Treating Acid With Anxiety

Father John Misty “Josh Tillman and the Accidental Dose”

Talking Heads may have written the most popular song about snapping out of a fugue state and having an existential crisis, but Josh Tillman has spent most of his career exploring this lyrical territory in-depth without ever getting a good answer to the question “how did I get here?”

“Josh Tillman and the Accidental Dose” is played as dark comedy, with our hapless hero tripping out in a terrible “set and setting” situation – accompanied by a woman he can’t trust and her collection of clown portraits, plus “a publicist and a celibate.” The verses, which roll around a winding piano melody, are funny, but the depiction of ego death is no joke. It plays out like a devil’s bargain over sporadic orchestra stabs, a direct view of “bare reality” in exchange for feeling permanently broken. The string arrangement sounds like dark clouds rolling in over a vast landscape, with Tillman feeling smaller and smaller as the words “you may never be whole again” are repeated and he starts to accept it as truth.

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Father John Misty “Real Love Baby” (Live in Pioneertown, CA 2024)

This is what Josh Tillman said about “Real Love Baby” just after performing it in this show from a few months ago:

“I had this realization about this song recently. Y’know, I was pretty ambivalent about it for a long time, and then it started making me a lot of money. No, I’m just kidding. Not really, not much. But I’ve got all these songs that are just about these humiliating debased scenarios I find myself in on psychedelic drugs and stuff. I was like, this song is an actually really nice thing that came out of taking psychedelic drugs. It’s a little bit of an ego death to have…that’s the only song that will last. If any of these songs has a chance of pollinating the world after I’m gone, it’s that one. And it’s just an incredible cosmic joke that this one song, which in no way fortifies my egoic perception of myself, that I’m this dark cool guy. And I like that, so now I really enjoy playing it.”

The thing is, as sweet as it is, “Real Love Baby” is not that different from his other songs. There’s a lot of lines in it that deliberately undermine that sweetness, just as there’s a lot of earnest feelings that soften the more cynical sentiments. The reason the song works and is so resonant for so many – including Cher! – is because these contradicting feelings about love coexist and overlap. This is most apparent in the later choruses, in which layers of conflicting thoughts and emotions swirl around in the vocal harmonies. It’s a battle between the head and the heart, and given that the most tender and open-hearted lyrics ring the most true as it’s sung, I think it’s a W for the heart.

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Father John Misty “The Ideal Husband” (Live in Pioneertown, CA 2024)

“The Ideal Husband” opens with Josh Tillman in a panic, terrified that Julian Assange is “gonna take my files” and reveal his scandals to the world. Is this character a politician, a celebrity, some kind of captain of industry? Maybe, but as Tillman lays out all his sins and regrets, the guy sounds more like a garden variety loser. Actually, a lot of the lines just make him sound ordinary. That only makes the terror in the song hit harder, because it prods you to imagine everything you’re privately ashamed of becoming public knowledge against your will. And like, would it change how people see you? They might already have a low opinion of you. But keeping these things private allows for a sense of security and some hope that you can actually control what other people think of you.

The final verse of the song is the punchline. It follows through on the premise that this guy is ruined, and he shows up at a girlfriend’s place at 7 in the morning, saying melodramatic things like “I’m finally succumbing” and “I’m tired of running,” and deciding he wants to settle down with her. The “7 in the morning” detail is so funny to me – Tillman probably initially landed on 7 to fit the meter, but this scene happening around when most people wake up is much funnier than if it was in the middle of the night.

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