Lyrics

A perennial debate about Cocteau Twins relates to the “lyrics,” or lack thereof. For years journalists, fans, and even record labels tried desperately to decipher what Elizabeth Fraser might have been singing. (Japanese record labels notoriously insisted on including lyric sheets with every album, and so would have staff write up what they thought they were hearing, which almost always led to some rather bizarre outcomes.)

In the beginning, some of the lyrics were included on the sleeves of Garlands and Head Over Heels.

Over time, Elizabeth’s vocal style and arrangements became more complex and almost entirely obscure before returning to relative clarity in the 1990s. Lyrics were included wholesale in the videos for “Rilkean Heart” and “Half-Gifts” in 1995 (from Twinlights) and for “Tishbite” in 1996. The 1996 LP Milk & Kisses featured snippets of lyrics printed on the inner sleeves of both the standard and special editions.

Liz has had many interesting things to say in response to questions about her lyrics, some of them very revealing and worth considering:

“It’s impossible. It’s impossible in as much as…No. You’d be disappointed if you found out. I might make it sound as if I think it’s unimportant, but the words are important, important to me I mean, but… I think you’re just supposed to get out of them what you can. And they DO make sense.” [Sounds, 1983]

“I’m not ashamed… I mean, even in the studio there’s been words, like actually singing… ‘Peppermint Pig,’ singing about ‘runts’ and things (laughs), there’s definitely some words that are very embarrassing to sing. The words that are on the sleeve [of Head Over Heels], there’s bound to be people who hate them, so it makes you really frightened, that might have something to do with it.”

“I’m proud of them, I’m very proud of them, but I’ve always said I didn’t want them to be a let-down to people, I didn’t want people to think, ‘Oh hell, I liked my version better’ (laughs), and even if people did like the words they’d get sick of them eventually, probably, and it just seems such a sad situation. I don’t want to sing about me anyway. Sod that! I have to distance myself from it. I don’t know whether I have to or not, but I do. Fortunately they come out making a sort of sense. They make enough sense to other people for them to actually… they can understand, they can see things, they have these mental pictures.” [Sounds, 1983]

[Jokingly] “I think I feel a bit sorry for them. I feel sorry me, as well! I don’t know. I just wish they’d take advantage of it. They could really use that. I could be singing anything. I could be singing things they could be sort of really against, like I could be raving on about hell or something!” [Baktabak Interview Disc, 1984]

“A lot of the stuff I was singing about [in the early 1980s] was all metaphorical. I wasn’t talking like I am now. I guess it’s back to how much personal power you feel that you have. Like, if I’m 17 and I don’t even know when I’m hungry, am I tired, have I had any sleep—if you don’t even know that, then how can you talk about lyrics that come from such an unconscious place? I always said ‘I don’t know’, and I didn’t.” [Alternative Press, 1995].

“That was the point this time [with Four-Calendar Café], to make them mean something. I can see that now in retrospect. Back then [on Blue Bell Knoll], with the sounds, I thought I was being really honest, but now I think I’m being a lot more honest by writing things down and then singing it.” [Lime Lizard Magazine, 1993].

“I’ve just recently realized that I’m a very secretive person, that I’m constantly covering up for myself. I’m only just realizing how much. I don’t really know what’s happening. I hope it doesn’t mean that I won’t allow myself to do more things like Blue Bell Knoll. I’d like to be able to do everything. You see, on that album, I was still expressing the same things. I was still feeling the same feelings, but I wasn’t getting caught up in them. I was just feeling into a fucking microphone. I really was getting caught up in them on [Four-Calendar Café]. It was very painful. And the lyrics aren’t even that explicit.”

“What I’ve got to do is get honest, to stop doing what I was doing. Unfortunately, and this is typical of me, I tend to go from one extreme to the other. To go from an album like Blue Bell Knoll, which is so heavily disguised and removed from reality, to Heaven or Las Vegas, or even more to this one, where everything on it is in English and it’s all audible…it is extreme, I think. But it seems important for me to do that.” [The Wire, 1993].

“It’s amazing though, yeah, I mean that’s—I mean really the records are—a representation of our coping skills, and I think I was very much in denial, and I think that you can hear that on [Blue Bell Knoll]. You know, not one word can you grasp. Giving anything away…it just wasn’t allowed.”

“What they are, are words that I’ve taken from maybe seen written down in a language that I don’t understand, and liking them and maybe making new words as well out of them. I mean I’ve got reams and reams of words that I don’t have a clue what they mean, but I wanted them because, I knew I’d be able to express myself without giving anything away.” [NPR Interview, 1993].

“The catch is I can barely talk English, isn’t it? I quite like that. Combining words in different languages that I couldn’t understand just meant that I could concentrate on the sound and not get caught up in the meaning.”

“See, I find that [my lyrics] don’t have any meanings. They’re not proper. Although I’ve got a great dictionary of them. It’s like the Cockney rhyming slang or something. Writers like John Lennon. Writers that just kind of made up their own portmanteaux that caught on and people still use them. They don’t mean anything, though, that’s the thing. You know all the transcendent sounds. It’s all sound all the way through.”

“…[the dictionary] is how I got some of the words. And then I got to the stage where, I don’t know, something just came in. My life was a fucking mess…and I just couldn’t carry on. I mean, it would have been so easy to do that. ‘Cause after Blue Bell Knoll, which was really the easiest, the easiest I’ve ever done to make a record, I just couldn’t keep going that way. I guess that was the start of learning to be aware of what was going on and what I was responsible for.”

“I went to see someone this time ‘cause I really got into trouble on this album. I was just freaking out all over the place. I stopped making a lot of sounds, you know. I was talking very quietly. I was just so afraid of getting loud again. ‘Cause I’m not really very loud on Four-Calendar Café. I just feel like I’ve lost touch with that side of me and I wanted to get back in touch with it so that I can have my quiet moods and I can have my moments when I can express myself in a very loud way, as well. ‘Cause that’s good for other emotions.” [Mondo 2000, 1993].

“It depends where I’m at in my head… The lyrics are words that I’ve found by going through books and dictionaries written in languages I don’t understand. The words don’t have any meaning at all until I sing them… I did it so I could sing something… My house is full of this stuff. It’s just full of it. I get a bug. I get a bug for words. But I don’t know what any of them mean. I just pull them out of foreign languages books and stuff like that. The music and the singing and the words created a feeling, and I had a freedom doing this that I didn’t have singing English. I just didn’t have the courage to sing in English.

“I felt like I was shark bait. I felt inadequate. I didn’t feel adequate as a lyricist. It’s a coping skill, really… I may resort to this again. This stopped working for me. It just did. And I found that when I tried to do this I wasn’t singing from my gut anymore, I wasn’t… I just had to move on. And so I began to sing lyrics again that people would understand. There was still a bit of this kind of stuff going on then [on Heaven or Las Vegas]—sound, rather than meaning.

“I don’t wanna know what they mean because it’s gonna be ridiculous. I might be singing about plum pudding or god-knows-what-else, you know? But it served a purpose. I really got a freedom from it. And it worked. It did work for me.

“With Four-Calendar Café, I knew I was at a place where I needed to be really honest with myself, so I immediately knew I was gonna be singing lyrics. A song like “Bluebeard,” the title is obviously very angry. At the time I felt very trapped, and I was… feeling my feelings for the first time, basically. I was experiencing old anger and new anger. Thirty years of it, really, all at the same time, all at once. I affirmed myself on that song. I was writing the way a responsible adult writes. It’s about waking up. I was doubting and questioning, and… I even made my declaration.” [From 1FM Radio “National Poetry Day” Interview, 1994]

“We have had people on the Internet who have written translations and they obviously have a natural talent for writing. Their interpretations are so beautiful that sometimes I have preferred what they have written to what I actually sang, it has been much more eloquent. Those people are not so precious about [Cocteau Twins] and just enjoyed using their talent and it is lovely to witness. But some people are very…It seems that some people are convinced they know us better than we know ourselves, and that we ought to listen to them. They want to steer us and they are very precious about us and they do not want other people to have us. If you really love something, then you have to let it go and endorse everything about it that attracted you to it in the first place. It’s just like a love affair or any relationship: you have to treat it in the same way or you’ll just suffocate and destroy it in the end if you don’t.” [BOYZ, 1995].

“I gained so much from [inventing language]. I didn’t expect it to be such a fulfilling experience, at first it was an avoidance tactic. More than that. But I must have given myself permission along the way that I was really gonna go for it and not worry about people’s opinions.”

“I often get into trouble with lyrics in a way that wasn’t happening with Blue Bell Knoll. I often get stuck with lyrics, I get into old habits and keep doing the same thing. Writing Blue Bell Knoll I had a wonderful freedom to put lyrics aside and not to worry.”

”[‘Athol-brose’ is named after the Scottish drink] “whiskey and honey… I’d had quite a lot of that. [On] ‘A Kissed Out Red Floatboat,’ I remember I felt love, a really intense love, I was romanticising about it, a romantic image of being open and having your heart open.”

“[Robin Guthrie’s mother] was quite a big woman, in terms of personality as well as physique, and she was very jolly and nimble; even though she was a big lady there was something very delicate about her. [On ‘Ella Megalast Burls Forever’] I just had this image of her revolving, and this going on and on forever and ever, eternally. And so she should!” [Elizabeth in conversation with John Grant, discussing Blue Bell Knoll, 2017]

Clearly there are few, if any, absolute answers to the question of Liz’s lyrics (other than what’s in her head or written in her journals). At the end of the day, we may all be better off simply listening and enjoying, rather than searching for any hidden meaning, although there often is some meaning to it all. According to Liz, Robin, and Simon, she never sang “gibberish” and was not really an improviser, either—what she sang was carefully worked out. She did occasionally resort to using foreign words or a “cut and paste” approach to lyrics. Nevertheless, fans have managed to coax some interesting interpretations (but read them at your own risk!)

What we can share

Here are the few lyrics that have been written down, either on a record sleeve or elsewhere (including for closed captions on television for music video broadcast). They run the full gamut from metaphorical to playful slang to straightforward prose and back again.

Garlands

But I’m Not

Things from the forest die here

But I don’t

Dead forest things are offered here

But I’m not

Blind Dumb Deaf

My mouthing at you

My tongue the stake

I should welt should I hold you

I should gash should I kiss you

Shallow Then Halo

The then shallow she

Earth as we know it

The then halo she

A sky for the sacred

Stars in my eyes

Stars at my feet

Womb in the belly

Capital place

Garlands

Garlands evergreen

Forget-me-not wreaths

Chaplets see me drugged

I could die in the rosary

Die in the rosary

Grail Overfloweth

Grail Overfloweth

There is rain

And there’s saliva

And there’s you…

Lullabies

Feathers Oar Blades

Bare in foot and hide

Barefaced bareheaded

Bare in foot and hide

Bare in foot and hide

Crestfallen, weeping

The cripples though crestless

Are crestfallen weeping

Feathers oar blades

Splitting hair feathers

Spitting out oar blades

Spitting out oar blades

Crestfallen, weeping

The cripples though crestless

Are crestfallen weeping

All in teetotum

Widdershins every’s body

Is all in teetotum

Is all in teetotum

Spitting out oar blades

Alas Dies Laughing

Flaxen the tresses / Both

Flesh and fleshings / Tongue-

Tied and stuttering / Was

Quick take to mummering

Flaxen the tresses All

Fingers and stresses / Tongue-

tied and stuttering / Was

Quick take to mummering

It’s All But An Ark Lark

Kicked all from my curtsies

Barking biting amongst ourselves

Heel to toe to heel to head

And it’s head over heels

And it’s all but an ark-lark

Heel to toe to hair and hoof

And it’s head over heels

And it’s all but an ark-lark

Kicked all from my curtsies

This mockingbird

My lullabies

And it’s head over heels

And it’s all but an ark-lark

Head Over Heels

When Mama Was Moth

Sunburst and snowblind

…

When mama was moth

I took bulb form

Glass Candle Grenades

Glass candle grenades

Are popping

Still we’ll not keel over

The Tinderbox (of a heart)

The tinderbox of a heart

Left a shell is all

My Love Paramour

Fig up, my love

Ooze out and away, onehow

Heaven or Las Vegas

Cherry-Coloured Funk

You’ll hang the hearts

Black and dull as the night

You hanged your past and start being

As you in ecstasy

Still being cried and laughed at before

Should I be sewn and hugged?

I can by not saying

Still being cried and laughed at

From light to blue

I should I be hugged and tugged down

Through this tiger’s masque?

Wolf in the Breast

Laughing on our bed

I pretended us newly-wed

Especially when

Our rough angel unleashed that head

I feel perpetual

Four-Calendar Café

Bluebeard

Aliveness, exploration

Aliveness, energy

Are you the right man for me?

Are you safe? Are you my friend?

Are you the right man for me?

Are you safe? Are you my friend?

Aliveness, exploration

Fulfillment, creativity

Are you the right man for me?

Are you safe? Are you my friend?

Or are you toxic for me?

Will you betray my confidence?

Are you the right man for me?

Are you safe? Are you my friend?

Or are you toxic for me?

Will you betray my confidence?

Naming things is empowering

I balance, walk and coordinate myself

I’m alive

Aliveness energy

Are you the right man for me? Are you safe? Are you my friend?

Or are you toxic for me? Will you mistreat me or betray my confidence?

Are you the right man for me? Are you safe? Are you my friend?

Or are you toxic for me? Will you mistreat me or betray my confidence?

Are you the right man for me? Are you safe? Are you my friend?

Or are you toxic for me? Would you mistreat me or betray my confidence?

Evangeline

Sorrow for letting someone else define you

Know who you are at every age

What impression am I making?

I see me as other people see me

There is no going back

I can’t stop feeling now

I am not the same, I’m growing up again

I am not the same

I’m growing up again

There’s no going back, I can’t stop feeling now

I had to fantasize

I was a princess, Mum and Dad were Queen and King

I ought to have what feeling?

I see me as other people see me

There is no going back

I can’t stop feeling now

I am not the same, I’m growing up again

I am not the same

I’m growing up again

There’s no going back I can’t stop feeling now

Feeling now

There is no going back

I can’t stop feeling now

I am not the same, I’m growing up again

I am not the same

I’m growing up again

There’s no going back, I can’t stop feeling now

I had to fantasize just to survive

I was a famous artist

Everybody took me seriously

Even those who did, never understood me

I had to fantasize just to survive

Twinlights

Rilkean Heart (Acoustic Version)

Rilkean heart

I looked for you

To give me transcendent experiences

To transport me out of self and aloneness

And alienation into a sense of oneness

And connection ecstatic and magical

I became a junkie for it

I came looking for the next high

And I’m sorry

I’ve been putting the search on the wrong place

I understand that you’re confused

Feeling overwhelmed

Well that’s a feeling state from then

The reality

I’m becoming truly self-reliant and

Becoming connected with something beyond me

That is where I have to go

I’m so sorry

I’ve been putting the search on the wrong place

You’re lost and don’t know what to do

But that’s not all of you

That’s the reality today

And that is all okay

Half-Gifts (Acoustic Version)

It’s an old game, my love:

When you can’t have me, you want me

Because you know that you’re not risking anything

Intimacy is when we’re in the same place

At the same time

Dealing honestly with how we feel

And who we really are

That’s what grownups do

That is mature thinking

Well I’m still a junkie for it

It takes me out of my aloneness

But this relationship cannot sustain itself

Intimacy is when we’re in the same place

At the same time

Dealing honestly with how we feel

And who we really are

That’s what grownups do

That is mature thinking

I just have to know

How to be in the process

Of creating things in a better way

And it hurts, but it’s a lie

That I can’t handle it

I still have a world of me-ness to fulfill

I still care about this planet

I am still connected to nature

And to my dreams for myself

I have my friends

My family

I have myself

I still have me

I have my friends

My family

I have myself

I still have me

Milk & Kisses

Violaine

(Hint: read the lines right-to-left, backwards.)

Ectefamof oitavito fles eth yll-anif

snoitatimil noitae chus sec-cus

namukadnu itnemavom lacigolochysp

Tishbite

Is it like a dream?

Or does it seem grounded and real?

I feel a connection

A deep connection

But it’s not reflected

In time spent together

It’s reflected psychically

Emotionally

Is it like a dream?

Or does it seem grounded and real?

This mountain of pleasure

I want to get lost in it

Sleep like a baby

Still close

Still close

Until I don’t know where you end

Or I begin

Until I just carry it in me

Calfskin-Smack

And when I had you

I didn’t always want you baby

Ups

Being here now in the moment

Please please let that be

The place where I am

Eperdu

Above day holding nest

Both that sheltering and

Taking possession hand, outstretched,

Trembles its echo

Treasure Hiding

Fire hairs had no belly focus

Light the discards

Purified love

Constancy purifies mistakes