I’m With Everyone And Yet Not

Bush “Swallowed”

Gavin Rossdale has had an extremely charmed life, but it’s still a bit unfortunate for him that his band arrived in exactly the window of time when they would get the least respect. Worse still that those biases have carried on long after people stopped caring about whether or not they were another corporate rock Nirvana rip-off fronted by a guy who looked like a male model, but more handsome. I am certain that if Razorblade Suitcase came out today, it would be warmly received, and the people most likely to have dismissed it back in the day would be the first to welcome a record so full of dynamics cribbed from Nirvana, Pixies, and PJ Harvey records that they just went ahead and had Steve Albini record it for them. In 1996, this type of music was in surplus and we could shrug off the uncool stuff. In 2016, there’s a lot more of it than there was for a long time, but it was a loooong draught.

Rossdale was great with dynamics and hooks, but pretty iffy when it came to lyrics. It’s hard to imagine that the bizarre syntax and mangled phrases of Sixteen Stone were written by someone for whom English is their first language, but it was the ‘90s and it didn’t take much for a hot dude to make a word salad like “Glycerine” seem deep to teenagers. With this in mind, “Swallowed” is notable for two reasons: 1) The lyrics are actually pretty good for the most part 2) they’re direct and vulnerable in a way that Rossdale habitually deflected up until that point. He’s singing about feeling alone in a crowd, and just wanting to be with the one person he can’t be with. When he sings “I’m with everyone and yet not,” he sounds a bit guilty for not appreciating the good times he’s supposed to be having. Ignore the biographical details about him feeling shitty on a tour for a massively successful album, and this is an incredibly easy song to relate to, especially if you’ve ever endured a long distance relationship. At the end of the song, he’s done being oblique and just says exactly what he means: “I miss the one that I love a lot.” It’s a very real moment from a guy everyone assumed was just a hunky poseur.

Buy it from Amazon.