There Must Be Some Mixtape: Track #5 – Scared by The Tragically Hip (1995)

Gord Downie fronting the Hip, 2009 | CC BY-SA 4.0 File:TragicallyGord cc attribution ScottAlexander.jpg

On my Facebook page about a year ago, I posted this short piece:

"Some of you may recall my making you play New Orleans is Sinking and other songs by The Tragically Hip in your cars around 1989 or so (on a cassette tape that I actually still own), and more of you will know their biggest American hit from being played on Anchorage rock stations for many years. I have no idea if the song is still played up in Anchorage, though I am pretty certain it is; I've heard it played on "oldies" stations down here in So Cal.

The point I am getting at is that The Tragically Hip are about to play their final concert in less than half an hour (5:30 ET) and it is being streamed live on YouTube at [link deleted here as it is no longer live].

The lead singer of The Tragically Hip, Gord Downie, has a form of inoperable brain cancer but was given permission by his doctor to undertake a farewell tour of their native Canada before calling it a day as a band. While I had the first three albums by the band back in the day, I lost touch with them over the years.

Luckily, about 7 years ago, I was partnered at my old job with Logan Johnson, who is severely and clinically Canadian. (And now, once again, geographically.) He also came equipped with a fervent love for the Tragically Hip, and so after we discovered that we had shared interests in music even though we had roughly 22 years between us, I was reintroduced to the Hip for good.

Also luckily for me, I am doing some work for Logan at the moment, so he gently reminded me with an hour to spare that the concert was coming on tonight. So I am passing this on to anyone that might be interested in hearing some pretty great music being played live for the very last time." - https://www.facebook.com/riktodjohnson/posts/10157343400450646


It is now just over a year later since that post. Last night, I received a text from Logan that Gord Downie died yesterday with his family by his bedside. Gord certainly made it a lot further than I and many other people thought, but the news is devastating nonetheless.

Without going too deeply into the band, its history, and Downie's prowess as a lyricist, I simply want to make a small tribute today to the man in regards to his passing. The song Scared, which was released in 1994 on the Hip's fourth studio album, Day for Night (itself a film reference), is not overt in its intent to frighten the listener, but is rather a thoughtful meditation on the subject of fear itself. The angle can occupy either the personal, political, or commercial, depending on the shifting balance of power for the song's narrator, and we are kept guessing as to the ultimate intent of the narrator. 

Many of the best songs of the Hip, while filled with marvelously rendered details and crystalline caricatures of their denizens, still leave the listener wrestling with interpretation for days and sometimes years. In this, Scared is definitely one song that is a good deal harder to pin down, and most interpretations I have seen fall apart hard when the interpreter gets past a solitary verse.

But, first, let's listen to the song, and check out the lyrics below...

Scared by The Tragically Hip 
[Robert Baker, Gord Downie, Johnny Fay, Paul Langlois and Gord Sinclair; Lyrics © Peermusic Publishing]

"I could make you scared, if you want me to
I'm not prepared, but if I have to
He said, I can make you scared, it's kind of what I do
If you're prepared, here's what I propose to do

You're in Russia and more than a million works of art
Are whisked out to the woods
When the Nazis find the whole place dark
They'll think God's left the museum for good

I can make you scared, if that's what I do
If you're prepared, and if I have to
If I make you scared, and you pay me to
That's the deal, now here's what I can do for you

Now there's a focus group that can prove
This is all nothing but cold calculation

Tests have shown that suspicious are hostile
Their lives need not be shortened
Truth be told, they can live a long, long while
Tickled to death by their importance

If you can make me scared, if that's what you do
If I'm unclear, can I get out of this thing with me and you
If you feel scared, and a bit confused
I got to say, this sounds a little beyond anything I'm used to

Now there's a precious few that can prove at the root
This is all nothing but cold calculation

Clearly entranced, you're leaning back now
Defanged destroyer limps into the bay
Down at the beach it's attracting quite a crowd
As kids wade through the blood out to it to play

Okay, you made me scared, you did what you set out to do
And I'm not prepared, you really had me going there for a minute or two
He said, you made me scared too, I wasn't sure I was getting through
I got to go, it's been a pleasure doing business with you"

The fifth of six singles off of that immensely successful Day for Night album, Scared only made it to #57 on the Canadian singles chart, but became a standard (and often an encore selection) at Hip shows thereafter.

The song starts out as if we are being talked to by a propagandist. There are impressions of Russians hiding vast stores of artwork, and of Nazis arriving too late to the scene. The narrator says that he can be paid to scare you, and then we get to talk of focus groups and the implication that fear is manufactured by "cold calculation". We told that the "suspicious are hostile"; is it the very taste of fear that keeps them going on for so long?

But then, with the second chorus, there is a seismic shift in the attitude of the narrator. Suddenly, he is the one who is to be scared, and then, in the turn of a line, both he and his subject seem to be dreading the same thing. The narrator admits that he is uncertain of where things stand. Is this suddenly a game where the participants take turns frightening each other, almost like a round of ghost stories around a campfire? Or perhaps the game is of a more sensual nature? Do you have a safe word?

In the final verse, the subject is "leaning back now," perhaps as if in a seat in a movie theatre. The last three lines of the verse could very well be a scene out of a war or horror movie, depending on how you interpret "defanged destroyer". The talk of focus groups earlier points to a possible cinematic pulse running throughout the song, though that could just as easily lead to the marketing of fear in the form of propaganda. The song was written 23 years ago, but it is hard not to think of our world today in relation to these lyrics, where every impulse is currently being led by fear, on both sides, real and imagined.

The narrator himself seems to be losing his grip throughout the song. While the lyrics (and Downie's delivery) remain tied to the rhythm of the music through the first chorus, with each succeeding version of the chorus, the narrator grows ever more nervous (or scared) and seems to try cramming ever more words into each line. By the third rendition of the chorus, he appears to have given up on meeting the original scheme and is almost babbling out as much as he can to complete his thoughts.

At its roots, though, Scared is a quiet tune with a gentle melody, hardly scary in its intentions, but definitely thought-provoking.

RIP Gord Downie. At least we still have your music...

RTJ