What Does It All Mean?: Matthew Sweet – Someone To Pull The Trigger

During the interview with Matthew Sweet we discussed what I believe to be the best song that he’s ever written, “Someone To Pull The Trigger.” Though he’s most associated with “Girlfriend,” which is a truly perfect pop song, “Trigger” still holds the top spot because of it’s utter uniqueness. Like so many of the songs Sweet has written, “Trigger” is a love song, but it’s a VERY unconventional one. If taken literally, this is a love song about a person who wants someone else to shoot them, to help them end it all, because they can’t do it on their own. As I remember quite a lot of critics took this song literally which gives it a much darker edge than perhaps the song deserves (despite Sweet’s admission in the interview that the song came from a “very dark place”).

It could just be the crazy, depressive, dark side of me speaking, but I find this to be a thoroughly romantic song. Love as assisted suicide is not generally the way we think of “romance,” but I think it remains apt for this song. This is clearly not a song about sweet, unproblematic, idealized love. No, this is a song about the realities of love for many of us, that love while it may lift us and gladden our hearts, does not always end well. When the person you love leaves you, it crushes us, destroys us and often leaves us for dead. But this song is not about the despair of heartbreak throughout your life. In fact it’s about the opposite. That’s why it seems like such a romantic song to me. This is a song about a person who has lost at love again and again and again and again, but they still haven’t given up. Consider how the song begins:

Well I’m loaded, ready, call me holdin’ steady,
Looking for a sign to show me when,
Now I’m waiting, willing, the clarity is chilling,
And I’m not turning back and neither can you

Here we have a person who is desperate to be loved and believe that they may have found “the right one,” but they cannot find it in themselves to take the first step. They need that other person to “pull the trigger” and take the lead.  When you consider the song like this it clarifies the chorus in particular ways:

I need someone to pull the trigger,
Is this hole in my heart getting bigger,
Everything I’ll ever be I’ve been,
And I need someone to pull the trigger,
So if you’re what I think you’ll be,
If you’re who I think I see,
Shoot

This person needs someone else to pull the trigger, they can’t do it themselves. They’ve been hurt by love so many times that they just can’t put themselves out there like that again. But they also realize that a life alone is no life at all. If they’re going to survive in this world, they need another person to give them a reason to live and a reason to make something of themselves. That “everything I’ll ever be I’ve been” line in particular seems to ground that point home. We often think we are capable of great things when we strike out on our own path. Some people do succeed, but many of us fail. Failure is tough when you’re in love, it’s absolutely devastating when you are alone. Once you’ve begun to fail, if you’re going to get better, be better, do better you need someone else to give you that push to be more than you’ve been. This is especially the case when you try and try and yet fail repeatedly. There’s nothing worse than the slow realization that you simply never had “it.” With a new love however, we can emerge stronger than before.  There remains that chance.

Which brings us to perhaps the best lines of the entire song:

So hold me and love me,
Tie me up and drug me,
‘Cause I’m not gonna beg you for my life

Again, this is a VERY desperate person. This is not a wide-eyed teenager full of idealized notions of romantic love. This is a person who has lived in the world and lost. They are at their wit’s end and are ready to give up. But they also want a love that is complete, total and even perhaps dominating over all aspects of their life. Here is a person completely and totally committed to the idea of giving over yourself to the person you love no matter the costs. No matter what you want to do with me, no matter what you do to me, just love me.

Now, I’m not saying the plea for co-dependence or the notion of love as suicide is a particularly healthy way of going about it, but it remains for me deeply romantic. What do you think…

Matthew Sweet – “Someone To Pull The Trigger” from Altered Beast (1993)

Well I’m loaded, ready, call me holdin’ steady,
Looking for a sign to show me when,
Now I’m waiting, willing, the clarity is chilling,
And I’m not turning back and neither can you

I need someone to pull the trigger,
Is this hole in my heart getting bigger,
Everything I’ll ever be I’ve been,
And I need someone to pull the trigger,
So if you’re what I think you’ll be,
If you’re who I think I see,
Shoot

So hold me and love me,
Tie me up and drug me,
‘Cause I’m not gonna beg you for my life

I need someone to pull the trigger,
Is this hole in my heart getting bigger,
Everything I’ll ever be I’ve been,
And I need someone to pull the trigger,
If you’re what I think you’ll be,
If you’re who I think I see,
Shoot (4X)