the sun on an empire in distress." Plus, it does make this last line into a minor triumph for the speaker, a final vindication of the truth of his love and character.

So why do I have to worry about alternatives? Well, I'm a cynical man and have known enough flaky people in my day to know that a lot of promises are cheaply held, and the more time people spend saying "I'll pay you back" the less time the spend actually doing it. So, while I think it

From this perspective the first verse, which I've quoted above, sounds a lot like the indignant protests of someone who resents being being in debt, and the blow to his self-esteem that it represents. The claim to be able to "explain it all" is the desire to see one's actions as justified, to somehow remove or mitigate the culpability of the debt or transgression, or at least the sense of responsibility that attends it. Explanation here is essentially an attempt to lessen the sense of indebtedness by means other than paying it back.

However cynical this may appear, this perspective actually makes the final line more interesting. If the speaker does by whatever turn of events end up being the only person left with the (ex)beloved, then, rather than a story of steadfast commitment it becomes a story of unexpected and perhaps unintended, reconciliation. Instead of the (ex)beloved misrecognizing the intentions and character of the speaker, the speaker actually misrecognizes his own character. What to the speaker had always been a self-serving lie, "I'll pay you back in time," becomes, by a simple twist of fate, the truth as he finds himself in the unexpected position of being able and willing to pay it back.

What is so interesting about this? Well, according to this reading the moral of this story is that we often only really know our own intentions and character retrospectively. We often tell lies about ourselves that turn out to be true, partially because we have told those lies long enough that we started to believe them, but also because we might not know enough about ourselves beforehand to know if they are really lies since our character and our actions are not exhausted by our explicit intentions. Now, perhaps I am misrecognizing this song in this way because I find this thought deeply satisfying, explaining as it does so many of the strange twists and turns of life, but it is certain that I only recognized this retrospectively.