Joanna Newsom’s “Only Skin” – Complete Dissection

c.w. abuse

            Joanna Newsom’s music is something like a religion to me. This is not to say that I worship Joanna Newsom like a goddess. Rather, Newsom’s music seems to contain a philosophy, a well-crafted and passionate code of life. Newsom has spent her 20-year solo career waxing poetic about partnership, womanhood, and sisterhood. Just as those subjects clearly mean a lot to her (considering the soul she pours into each verse and vocal take), they’ve come to mean a lot to me. And just as much as she values telling a great story, like any other folkie worth their salt, she perhaps values theme even more. Her songs aren’t mere portrayals of events, but rather, interconnected and interwoven meditations.

While folk is synonymous with squeezing universal experiences into isolated snapshots, often these lack greater significance to anyone but the performer alone. It’s hard to both portray a common experience in a unique and moving way, while keeping it relatable and comprehensible to the everyman. This is to say: we’ve all experienced our own breakups and deaths, so what makes someone else’s more important? And if these are important to them alone, then why do I care?

Newsom solves this, ironically, by complicating the problem. The songs she writes are at times, incomprehensibly personal, obfuscated under layers of complex language and conceit. Newsom’s previously poked fun at those who listen to her music and are wowed by her flowery language, while not actually trying to understand what she’s saying with it.¹ Listening through her discography, it becomes clear that Newsom finds value, not in simply putting a pretty spin on something that’s already been said, but in innovating upon old stories. But these nuances and accoutrements are where I find so much to latch on to. Newsom’s songwriting modernizes raw and profound sentiments about every stage of life: from birth, through love, through failure, to death, to maybe something after. Albums of hers like Divers, her fourth and most recent, explores these steps being not only inextricably interwoven, but part of a cycle that loops, and provides us with the chance to begin again.

While complicated, these songs have a reason to be so; Newsom perhaps believes the only proper way to explore complex ideas and relationships is through complex elaborations. Although her first album, The Milk-Eyed Mender, was more immediate with its pop-structure than her later material, it was never immediate writ large. So, when its lead single “Sprout and the Bean” found its way into a Victoria Secret ad, it was utterly incomprehensible – practically more incomprehensible than the song itself, despite my impression that fans can’t decide on it meaning any one of four things.² Newsom even described the mere title of her album Ys as being named such under “five or six layers of meaning.”³

There’s value to telling complex stories in simple ways (for the sake of digestibility and “universality”), but when we lose complexity we lose nuance, too. Newsom takes no such chances. Her meaning isn’t found merely in her words, but in what’s written between them, and what’s written between those words, too. Don’t fall for the fey veneer of her harp and unconventional vocals. Joanna Newsom means serious business, and it’ll take a lot of unpacking to prove it. This essay, with a scope as narrow as a single track (and all it connects to), and a wordcount above 17000, should make that clear.

For the few of my friends who this essay sounds familiar to, let me explain: I put together an analysis of her track “Only Skin” two years ago; while I was always happy with the concept, I’ve spent the last while dissatisfied with how it came out. I limited its scope to exploring merely the relationship it depicts, rather than the track’s greater themes or the potential significance behind its allusions. I eventually concluded that was irrationally narrowminded for a song of such depth. I also feared large portions of my analysis were shallow or occasionally flat-out wrong and, being a reasonable person, that was tearing me apart. How would my peers respect me if I didn’t value the deeper meaning of Joanna Newsom’s complexities?

That sham essay was not rewritten, but rather, entirely scrapped. While this essay occasionally interpolates its ideas, what you see before you otherwise bears little resemblance. This essay is also three times the length (I had a lot more to say). Why did I write this essay not once but twice? I respectively have two reasons:

A.    “Only Skin” has been, and remains, my favorite song. And really, it means the world to me.

B.     Newsom’s catalogue is baked with more intentional meaning than most any of those albums with “weird” lyrics. You know the ones. In their abstraction and over-specificness, they beg you to open the lyric-book and try to connect the dots. But when I do so, I feel like I’m often doing what the artist themselves didn’t: finding meaning behind the words. These are all color, no bite. Their deepest conversations are shallow. But “Only Skin” has so much to say, that writing this essay was a process of having the love poured into its writing reveal itself to me.

My original essay also assumed too much background on the subject matter, so I’ve boiled it down to this: Ys is a folk album by Joanna Newsom. Ys is five songs long. Its fourth song, her longest to date at 17-minutes, and perhaps her very densest/most verbose, is “Only Skin”. This essay is an act of lovingly pulling significance out of it.

Synopsis/Interpretation

            We enter “Only Skin” in the middle of a literal nightmare, which establishes the tension for the first leg of the song.⁴ Newsom hears the booming of distant explosions, and envisions a chaotic scene of jets soaring above her partner who’s away at war. In addition, Newsom sees the sky literally crumbling, like a ‘bread roll soaking in a milk-bowl.’⁵ We as listeners picture porous holes in the fabric of the sky, revealing to us its ethereal whiteness beneath. This paints for us an abstract and intentionally nonrealistic scene, which is one of the ways we know it’s a dream. Newsom describes the airplanes cascading overhead like the struggle of ‘beached whales, shelled snails.’ Her reference to these lethargic animals establishes that her nightmare moves at a tedious crawl.

But this dream doesn’t portray Newsom longing for her partner who remains far from home. She’s dreaming of a specific story he’s told her, made clear by her use of the expression ‘that night’ in line 2. Lines 19-21 also support this, stating that Newsom’s partner has explained the details of this story after coming home from the carnage (‘released from their hairless and blind cavalry’).⁶ This establishes that Newsom’s partner has brought the war, and his trauma, back with him. Just as this story haunted him, it now also haunts her, who must suffer alongside him in the form of these nightmares.

Newsom connects verses 1-3 and verse 4 by ending them with essentially the same line (‘retreat/released from their hairless and blind cavalry’).⁷ Whereas the first three verses set the scene of what Newsom sees, verse 4 explains the meaning Newsom pulls out of this vision. Newsom doesn’t simply witness the horror of war in the first four verses. She also imagines the vulnerability of her partner, who she watches cowering and afeared from the chaos (‘you froze in your sand shoal, prayed for your poor soul’).

We’re already going to get sidetracked for a moment by talking about the significance Newsom imbues prayer with. Newsom’s partner’s prayer for his life contrasts with Newsom’s prayer a lot later into the track, where she hopes that a bird that flew into her kitchen-window may die painlessly.⁸ While Newsom’s partner’s prayer is self-centered, in that he prays for his own life, Newsom’s prayer is selfless, in that she prays for another living creature. This is a small point of contrast, but note that the narrative of “Only Skin” is riddled with contrasts big and small. They all function together to portray Newsom and her partner as being diametrically opposed on many axes.  

There’s also some nuance to what their prayers establish about Newsom and her partner. When Newsom’s partner prays and receives no answer (‘and there was a silence you took to mean:’), he concludes that there isn’t a God listening to him, and he actually seems fine with that. However, when Newsom herself prays ‘for some sort of rare grace’ (for God to let the bird die peacefully), she denotes that she doesn’t see herself as worthy of Him listening. This establishes religiosity as a topic early on into the narrative, more specifically, how different beliefs are the foundations for different kinds of people. Newsom’s experience with belief, and specifically the afterlife, is of utmost importance to Ys as a whole.

This allows me to introduce the fact that “Only Skin” is best understood, not as an insular narrative, but as a sort of thematic nexus for the other four tracks on Ys. Although it explores a narrative distinctly separate from “Emily,” “Monkey & Bear,” “Sawdust & Diamonds,” and “Cosmia,” our song in question references the events and elaborates on the theming of all of these tracks. Newsom herself explained this in a Pitchfork interview:

“There were four very big things that happened in my life in this particular year, and so four of the songs are about these things. The fifth song, ‘Only Skin,’ was an effort to talk about the connections between the events.”⁹

So, while religion and the afterlife aren’t core to “Only Skin,” these are core topics of other tracks on the album (“Sawdust & Diamonds” in particular). That track opens with Newsom asking if Heaven exists, and if so, will she be able to meet her child there (who never made it to this world) when Newsom passes too.¹⁰ I believe this alone sets up everything we need to understand how Newsom connotates prayer on “Only Skin.” Newsom’s prayer on “Only Skin” acknowledges its own frailty. Newsom lacks confidence that God will look down on her in her time of need, but crucially, she decides that isn’t an excuse not to try praying.

And when Newsom prays, her scope is small. She asks that a little animal, already on its deathbed, can at least pass away comfortably. She also hopes to bring it to a ‘higher place’ in its time of dying. In “Sawdust & Diamonds,” the higher place of the opening verse is Heaven, which Newsom makes clear by invoking its popular image as a bright, ethereal place, at the top of a set of stairs ascending from our mortal plane. On “Only Skin,” the higher place is meant literally, as a place in the canopy where the bird would feel safe and at home. Simultaneously, by using the rather particular expression ‘higher place,’ this line is best taken as a double entendre which connects the canopy with Heaven, as we know that Newsom pictures Heaven as somewhere physically above our reality.

In the first three verses of “Only Skin,” Newsom establishes a base of how she and her partner operate a little differently in the world at-large. This becomes a much wider divide shortly into the narrative. Verses four through seven are the first way we see this in practice: her partner seemingly also suffers from nightmares, or maybe some form of night-terrors.¹¹ Newsom’s partner wakes her in order to detail his own nightmare to Newsom (although Newsom herself keeps her nightmares private, in want of not upsetting her partner with discussion of his deployment).¹²

Newsom implicitly has the task comforting her partner, based on how quickly she moves to do so after being woken up (‘undressed and yawning’) – but she doesn’t expect him to comfort her, another point of contrast between them. Lines 30-34 carry a sense of urgency as she makes herself there for him, as Newsom repeatedly states he’s safe: she starts off with the claim ‘it was a dark dream darling,’ then re-establishes that statement (‘it’s over’), and then moves into a simile which carries the same sentiment for the third time.¹³

Let’s unpack the effusive imagery of this simile. Assuming that the ‘fire breather’ references some sort of weaponry or warfare, that it is ‘beneath the clover’ explains that Newsom’s partner is protected from violence by something organic and natural. Throughout “Only Skin,” Newsom contrasts the way she sees the world with the way her partner sees it, to show the divide in perspective between them. Newsom sees the Earth as alive, in terms of animals, plants, environments, and love for one’s people. Her partner sees the world in terms of violence. He tells stories in terms of such dark, artificial imagery as ‘black airplanes’ (line 2) and a ‘plague of greasy black engines a-skulking’ (line 17).

Newsom herself never sees the world around her in terms of such harmful industry. Let’s take another one of Newsom’s tracks about warfare as an example: “The Waltz of The 101^st Lightborne,” off of her album Divers. Although the topic of this track is the operation of some sort of colonizing ship (which just happens to be in outer space because of the track’s sci-fi bend), what Newsom examines through this track is her philosophy of spacetime and technological evolution. The track references war, it mentions ships and planes, but always in a word, and never with imagery as cold and off-putting as the ‘greasy black engines’ of “Only Skin.” Why the difference? Because this is Newsom’s idea of combat, not her partner’s idea of combat.

Newsom states in her simile of safety that not only is her partner safe from the ‘fire breather’ but that said fire breather is atop ‘cold clay,’ an image taken from a traditional folk song Newsom has performed (“Ca’ The Yowes to The Knows”) which means something is dead. She ends her verse with a line like the one about the fire breather beneath the clover.¹⁴ That the hound-dog (an arbiter of violence) is toothless (disarmed by intervention) and is choked by a feather (Newsom’s organic, pastoral imagery), implies that Newsom will keep her partner safe. So, over the course of the five-line seventh verse, Newsom basically tells her partner five times that he is safe. This is how her desperation comes across to satisfy his needs.

The hound-dog which Newsom mentions here is elaborated upon later in the song. Lines 124-139 explore the insular story (in the greater, overarching narrative of the song) of the bird that crashed into Newsom’s house. In a desperate attempt to comfort the bird, Newsom makes a mad-dash through the woods, her partner beside her, in order to bring the bird somewhere it can find peace. Newsom hikes up the tempo as she sings this part to establish the tension and stakes to the audience.¹⁵ This story portrays a rare moment of teamwork between Newsom and her partner. As she cups the dying bird in her hands, her partner wards off the dogs which chase them and seek to kill the bird themselves.¹⁶

What Newsom implies immediately after telling this story is that it didn’t really happen. Her version ends with the bird flying out of her hands into the trees.¹⁷ But immediately after, she claims that a miracle like this wouldn’t happen to her. Lines 140-141 explain this: ‘While, back in the world that moves, often, according to the hoarding of these clues.’ I take these lines to mean “back in reality as it can expectedly happen.” Newsom wants us to take this daydream allegorically, as a representation of the sort of relationship she longs to have. If she has an arrogant partner with violence in his heart, well, maybe he could at least protect her with his strength. But her partner wouldn’t really protect her from these dogs, who would end up killing the bird if it ever did crash into her window.¹⁸ She held onto this vision of safety with her partner for a while, as she tells this story as though she imagined it days prior (‘last week, our picture window, produced a half-word’).

This tale puts a new spin on the ‘toothless hound-dog choking on the feather,’ back in line 34. The implication here is now far darker, that Newsom’s only way of defending their relationship against the outsiders who seek to harm it (symbolized by the hound-dog) is not just with action, but through self-sacrifice (symbolized by the dog eating the innocent bird). It also brings sadness to Newsom’s promise in line 132 that no dog will come to harm the bird. Her promise was made in earnest, but disrupted by her partner’s failure to act.

I say this next part very delicately, as we’re verging on pure speculation: in the greater narrative of Ys, this bird perhaps alludes to Newsom’s loss of her child/pregnancy, and could also imply why she saw this loss as having to happen. This, like the self-sacrifice of Newsom comforting her partner from his nightmare, is a microcosm of the relationship. Newsom constantly sacrifices herself, her body, and her peace, bit by bit for her partner until there’s nothing left to give. Yet, he’ll keep asking for more.  

Newsom moves to provide for her partner after his retelling of his nightmare by promising to tend to him. We glean a few bits of Newsom’s perspective on her relationship through lines 35-42.¹⁹ For starters, we learn how Newsom internalizes her partner’s behavior via the line ‘the love you’ve lent me.’ This implies meekness as a character trait of Newsom at this point in the narrative. She doesn’t have the confidence that she deserves his love, despite the effort she pours into her relationship. But Newsom is a dynamic character over the course of “Only Skin,” and by the end of the song, her meekness evolves into resilience and strength.

This ‘bitter herb’ Newsom seeks out, what does it portray? Unlike this key flora, many of the herbs mentioned across Ys are depicted in the album art. The poppies and cornflowers in her wreath appear by name on “Emily” and “Cosmia” respectively.²⁰

This wreath, like “Only Skin,” is a nexus of Ys’ topics, as many of the herbs seen on it are pulled from important scenes across the album.²¹ Often these herbs crop up during moments of overwhelming tension or pressures. None of the herbs depicted, however, match the description of a dastardly rare, bitter herb, that grows along rivers. So, perhaps like the non-existent ‘chim-choo-ree’ bird named in the opening line of “Emily,” and its fantastical likeness on the album art, such an expression carries feelings of whimsy and fiction.²² Newsom’s task to collect this herb, then, is meant to imply a fairy-tale adventure, representing the quest one completes for true love.

This would also explain why, if the herb Newsom’s seeking blooms ‘one day a year,’ she’s so confident that she’ll be able to provide it to her partner. After all, we don’t witness Newsom successfully collect this herb or deliver it to him. That’s why I choose to take this mission figuratively. That Newsom makes such large promises to her partner implies that she works desperately for his commitment. She already senses his passion for her fading, and hopes to woo him back with these grand displays of affection.

This also brings up the question of Newsom’s actual goals in lines 35-42. I find myself wondering why, if she goes to the riverside in order to forage, she spends her time here fishing. One possibility is that this activity is a moment of reprieve from her partner. She perhaps finds peace in doing something delicate and meditative, in a beautiful place, away from the needs of her partner.

The scene of her fishing is rather somber; Newsom describes the swaying of the fishing line as though it sobs.²³ Her tow faces stark resistance from the ‘hustling breeze,’ imagery which implies that something works in resistance to her peace. But that her line manages to cut through this wind perhaps symbolizes that she is capable of remaining tethered through life’s unexpected adversities.

The fishing scene ends with an intimate description of the river.²⁴ Taken literally, these lines mean the river shifts in a striking manner, flowing over the mussels (a play on the homophone muscles) which live along the shoreline. The way Newsom details this movement (‘how the water was kneading so neatly, gone treacly’) and the imagery she associates with it (‘along the muscles beneath’) both foreshadow the sex scene of the following verse. That’s because, if we take these lines as the innuendo Newsom likely intended, the bodies of her and her partner move together in a tender rhythm, ‘slow[ing] to a stop in this heat’ in exhaustion, as they tirelessly work their muscles (‘frenzy coiling flush’).

This implication is clearer in conjunction with the following verse;²⁵ the lines ‘press on me: we are restless things’ more obviously depict sex. Sex enables Newsom to placate her partner (‘shot full of ink, until you sink into your crib’), as sex is one of the only resources that Newsom’s partner values out of their relationship. Sex is what it takes to bind them together, and like Newsom’s quest for the mythical herbal remedy of true love, sex represents Newsom’s drive to maintain their relationship through satisfying her partner’s needs. But it also shows that Newsom herself has something to gain: this verse isn’t connoted as an act of reciprocity, but rather, as an act of mutual contentment. This is done by opening with the equitable pronoun ‘we.’ They are both satisfied here. Newsom, however, will later be criticized for her contentment, while her partner will not.

The river-similes from the prior verse are continued through lines 46-51; e.g., how the way they’re laying together in bed is akin to being ‘swaddled in seaweed.’ From the blankets of seaweed, to the soothe of the squid, the scene here is calm, and so are the images of the river that come with it. Their relationship is similarly in a state of mutual satisfaction.  

The tension of water is a sort of tracker for the tension between the partners throughout the narrative. We’ve already witnessed the agitated state of the river as Newsom went fishing, and how she manages to cut through the tension with her lure. A little later into the song, the water is roaring, and it poses a threat to Newsom and her sister (‘though we felt the spray of the waves, we decided to stay, ‘till the tide rose too far,’ lines 90-92). This takes place after a huge blow to Newsom’s confidence in her relationship, the nature of which we’ll explore later.

As Newsom is at peace with her partner after their intimacy, she finds herself in a state of false confidence that she and him could forge something together. This moment of unconventional faith in her partner frightens Newsom, who recognizes that her partner is deleterious to her.²⁶ The image of lines 52-53, a song heard while paddling along a river, evokes thoughts of a dangerous siren, who lures sailors to their death. This personification of Newsom’s feelings explains her present purview: she’s allured by her partner, but she fears that allure all the same. ‘Rowing’ may also be a double entendre for fighting (as in participating in a ‘row’), rather than rowing a boat – meaning that he proves himself to be unworthy of her faith during their disputes, so when she does have faith, it concerns her.

Newsom’s reversal of the siren’s usual gender dynamic is worth pointing out; traditionally, it’s a female siren who lures men to their deaths, whilst ignoring passerby women. While Newsom’s work often explores patriarchal society, it criticizes those norms by avoiding working within that patriarchal ideology. Hence, the male siren maneuvers around the misogyny of the siren’s usual connotation. In a similar way, her track “Colleen,” while probably inspired by the aquatic and mythological selkie, reverses her traditional connotation as a duplicitous succubus. In Newsom’s take on the tale, this is not inherent to the selkie and her character, but an imposition by the patriarchal society above the water, one which her selkie refuses to give in to (‘well they took me in… and said my name would be Colleen…’; ‘but still, I don’t know any goddamned “Colleen”’).²⁷

The lines to follow this siren-ish scene introduce some prominent similes (a stonefruit and a cinder) to Newsom’s song.²⁸ Let’s explore the latter: an ardor works its way into Newsom (which she calls a cinder), one which poses an imposition. Whereas a cinder on its own doesn’t mean danger, it signals a fire is close behind, which Newsom is already weary of. Recall that she tries to ‘hush’ the sound of this ardor, but it’s already too late. For the moment, this fire is on the backburner, and while introduced in verse 13, only resurfaces as a threat some 30 verses later.

“Only Skin” is 198 lines long, and while images are repeated throughout, the song has nothing that comes close to a chorus. Verse 14, and the melody Newsom strums, is the only repeated part of the song.²⁹ She’ll play it again 30 verses later, implying she knew all along that this love was probably a lost cause.³⁰ Newsom twice calls out on the inappropriateness of her partner’s assertion that she’ll be the last relationship he’ll ever need (‘why would you say [that] I was the last one?’). The first time she sings this verse, Newsom holds some small hope they’ll someday come together as a functional, interdependent team. This explains why Newsom simultaneously sees her partner as a flight risk, but doesn’t bow out quite yet. But by the time Newsom repeats her verse (lines 169-172), she holds no such hope.

The second issue which arises after their sex is that line 54 seems to similize a pregnancy taking root, via the opening of a ‘stonefruit.’ This fruit’s pit represents new life. My claim is conjecture until considered in conjunction with the climactic duet at the end of the song. Lines 173-189 summarize the complications of their failing relationship, perhaps the largest of which being the lost potential of raising up of… something. The duet’s actual subject is a ‘cherry tree,’ but let’s consider why this tree may represent a child instead.

Around the release of Ys, Newsom stated in an interview that raising a child is practically her only want in this life.³¹ Although, Newsom did not have any children until 2017, 11 years after the release of Ys.³² Considering Ys is an exploration of Joanna Newsom’s real-life story, we can look out for this longing in her 2006 songwriting. It’s easy to read “Emily” and “Sawdust & Diamonds” as explorations of a challenging pregnancy and its subsequent hardships. So, if we keep an eye out for similar rumblings on “Only Skin,” we naturally find something borne of the same ethos: the cherry tree whose raising is riddled with toil and tears.³³

In the duet of “Only Skin,” contextualized as a back-and-forth retelling of where their relationship lost the plot, Newsom’s partner implies that their relationship provides him with nothing (‘cold, cold cupboard, lord, nothing to chew on!’ [line 175]). We know as listeners that he’s inarguably incorrect, but this is his selfish perspective, mind you. So, Newsom and her partner try having a baby to bridge their rift: ‘suck all day on a cherry stone. Dig a little hole not three inches round – spit your pit in a hole in the ground,’ lines 176-178. The planting of a tree in these lines presumably connect back to line 54, considering that a cherry is a type of stonefruit.

Despite the hardships, their parentage potentially seems to work out for a short while (‘till up grows a fine young cherry tree’ [line 180]), but ends in tragedy: Newsom’s partner foresees, or actually witnesses, the child dying (‘when the bow breaks’). The future tense makes the connotation somewhat nebulous, but was probably written this way to preserve its original phrasing. Original? Well, Newsom’s story probably references the classic dark nursery rhyme Rock-a-bye Baby, wherein a baby’s cradle falls out of a tree, presumably to its death.³⁴ This alone may not be sufficient to decide that Newsom clearly meant her child passes away/her pregnancy ends early, until we remember that “Only Skin” intends to combine the other four songs/four life events of Ys. “Sawdust & Diamonds” is singularly about how Newsom copes with the loss of her pregnancy. All of this combined gives us a pretty clear idea of what this cherry tree represents.

Despite the problems that Newsom’s already identified, she still longs for this man and the tenderness he could potentially provide to her. In lines 62-63, we’re enraptured with the vivid beauty in Newsom’s cutting of her partner’s hair.³⁵ Newsom’s description of the scene is so lovely it doesn’t sound hyperbolic when she claims she’s the ‘happiest woman among all women’.

The intimacy found in a woman cutting her lover’s hair carries our thoughts to the tale of Samson (from the Hebrew Bible), who derived his inhuman strength from his luscious hair. So, this verse may not be as superficially simple as a woman yearning for intimacy. It may aim to confound our view of control in this relationship. Newsom’s partner often seems to dominate the pair’s present and future, but moments like these portray Newsom wresting back autonomy, just to remind her partner: it’s not always the man who’s in charge.

Also, to briefly explain why this is probably a Biblical analogy: it’s not the only one in our song, and there are many more in her discography. Consider line 13 of “Only Skin,” where Newsom dreams of her partner: ‘my sleeping heart woke, and my waking heart spoke.’ This depiction of being emotionally bound to your lover, even in the throes of sleep, is very similar to Song of Solomon 5:2: “I slept but my heart was awake.”³⁶ If Newsom borrowed these two scenes from the Bible, she seems to leverage both to portray a story of modern intimacy.

“The Book of Right-On,” off of Newsom’s album The Milk-Eyed Mender, explores the contrast between the dominance of men and the intimacy of love similarly. On that track, Newsom calls herself a ‘pack-leader,’ defining the source of her authority as her strength. When she accepts intimacy from her partner, she reiterates that she’s the one in control (‘even when you touch my face, you know your place’).

But there’s an underlying implication that her authority doesn’t come from innate value. Newsom isn’t in control because she’s respected, but because she aggresses upon those who don’t respect her. She even calls her behavior here ‘shallow.’ Doesn’t this remind you of Newsom’s partner on “Only Skin”? The hook of “The Book of Right-On” encapsulates the idea that it’s worth examining one’s claim to fame (‘shining a light on’) rather than taking said claims at face value (‘and the Book of Right-On’s, right on’).

In the case of both narratives, “Only Skin” and “The Book of Right-On,” either Newsom may be in control, or the ‘you,’ or both may assume control during different moments. This all depends on whether you accept the obvious narratives, or read between the lines. But her whole discography seems to invite the latter. Keep this thought in mind on “Only Skin”: Newsom may often seem to be in a perilous spot, under the weight of her partner’s dominance. But even as she loses battles here and there, she always works diligently towards winning the war, through thoughtful strategy and self-preservation.

In this moment of hair-cutting, Newsom and her partner are somewhat at peace. She finds even-footing in the water she stands in here.³⁷ But like the scene where Newsom goes fishing, the tone is somber. While the water is traversable here, it is still not moved through with gusto.³⁸ Assailing this water, and her relationship, are connotated like hard labor, based on her humming of a work song. Newsom also picks the verb ‘weep’ for the bird’s call here, which shows the depressing tone Newsom sees the world in. It seems her trials are getting to her in these moments of solitude.

Verse 20 introduces us to a new conflict within “Only Skin.”³⁹ While the narrative has primarily focused on Newsom’s strife with her partner, we now see how that conflict infests her community too. Newsom feels ostracized by her neighbors, excluded to the edges, for providing what her partner needs. Newsom satiates her partner with sex, but her community judges her for this. The alternative is to not provide for her partner, which would threaten their relationship. The implication of this verse is that Newsom is punished for what her partner requires, while not respected for her own desires – an obviously gendered disconnect.

This judgement infects Newsom’s own inner dialogue (as denoted by the parenthesis in the official lyrics). That verse is a private thought; it’s how Newsom herself interprets their judgement. She thinks of providing for her partner as ‘what it is I do to you,’ as though she is doing something improper, rather than using language like “for you.” This helps us understand that Newsom feels she and her partner aren’t equals in their relationship. She also sees this sort of outside judgement as a hallmark of ‘being a woman.’ Joanna Newsom’s sister Emily comes in to provide her with better guidance on what womanhood truly is: not balking to the pressures of a man, or the patriarchal society that he represents.

We’ve seen now repeatedly how traditional gender roles pervade the world of “Only Skin.” Up to this point, Newsom has portrayed the fear that her womanhood and needs of her partner are at odds with one another. But let’s keep in mind: Newsom is dynamic over the course of this track, and she’ll grow towards the realization that her partner shouldn’t, and can’t, ever be a threat to her femininity.

This condescension brings into question Newsom’s business in verse 20. After all, what errand invites such controversy? I see two possible candidates for what she’s up to: she is either pregnant and seeking an abortion, or she is working to prevent a pregnancy. That she describes herself as being weighed down by something heavy could imply she is weighed down by the fetus growing in her. Defining this weight as ‘candy’ also invokes thoughts of something youthful, like a child. I think this interpretation is logical, considering how often the song returns to motherhood; whether that be in the beginnings of a pregnancy (in the first verse about the stonefruit), Newsom providing for something tenderly (in the case of the story about the bird), or her eventual loss (which is explored in the duet).  

This conflict, of Newsom’s community scorning her for seeking an abortion, portrays a modern dilemma (albeit one that stems from a historic disparity): men are those who hunger for sex the most, yet it is women who are punished for providing that to men.⁴⁰ An alternative conclusion is that Newsom is seeking birth control which would prevent a pregnancy, considering her lack of faith in her partner. This too invites contemporary scorn (from conservative know-nothings), as women will always be scorned for being promiscuous before any “player” man.

Although Ys manifested with ornamental classical instrumentation and the occasional ‘thee’ (Newsom actually sings it once only), we have to keep in mind that Ys decidedly roots itself in the issues of the present. Newsom herself has called out the boundless interpretation of her work as anachronistic, and has doubled down in multiple interviews and talks that her concerns are utterly modern.

Newsom’s similarly resistant to other popular characterization of her material, whether that be her child-ish vocals (defined as such in poor taste), or her pixie sort of personality.⁴¹ She describes any outlandish description of her as a box she’s being shoved into, rather than as a conclusion based on the deliberateness of her work.⁴² “Only Skin” may be a song about birds, hound-dogs, rivers, snails, and whales, but its theming is evidently quite serious and emotionally raw.

Newsom’s own opinion on the matter is that her stylings are, well, totally normal! Newsom attests that the way she expresses her music is as legitimate and pure as any traditionally-rendered indie folk. Newsom openly deplores what she calls ‘period indie music,’ which she described in The Wire as “often really cheap and actually not very intelligent.”⁴³ It should be readily seen that Ys is based, at least in great part, in the modern era. Just note the con-trail that streaks across the album art’s sky.⁴⁴

Our tracks’ issues of gender dynamics and disdain for women’s freedoms are relevant to Newsom’s own life, after all, which is why Ys covers them and why (I think) material about her work should cover the same (rather than stoop to insipid Björk comparisons).

We’ve arrived at Newsom’s moment of greatest pain on “Only Skin”: discovering her partner’s infidelity. Understanding this takes a pulling apart of verse 21. What we understand about Joanna’s partner up to this point is that he’s full of lust. Lines 77-78 explore Joanna’s frustration in greater detail: she sees her partner’s needs as a constant, ravenous hunger.⁴⁵ Her personification of this desire is as though he is Sisyphus, implying that his desire is insatiable.  

What Joanna discovers on his person provides us with the greater significance of this verse; his infidelity is discovered in just three lines: ‘picking through your pocket linings – well, what is this? Scrap of sassafras, eh Sisyphus?’ Her alliteration, combined with what are almost homophones, guides our minds to a word very similar to Sisyphus: syphilis. Say them side by side and you’ll hear their rather unique ‘syph’ consonance, indicating that this implication was intentional. There are other reasons I interpret this verse as pointing our attention towards an STI. For starters, the sassafras that Newsom finds is a traditional treatment for STIs, namely, syphilis.⁴⁶ If we combine these two ideas into one syllogism, the verse means this: her partner has syphilis, and the most logical reason this would dismay Newsom is that her partner got his STI from a woman other than her.

The sickening context to this is that Newsom, at this point in the narrative, is pregnant. So here, she discovers a landslide of information. While pregnant, her partner has been sleeping with other women. He’s lied to her, not just about this, but about the diseases he carries, which he may have passed on to Newsom through their intimacy without her knowledge.

The final indication that Newsom discovers her partner’s infidelity here is how Newsom reacts to this knowledge. She crumbles. For the first time in the narrative, and beyond the many complications of her relationship, she finds herself unable to deal with or process this information. All the while, Joanna finds herself proverbially drowning in this swill of horror (‘though we felt the spray of the waves, we decided to stay, ‘til the tides rose too far,’ lines 90-91). In the face of this snowballing adversity towards Newsom, from within and outside of her relationship, she calls upon the support of her sister Emily.

An important dynamic established on the narrative of Ys’ first track “Emily” is that Emily Newsom comes through to help her big sister through life’s trials. What Emily provides Joanna Newsom with on “Emily” is a support system through Joanna’s difficult pregnancy.⁴⁷ On “Emily,” we learn that Joanna had ‘gone healthy all of the sudden,’ in reference to said pregnancy, indicating it ended quickly.⁴⁸ This, to me, confers an abortion. And just like on “Only Skin,” Newsom faces judgement from her neighbors for ending her pregnancy.⁴⁹ But various scenes across Ys point to the idea that this may have not been entirely within her control, rendering their judgement all the more sinister. “Emily” connotes this pregnancy as being significantly difficult, and “Sawdust & Diamonds” implies that Newsom was very resistant to whatever procedure she went through to end it.⁵⁰

Further indication that Newsom’s loss was of a child before birth is that, in an interview with NY Mag, she talks about Ys being inspired by a death. A single death. But “Cosmia,” the album’s fifth track, is explicitly about the death of a friend. But the emotional significance of this miscarriage to Newsom evidently carries a similar or greater weight as the death of her friend.

Another important dynamic between the sisters on “Emily” is their contrasting perspectives on the world. Emily, driven by the inherent truths of the natural world, provides both wisdom and familiarity to Joanna’s life. While Emily is the explorer, Joanna is most comfortable at home. While Joanna is the boundless creative, Emily binds herself to the definite.

We can see this contrast in the chorus of “Emily”: although Joanna relishes the truths that her sister provides her with, she also misquotes Emily’s lesson.⁵¹ Joanna claims that the meteoroid is a space-rock that’s made it to Earth, but this actually defines a meteorite, and what she calls a meteorite is a meteoroid. Joanna better understands these astronomical phenomena with a simile that these are bounties from somewhere incomprehensible.⁵² Neither are wrong in their interpretation; they simply contrast and complement each other’s perspectives.

So, when Emily comes in on “Only Skin,” she provides a new and important outlook on Joanna’s relationship with her partner. Lines 82-83 show Joanna addressing Emily with her fear that the light is going out of her life, considering that Joanna says ‘little sister.’⁵³ It’s unclear if Joanna states her partner will come back in order to assure herself, or like she’s pointing this out as a threat.

The perspective then seems to switch from Joanna to Emily, considering that lines 84-89 connote the relationship totally differently to what we’ve seen so far. Joanna’s established language about her relationship by the end of “Only Skin” is that of cataclysms: an ocean that threatens to engulf her, or a raging inferno that she fears may set her ablaze. Whoever is speaking here seems to view the relationship as a routine problem (‘nothing but a nuisance’).⁵⁴ Alternatively, the expression ‘little sister’ may not be a literal qualification of age. This may then confer their relationship as being untraditionally dynamic, where either sister leads the other one, as the older/wiser sister traditionally would. From that perspective, Emily may be the perspective for this entire verse, calling as she leads this charge.

Although the listener often finds themselves in new scenes without introduction, we usually get more indication of the song switching its point-of-view than this. The nebulous perspective makes this verse uniquely difficult to parse, however I have gone with the explanation which makes the most sense within the narrative up to this point. This is why I feel semi-comfortable, but not quite confident, that Emily is the perspective for lines 84-89.

So, assuming this perspective comes from Emily, let’s explore her idea of the relationship is. Emily depicts Joanna’s maladies as spiders. These are miniscule irritants, not even sizable enough to be called issues. Emily has dealt with many similarly small problems for her older sister over the course of their lives (‘washed a thousand spiders down the drain’), and sees Joanna’s crumbling relationship like yet another spider. This language re-emphasizes Emily’s maternal position in their relationship. Although they are sororally bound, Emily provides Joanna with more of a mother figure. The small-but-scary problems fall to her, like getting the spiders out of the house.

Emily urges her sister onward, despite how overwhelmed Joanna feels by her current circumstance, between her complicated pregnancy, and her partner’s unfaithfulness. Emily’s underlined point is that this is womanhood. Womanhood is surging forward with strength, knowing that you are greater-than-thou. Womanhood is not the judgement you receive from your peers, or the mistreatment you receive from men. It’s resistance and it’s beauty and it’s devotion to yourself before devotion to others. This is where their perspectives contrast, but as we’ve already learned from “Emily,” neither is incorrect, they’re just different. Rather than seeing both perspectives as alternative truths, we can see both as a single complimentary truth. Maybe womanhood is remaining faithful to others, even when they don’t provide for you, like Joanna says. But it’s also providing for yourself no matter what, like Emily says.

This verse also re-introduces the stone-fruit metaphor, for the first time since verse 13. Then, the stone-fruit was just being cut and opened, but now Joanna mentions a cherry tree in full bloom. Time has evidently progressed, but exactly what this means for her pregnancy is unclear.

For the first time on “Only Skin”, Joanna pits herself directly against her partner. Verse 23 is brimming with ‘we’ statements, meaning Joanna and Emily, a dictation we don’t see otherwise in the narrative.⁵⁵ She sides herself against the ‘you,’ which we know to mean her partner. This indicates that Joanna has internalized Emily’s perspective and has decided against the self-sacrifice we’ve seen in the narrative thus far. Joanna is growing as a person thanks to her sister’s encouragement.  

Regardless of how Newsom confronts this dark spell, she can’t help but be utterly furious about her partner’s disrespect and endangerment of her. The following lines are somewhat abstract, and all get rattled off in quick succession, but a few meanings stand out.⁵⁶ The scene is of an ‘awful atoll,’ which consistent with the many references to water on the song, implies she’s cornered on all sides by her partner’s issues.⁵⁷ Newsom also makes her specific anger known here: her partner’s ‘incalculable indiscreetness,’ i.e., how could he not only dare cheat, but with such irreverence.

Newsom’s cry of ‘sibyl sea-cow’ is nebulous in its direction. But I can explain what the expression means. A sibyl is an ancient prophetess, and a sea-cow is a marine mammal (think like a manatee). The contrast between these things, the divine and the amorphous, seems to portray an individual who can’t conceal their true, inferior self. Considering that they’re ‘all done up in a bow,’ this is like Newsom’s unique spin on putting lipstick on a pig. A sea-cow isn’t visually far from a pig in the first place (even if I personally think they’re adorable).⁵⁸ It’s probably safe to assume Newsom means her partner here, who she’s calling out for advertising himself as something that he never was: a potential partner, friend, and lover.

More evidence for her partner’s infidelity is found in the lines ‘yarrow, heather, and hollyhock – awkwardly moat along the shore.’ The connection between these seemingly unrelated plants is that none grow along the water. This references something ‘awkward’ in the partners’ lives, as in something out of place, which we know to interpret as her partner’s cheating.

If the narrative of “Only Skin” has a definitive turning point, it’s in lines 102-104, where Newsom has lost all faith in her relationship’s foundation.⁵⁹ Every line here is sung plaintively and movingly, so that the depth of these fears sinks into the listener. Newsom’s use of ‘heart’ here is a synecdoche, i.e. a symbol that both represents something and proverbially is that something. I know this is the case because Newsom often uses the word ‘heart’ this way in her music, even on Ys itself: take the exclamation ‘I miss your precious heart’ on “Cosmia” for example.⁶⁰ For her partner to no longer be at the center of her being is, well, a heartbreaking sentiment. But we know Newsom is capable of surging forward. Something valuable can newly become this heart, like her sisterhood, or her motherhood.

In lines 105-114, Newsom’s loss of faith in her partner comes to a head.⁶¹ Sensing her lack of confidence in him and their relationship, Newsom’s partner threatens to shoot himself if she leaves him. This scene portrays Newsom’s partner as a conniving abuser, which the rest of the narrative supports: he cheats on Newsom at will, lies about it, lusts for her, but keeps his STIs a secret. He also constantly fails to support her during dark periods of her life, all while begging for her constant affection and love. Newsom’s partner on “Only Skin” is thus easily interpreted as being physically and emotionally abusive. So, in line with this, he tries to plant a trap, one which’ll keep her stuck beside him. But Newsom has grown by now into a resilient individual, and one who can’t be brought down by the likes of him.

As Newsom talks him down, she implies that she’ll sink the ship to kill the captain.⁶² His threat of self-harm backfires, as while Newsom certainly doesn’t want him to do anything drastic, she also makes it clear that he won’t get what he wants out of this. I take her stance in lines 113-117 to mean: “you’re right: there’s no out for you from our relationship (‘there is nowhere to go’), besides dying (‘save up’) and going to Heaven (‘where the light, undiluted, is weaving’).” Or, in simpler terms, she says: “You’re gonna kill yourself? Bet.” If Newsom’s partner wants to keep her stuck in a miserable relationship which provides her with nothing, she’ll keep him trapped there all the same.

At this point in the narrative (this blowout fight leads into the bird story), Newsom is only capable of daydreaming of an equitable relationship with her partner. After her dream, the pair goes on an apocalyptically isolated drive through the countryside. This is simultaneously a moment of narrative solace and sonic reprieve, considering the arrangements and Newsom’s vocals here are reserved and melancholic.

This moment marks an interesting tone shift after the bird story; we’ve just seen how Newsom’s partner fails to protect her from outsiders. But as they take a drive together, holding each other, Newsom sarcastically quips he’s capable of protecting her.⁶³ The lines to follow are also ostensibly tongue-in-cheek.⁶⁴ This is especially reinforced by Newsom’s performance; her little choke singing the expression ‘we have everything’ helps make her tone clear. This bit of sarcasm is a subtle moment of resistance. The final verse of the song may then be taken in the same way (it’s easy to interpret the word ‘darling’ sarcastically considering the ringer he’s put Newsom through.)⁶⁵

After this verse they seemingly have another blowout fight.⁶⁶ Two things are made known here: they no longer seem to be living together/spending time in the same place (based on the use of ‘you stopped by’), and Newsom is no longer fooled by her partner’s manipulation tactics.⁶⁷ Newsom paints this fight as an elaborate dance. Newsom is filled with vitality and prepped on the defense this time around, once again wresting back dominance from her partner. Her meekness earlier in the narrative seems to have been healthily done away with by now.

Narrative wise, this fight is the last actual event described by the song. The following duet, sung between Newsom and Bill Callahan, is an elaborate recollection of their lives throughout the relationship. They alternate singing lines together and having Newsom sing her lines alone, which portrays the divide in what they give to this relationship. Every line Callahan joins in on is a complaint, or a whine (like the opening line ‘All my bones, they are gone, gone, gone’). Every line Newsom sings alone is about ameliorating him (like the second line, ‘take my bones, I don’t need none’), which reiterates the idea that Newsom does all of the providing in this relationship, even though they both have needs.

Through this duet, we get a little synopsis of their time spent together: Newsom becoming pregnant,⁶⁸ her pregnancy being full of hardships,⁶⁹ and the eventual loss of that child.⁷⁰ Newsom here promises to her partner to make something out of this tragedy, by constructing a ‘little willow cabin’ (line 182). This line references Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, wherein the willow cabin is built to declare total devotion to one’s love. The cabin itself, as an icon, represents selflessness.⁷¹ In the context of “Only Skin,” the willow cabin is referenced, less to show Newsom’s devotion to her partner, and more to show that her partner doesn’t care about this devotion. He questions this gesture as being useless to him, calling it a ‘trinket’ (line 184).

The duet, writ large, is a wonderful and emphatic piece of poetry, backed up by Van Dyke Park’s immaculate string arrangements. These give the climax a sense of towering scale, while never taking the spotlight away from the brilliant vocalists. Every line is effusive, the hardest hitting in my opinion being ‘Come across the desert, with no shoes on! I love you truly, or I love no one.’ While Newsom’s partner’s assignments only grow more impossible, Newsom’s devotion only comes out more. I take this part more as a “what-if,” considering that leading up to the duet, they seem to pretty much deplore one another. It’s up to interpretation how, but he somehow stirs her passion just before the duet, implying he may still have some small hold over Newsom.⁷² I doubt they can ever find holy matrimony, but it goes to show how even the most disastrous relationships can dredge up our most powerful feelings.

“Only Skin” ends, perhaps predictably, in inferno.⁷³ In their last moment together, we see Newsom’s selflessness come out. Whether this is a final gesture of generosity, or a moment of Newsom falling back into her meeker ways, is up to debate.

While Newsom’s use of water and fire throughout “Only Skin” appear to be purposeful antonyms, binarily opposing ideas, Newsom didn’t pair them this way intentionally. Newsom sees both appearing in her world, organically and unrelatedly, and fears both in their ability to engulf her: the rising tide, and the deepening fire.⁷⁴ Both similes in tandem cohere into the image of Newsom’s partner: a threat who grows and threatens more as time passes, and seems within her grasp until, in a blink of an eye, he isn’t. This seems to be a message on the nature of abusive relationships. The longer Newsom stays, the more threatened she feels. And without a move towards strength and the support of loved ones, said relationship could have been her tomb.

Water factors more into Ys than fire does, and is used more dynamically. Newsom describes water as containing multitudes. Water sinks, floods, drowns, and destroys (prominently in the case of “Only Skin”).⁷⁵ But as an environment, it also initiates change, transition, and rebirth (prominently in the case of “Sawdust & Diamonds”, the other track on Ys where water is prominently mentioned).⁷⁶ Although we can see water used in both ways on “Only Skin.” The the flood of her partner’s abuses threatens to drown Newsom, yet simultaneously, the riversides Newsom finds peace around are an environment for introspection, contemplation, and evolution. “Only Skin” is hence not just about drowning under the weight of a harrowing relationship, but coming out on the other side reborn, like a phoenix caught aflame.  

Further Analysis

The titular allegory of “Only Skin,” while seemingly benign in the context of the song (taking up a mere two lines), actually ties together the track’s premise and many of its themes.⁷⁷ The phrase ‘only skin’ refers to an ailment, but specifically a physical one. A physical ailment is construed here as a minor inconvenience, a small hurt, like scraping your knee. But that it ‘makes the sound of violins’ makes these lines a lot more interesting, because what’s absent while Newsom sings these lines? That’s right: the backing orchestra, which has been moving in giant swells up to this point.⁷⁸ It silences for the first time during the prior verse (lines 56-59), where Newsom questions the significance of their relationship.

This implies that whatever physical ailment the phrase ‘only skin’ points to, it’s somehow missing. Missing, and/or silent. Now, “Only Skin” doesn’t really explore or draw our attention to any injuries. Your mind might jump to the bird flying into the window, but consider that it isn’t really injured, because A; it eventually flies away unharmed and B; the bird is imaginary, and hence was never tangibly hurt in the first place. The only other ailment in the song is the end of Newsom’s pregnancy.

Newsom brings up the fostering of this child (via the simile of the stonefruit/cherry stone) throughout the track, and it’s also a major focus of the climactic duet. I think that makes it fair to reason that the sole use of the phrase ‘only skin’ in the narrative somehow references her bereaved child.

Assuming that’s true, it shines new light on what these lines mean. If what Newsom is missing makes a sound like a violin (an evocative, shifting tone), but that sound is absent, it implies Newsom longs for the sound of something she’s lost. It makes a lot of sense to me that this sound is that of a baby. The intimate performance of the verse, with its sparse strums of the harp and whispered singing out Newsom, represents that she’s quieted by this untenable silence in her life.

The sound of violins is even a logical analogy for the sound of a baby; their song is leaping, and rich with possible meaning and mood. A violin can perform nonsense, something atonal and attention grabbing, akin to a cry, or something magical and moving, just like the emotional chatter of children. Just as much as their sobs are upsetting, their laughter can be tear-jerking, and just like a violin, they can jump from one to the next with a single deft movement.

On “Only Skin”, Newsom both longs for and fears the significance of a newborn to their relationship. She simultaneously wants this child, but finds instability in an unfaithful partner/parent who’s unwilling and unable to tend to a newborn. She waits in excitement, in awe, and in terror of the baby’s cry. But when it’s missing, out of her control, she grieves.

But I do want to momentarily discuss a possible invalidity of this supposition. I mean, all the lyrics on Ys were written before accompaniments were drafted. And if “Only Skin” were played solo (i.e., no backing instrumentation or violins), as it often is when Newsom tours alone, the simile suddenly falls apart. There’s no sound absent from verses 15-16 if there’re no violins on the track to begin with.

But let’s consider how Ys was constructed to understand that this was very likely not the case. Newsom knew before arranging Ys that that at least three tracks would definitely be orchestrated (“Emily,” “Monkey & Bear,” and “Only Skin”), and that two might not be (“Sawdust & Diamonds” and “Cosmia”). This comes through in the studio product: four tracks on Ys were orchestrated, while the fifth (“Sawdust & Diamonds”) is performed solo. It’s reasonable to say that, even before writing or composing, Newsom had a schema for the themes of “Only Skin,” and perhaps how she would present them. Via Pitchfork:

“I started by giving him [arranger Van Dykes Park] that manifesto, then a more detailed series of notes as well, going line by line through the songs. ‘When this lyric is being sung, I want this happening musically,’ and then I would describe something, usually pretty abstract and non-technical, sometimes in more concrete musical terms.”⁷⁹

I think it’s fair to imagine the lyrics were written for the intended orchestration, or the orchestration was written with this simile in mind, accomplishing the same thing. And hence, bringing it all back, the significance of the violin is that it’s missing. This supposition also shines a new light on “Sawdust & Diamonds.” Sawdust both is unaccompanied (performed without orchestration), and takes place entirely after Newsom’s pregnancy ends. This reinforces my theory that the violin represents the cry of a baby, if a song entirely about the absence of that baby is also absent of violins.

This raises a new question though: why does Newsom refer to what seems like a significant loss to her in such a minimizing way? As in, why does she describe this loss with a diminutive word, like ‘only,’ and present the loss like the minor inconvenience of scraping one’s knee? If Newsom is as shattered by this event as she puts forth in a song like “Sawdust & Diamonds,” this phrasing seems at odds with her own perspective. But in a way, its place in “Only Skin” suddenly makes more sense. Perhaps this personal loss shouldn’t be understood as a lesser problem than her struggles with her partner, but rather, as a contrasting problem. It seeks to create a parallel.

If we imagine the loss of her child as something physical and tangible (as opposed to mental and internal) and as a sudden and catastrophic tragedy (rather than an ongoing battle), then it clearly parallels the other major subject of “Only Skin”: her relationship. Her relationship with her partner is portrayed as an extensive, dynamic strife. It’s a war, where both sides gain and lose ground (their emotional sanctity and stability). And it’s a war without end, considering the end of the narrative doesn’t totally resolve their conflict. Newsom’s partner still means something to her, so no treaty has proverbially been signed.  

So, unlike the loss of her child, Newsom’s self-image/sanctity/strength are slowly and interminably leached away by this man. It’s not an instant loss, or even a short-term one. “Only Skin” sees Newsom losing, repeatedly, for the first half of the narrative, until she starts standing her ground. This is what gives meaning to the phrase ‘only skin.’ Physical losses, while tragic, are finite. These procedures start and end. Abuse, on the other hand, can always have you losing. There is always more damage to sustain, always new conflicts, and the rock bottom can always sink further until you force yourself to climb out. Even as Newsom grows into a person who fights back against her partner, he lives on in a primordial state, like a cancer in remission.

But an important point of nuance to “Only Skin” is that Newsom provides her partner with a perspective. He’s not a blank canvas of an antagonist, but rather, a person with schemes and outlooks. Verse 21 is a pivotal turning point for the tension of “Only Skin”: as Newsom discovers her partner’s infidelity, their relationship gains steam towards its explosive ending. Newsom personifies her partner here, in his constant and unyielding lust, as Sisyphus. He is always craving more sex, but finds himself sated by no number of women. Although Newsom’s partner may play the antagonist of “Only Skin,” we should remember that Sisyphus isn’t the antagonist of his own mythos. When he is imprisoned by eternal labor which will never yield, we don’t scoff at the incredulity of his wasted time. We sympathize.

Sisyphus’ punishment is a common image of nihilism. He is bound to what we usually construe as torture: fruitless, and hence meaningless, labor. We think he hence has no reason to live, and we find that depressing. But of course, there’s an alternative, Camusian, interpretation of the Sisyphus myth: rather than him being the image of pessimistic nihilism, he’s an absurd hero.

What do I mean by absurd here? In Albert Camus’ essay “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Camus defines absurdity as the logic that leads us to conclude the world is without reason. Camus felt that, in the quest for finding a purpose beyond ourselves, we would be faced with the absurd fact that none exists. And when faced with the absurd, we rationalize the only cure being our own death, or in his example, suicide.   

Or alternatively, once we conclude the absurd lack of truth of life, we can accept that life is pointless and, instead of dying, just be okay with that. We can live, even live happier, without believing there’s a reason for living. We can simply exist, and take pleasure in the things we can see and grasp. While Camus’ basal nihilism is pessimistic, he delves further into the idea that absurdism can be optimistic and self-satisfying. Camus’ underlying point to his essay is this: “one must imagine Sisyphus happy.”⁸⁰

Newsom, too, imagines her partner happy. This optimistic nihilism is the logic which Newsom ascribes to her partner’s actions, and his reason for coming to this perspective is just like the example that Camus explores. In the opening dream of “Only Skin,” Newsom imagines her partner faced with his own death during war. He prays for his life, and although he receives nothing but silence from in return, he lives on. Newsom concludes, then, he took this silence to mean he ought to “run, sing, for alive you [her partner] will evermore be.” Newsom’s partner relishes in this absence of reason, by relishing in the pleasure of hedonism. Camus calls this a sort of “sin without God.”⁸¹

For Newsom’s partner, his life after returning from war is full of sin: he cheats, lies, threatens suicide, exists without hope. But still, this is a purpose. He has a reason for living: to exist unbounded and free, and wring everything he can out of the women life presents him with. Newsom has imagined this reason for him, through her dream. Her partner’s behavior isn’t remotely relatable, nor respectable, but it’s at least justified in his mind. Or at least, according to Newsom it is. This quest for purpose is a prominent theme across Ys, as Newsom states in The Wire:

“But the (…) most significant role that decadence plays, is in the narrative itself, like, decadence figures very prominently. Either the idea of decadence, or I guess a searching or longing or wnodering [sic.] that is rooted in a desire for any self-gratification, selfishness, self-centredness [sic.], which is a sort of decadence I guess.”⁸²

It is important, to me at least, that Newsom both quests to find her own meaning in her narrative, and tries to establish greater meaning to her partner’s actions. The key function this has on “Only Skin” is that it enrichens the world Newsom creates with depth and realism. Although the listener may detest Newsom’s partner, just as Newsom likely does, Newsom still sees him as living within his own schema of life. She doesn’t sympathize with his acts, but she imagines him with a reason for acting the way he does. And she does this in just two brief references: her dream in verses 1-4, and her personification of her partner as Sisyphus in verse 21.  

Even if Newsom’s partner fills an archetype of the optimistic nihilist, it’s unclear if she was directly influenced by Camus’ theories in the writing of “Only Skin.” But Newsom has acknowledged Camus’ theories on the absurd in prior material. On her track “This Side of the Blue,” she summarizes the posit on which Camus rests his theory: the understanding that all we can know is what we can see and touch.⁸³ Newsom also respects a character who understands this, by calling his interpretation of the world well put-together.⁸⁴ The significance of this, for us, is that Newsom has connotated some respect for Camus’ theory of the absurd. Hence, in the case of “Only Skin,” it means that her narrative ascribes a worldview to her partner which she has previously presented as worth consideration.

But maybe, while an absurdist worldview is rational, it’s not exactly desirable. The tone of “This Side of the Blue” is remarkably mellow and lethargic for Newsom’s discography, which helps establish that its tone is perhaps a little dour. And while blue seems to represent an ocean in the track, it’s also the color we associate with sadness and loneliness. We could then reason that, while Camus’ theory helps Gabriel from “This Side of the Blue” navigate the world, it also leaves him no less lonesome than his peers. We could picture the same for Newsom’s partner on “Only Skin.” He may be logical, but he’s also turned himself into a deeply isolated man, by not showing respect for anyone around him.

Moving on; in the synopsis, we discussed how the bird narrative teaches us that Newsom’s relationship lacks teamwork, and that her partner fails to leverage his few skills in order to protect Newsom from a harsh world. The concept for this analogy, of a bird flying into a window, is probably borrowed from the novel (and its nested poem) Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov. This is all but guaranteed, considering Nabokov’s literature significantly influenced Newsom’s lyricism and theming.⁸⁵ The opening lines of the poem “Pale Fire” go like this: “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain; By the false azure of the windowpane; I was the smudge of ashen fluff – and I; lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.”

We can see how Newsom translates this into her own poem: the verse which preludes the bird story refers to ‘estuaries wax-white wend[ing].’⁸⁶ Whereas the image describes brighter horizons in Newsom’s future, the adjective ‘wax-white’ is clearly a pun on Nabokov’s ‘waxwing.’ This is supplemented by Newsom’s alliteration with the verb ‘wend.’ Less importantly, Newsom describes the bird in her narrative as ‘heavy and brown.’ These details are probably window-dressing, but they don’t stray from Nabokov’s writing. A real-life waxwing is multicolored, but it wouldn’t be strictly incorrect to call it brown; a waxwing is also roughly robin-sized, so it wouldn’t be strictly incorrect to call it heavy.

This reference works to bridge Newsom’s tale to Nabokov’s, which perhaps means the themes of the latter influenced the former, forming deeper meaning than that which we explored in the synopsis. So, here’s the significance of the waxwing in Nabokov’s poem: his opening four lines depict a near-death experience, inspired by the life of the poem’s “author” (the fictitious John Shade). Shade understands himself not as the bird – a common symbol of freedom and an ephemeral life – but rather as its shadow: whether that be its echo, or its afterlife. Shade, after surviving past his death-bed as a child, mulls over the lofty idea that he’s in some sort of “after.” This may simply mean an important new phase of his physical existence, or an afterlife, depending on what conclusions he came to via his poem.

Shade and Newsom both struggle to answer the same questions about the after: does God not exist? Or does God exist, and I’m not worthy of Him listening?⁸⁷ And further: is death just tragic randomness, or does it have significance beyond itself? In Newsom’s case, the primary impetus of these questions is the end of her pregnancy. On “Only Skin,” and especially in “Sawdust & Diamonds,” she longs to find meaning beyond this being simply a tragedy. Newsom begs to know on “Sawdust & Diamonds” if Heaven would give her the chance to ever see her child again.⁸⁸ She longs to be with her kin again, to be a mother again, or at the minimum, for this tragedy to mean something. Shade doesn’t initially trust that his loss has significance. Newsom feels the same.

Newsom’s partner is the symbolic representation of deciding death is without significance. He similarly once asked himself if God existed to him, if God could protect him while a hair away from his grave. He decided the answer to be a resounding “no,” but he’s okay with that. “Only Skin” may explore why this conclusion is the wrong one. Because past this decision, Newsom’s partner lives on to be an awful person and an abusive partner, a symbolic wrong path to this existential question.

If that’s the wrong conclusion, then Newsom’s must be different. Newsom seems to decide whatever Shade decides, when we consider the thematic influence Nabokov had on her work. Notwithstanding, Newsom’s life and Shade’s experience have some key similarities. Shade, like Newsom, loses his child. In his case, his 20-year-old daughter commits suicide. Both were already questioning if God existed and if life had significance, and then the deaths of their respective children plunged them deeper into existential chaos. There’s suddenly a very important reason to decide on God’s existence/non-existence.  

During the fourth and final canto of Shade’s poem, he concludes that life is patterned, and hence has graspable significance. For example, just as he’s fairly sure he’ll wake up to see the next day, he’s similarly certain that the daughter he’s bereft of exists somewhere.⁸⁹ The complicating flaw of Shade’s conclusion is that he’s immediately proven wrong. Or at least, kind of wrong. “Pale Fire” is a poem split into four cantos, roughly 250 words each, totaling a poem with a thousand lines. But “Pale Fire” is missing its final line, because in universe, Shade dies the night before he completes his poem. He was wrong that he’d wake up to see the next day.

The last line of “Pale Fire” presumably would have been the same as the first, considering line 999 ends with “lane,” which would rhyme to his first line “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain.”⁹⁰ By tying together the beginning and the end of his poem, Shade would have symbolically established to the reader that life is patterned, or at least his art is patterned, and hence his daughter’s death followed a pattern of fate. Shade’s death, by a stroke of fatally poor luck, confuses the supposition that life has patterns. While not entirely disproving Shade’s theory that life is patterned, this complicates it. The answer to his question “is life patterned” is thus paradoxically yes, and no. Death is random, and is hence lacking in significance, but it also can be understood through contemplation and art, which gives it significance.

There are so many parallels between Shade and Newsom’s life-story/theming/imagery that there’s an implication that either individual reached similar conclusions. Neither Shade nor Newsom ever come to answer their questions in complete confidence. But both find comfort in exploring them. In Shade’s fourth canto, he realizes that although he may have a grasp on very little of the universe’s great truths, like the existence/non-existence of God, that he still finds a little comfort through his writing. Newsom does the same.

By the end of “Sawdust & Diamonds,” Newsom firmly fails to drown out her memory of her grief, symbolized by the bell which still rings even after she drops it into the ocean. And through this, she seems to find some solace, that this painful memory is supposed to live on with her. She’s not totally assured she’ll find her daughter someday (symbolized by her opening and closing the track by asking the same question: ‘for the rest of my life, do you wait for me there?’); but Newsom finds the assurance that in some way, her daughter lives on with her. It may not be in the form of a soul, embodied in Heaven, who she could one day treat as her daughter after her own passing. The sound of this bell represents the love that she’ll always have for her daughter, which in its own way, gives her daughter eternal life.  

Shade decided upon hope. He decides that, even if life’s significance and God’s existence may not be privy to him, those answers exist somewhere. He additionally epiphanies that he can explore those answers by exploring himself through his writing – which is what Newsom’s done through Ys! Newsom similarly hopes that her daughter will wait for her in Heaven, and every track on the album is an act of finding that hope. 

Newsom, in a similar way, finds meaning to her life beyond the tragedy of her relationship. After the many spars between her and her partner, she sings this: ‘I can’t with certainty say we survived’ (line 156). After Shade’s own tumults, he states this: “I’m reasonably certain that we [Shade and his daughter] survive” (line 978, Pale Fire). I think this means that, through the catastrophe of their relationship, although Newsom no longer can love her partner as a monogamous lover, this lyrical parallel indicates she’s found meaning to her life other than him. ‘Survived’ isn’t meant literally, rather, it just means they moved on from their catastrophe intact. Newsom is a changed woman after her relationship, a mightier woman. So, she didn’t merely survive; instead, she was reborn.

Recall that the question Newsom asks on “Sawdust & Diamonds” broaches two existentialities. Not only does Newsom question if Heaven exists for her child, but in her survivor’s guilt, she simultaneously doubts that her daughter would want to see her there anyway. Yet by praying on “Only Skin,” Newsom seems to acknowledge that God may exist, even if she sees no proof of Him, and she’s unsure she’s worthy of Him listening. This prayer indicates she found hope.

This reinforces my claim that Newsom and Shade concluded the same answer to their existential doubts. Maybe Heaven will always be unknowable to them, and maybe death doesn’t have clear significance beyond itself. But Newsom, like Shade, understands that Heaven may exist and that she can confront the meaning behind death through her lyricism. Or, maybe Heaven doesn’t exist, but Newsom’s child still exists in some capacity to her. The implication in Shade’s poem is nebulous; perhaps his daughter lives on in his memory, or through the art he made that was inspired by her. It’s safe to assume Newsom sees her daughter living on in the same way.

Both Newsom’s relationship and the death of her child are the impetus for questioning whether tragedy has significance. Although superficially the spotlight of “Only Skin” is on its grandiose falling-out, upon pulling it apart, we see how Newsom uses this relationship as a vehicle to explore her life’s questions in greater detail. We see how the track’s title symbolizes this: the event of her child’s death, or the story of her and her partner’s falling out, are the more readily interpretable conflicts of the track. They are ‘only skin,’ paling in comparison to the less tangible complications that are born out of them. How Newsom opines on the significance of death, how she questions the existence of God, and meaning of motherhood and womanhood, these themes are what Newsom’s getting at with the narrative of “Only Skin.”

We’ve already discussed at length how “Only Skin” connects to two other tracks on Ys, being “Emily” and “Sawdust & Diamonds,” while until now neglecting Ys’ second and fifth tracks. Let’s briefly explore “Cosmia” before connecting it back to the narrative on “Only Skin,” specifically to Newsom’s waning faith in her relationship. The narrative on “Cosmia” revolves around Newsom grief over the death of her friend.⁹¹ The Cosmia moths throughout the track represent not only Newsom’s overwhelming grief,⁹² but her hopes of overcoming it.⁹³ Just as moths seek out the moon, the Cosmia represents finding the light in a period of darkness.

“for dear cassie, in june. love, j,” as seen in the inner sleeve of Ys

In a narrative beat which represents Newsom’s pull towards overcoming her grief, she watches and is entranced by the moths on her porch. They are described here in legendary detail, with ‘limbs of water’ and ‘hair of fire.’ Seeing this brings her to an epiphany. She understands that the moth may be privy to truths she doesn’t understand (‘well, if you’ve seen true light.’) Inspired by the moth, even if Newsom can’t imagine how things will get better, she can hold the hope they will.

The moth may specifically know of what comes after death, based on Newsom’s use of the expression ‘true light.’ Like on “Sawdust & Diamonds” and “Only Skin,” she asks for a sign that Heaven exists so that she may find some closure (‘then this is my prayer: will you call me, when you get there?’) after this passing. This is a double entendre; Newsom asks for a sign if the moth has seen Heaven, and asks for a call that her friend has made it safely to her destination. 

Newsom decides on “Sawdust & Diamonds” that, despite the weight of the world, she deserves to allow herself hope.⁹⁴ She describes herself in her verses as born sturdy and capable of bearing the brunt of her anguish, regardless of if she must lean on a loved one in her darkest moments (in the case of “Emily” and “Only Skin”).⁹⁵ These three tracks teach us that we can picture ourselves soaring high, even as we are looking skyward from our darkest places.

How does Newsom connect this scene of the moths to “Only Skin”? After Newsom talks her partner down from shooting himself, we find her in a moment of contemplation, standing out on her patio.⁹⁶ As a location, this may be the same as the one in “Cosmia,” where Newsom is enraptured by the moths circling the ‘porch-light.’ There’s also a parallel in Newsom’s behavior, as in “Cosmia,” her attention is drawn by a swarm of moths, whereas on “Only Skin,” she’s watching a cloud of bats proverbially draw in the night. Finally, there’s a parallel in situation. In both scenes, Newsom is doing the same thing: yearning for her sorrow to ease (on “Only Skin” this is because her relationship is spiraling out of control). Hence, the ‘where,’ the ‘what,’ and the ‘why’ of these scenes are essentially the same.

So really, the only key difference between these scenes is the animal in question, bats on “Only Skin” versus moths on “Cosmia.” Bats have previously represented transitioning out of something, in Newsom’s vocabulary of animals, just as bats appear during the changing of the day to night. In the case of her song “Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie,” this transition was out of a fading relationship.⁹⁷ The bats on “Only Skin” could very easily represent the same, that this relationship is also nearing its end, considering where they show up in the narrative. In both cases, Newsom is resistant to this change, even if she seems to understand deep down that it’s necessary to her wellbeing.  

In the greater story of Ys, all of this functions to tell us where Newsom places her hope in her life. On “Cosmia,” she concludes with the hope that she can make it through her period of depression and find solace after this tragedy. On “Emily,” she hopes for the same, in the wake of terminating her pregnancy. By the end of “Sawdust & Diamonds,” Newsom appreciates that Heaven may remain unknowable to her, but still hopes her child lives on for her somewhere, in some capacity. On “Only Skin,” Newsom alludes to her hope for all of these things through her delicately crafted parallels in imagery, but yet, she doesn’t hope for her partner to start loving her back. While an optimist in her worst moments, she remains a realist. Newsom holds optimism for her life, optimism to reign in her existential doubts, but her optimism isn’t based in logicless reality.

Ys is oftentimes a tragic album. But these tragedies, like the relationship of “Only Skin,” allow Newsom to explore bigger things: yearning, self-preservation, passion, and hope. Whereas these stories are as old as time, may they be the depression of losing a child, or the travesty of a dangerous relationship, what we’ve hopefully seen is that Newsom’s elaborations on these events are singular, personal, and inimitable. Yet simultaneously, they are great lessons for all of us, getting at universal truths and hopes in our lives.

Additional Discussion

The breakup song and the breakup album always, perhaps unfortunately, invite speculation. For us fans of singer/songwriters, who love being let into our revered author’s worlds, it’s hard not to want more. It’s ultimately up to the artist, always, how much they want to make explicit in the public lens, may it be the sincere openness of Bjork’s Vulnicura versus the deny-til-death of Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks.  

Newsom falls somewhere in the middle when it comes to what she’ll say about Ys’ writing. While honest about the places that inspired these songs, she eschews confirming any fan theories or deliberating on most of the details. From the interviews I’ve combed through, here’s specifically what I know about Ys’ background: Newsom was publicly in two relationships prior to her marriage to Andy Samberg (2013-present): producer/sound engineer Noah Georgeson, and then, labelmate/fellow folkie Bill Callahan.⁹⁸ We can hear Georgeson’s production and mixing on Newsom’s three albums other than Ys. Newsom seemingly is deeply involved in the mixing and mastering of all her projects however, and despite their breakup, seems to maintain a professional relationship with Georgeson through the present day.

Callahan’s collaborations with Newsom are more readily heard, however. He provides the voice for the duet on “Only Skin,” just as she supplements his track “Rock Bottom Riser” with a beautiful piano performance.⁹⁹ Both tracks were released around the same time. They’ve also played together live on multiple occasions, based on some posters I can find online. Newsom’s relationship with Callahan in particular has spawned devil-may-care fan theory, perhaps because he’s a more publicly known artist, or perhaps because their songs often reference one another’s.¹⁰⁰

Newsom’s track “Baby Birch,” like “Sawdust & Diamonds,” elaborates on all she’s lost in the wake of ending her pregnancy.¹⁰¹ She grieves over what experiences she’ll never have, the face she’ll never know, and finds herself swarmed by the faces of those who failed to help her in this nine-minute dirge. Callahan, a year later, released the song “Baby’s Breath,” a cryptic recount of a couple losing a child. The title seems to reference an herb which induces an abortion. Callahan is grimly reminded throughout the track of the child he’s missing, through his wife’s suffering which he cannot amend. In Newsom’s track, we witness a woman reeling from the significance of her loss; in Callahan’s, we see a man at a loss in the face of his partner’s pain. “Baby’s Breath” and “Baby Birch,” in their titles and narratives, seem to play off one another, like alternate perspectives on the same event.

Callahan and Newsom’s lyrics have pointed to one another multiple times, in cases as small as borrowed metaphors or as large as premises for songs.¹⁰² But really, this is as far as their connections go. These tracks seem explicitly connected, but other tracks of theirs bear no clear connection. While some fans claim Newsom’s tracks like “Only Skin,” “Good Intentions Paving Company,” or “Does Not Suffice” were definitely about her relationship with Callahan, this is entirely unconfirmable. Newsom has never stated in interview any names, or ever remarked whatsoever about who these tracks were inspired by. Even the popular fan understanding that Newsom had a pregnancy which ended early, which would have premised songs like “Emily,” “Sawdust & Diamonds,” “Baby Birch,” etc. hasn’t been explicitly confirmed by Newsom.¹⁰³

But unlike fan espousal that Callahan (or Georgeson) are the subject for her breakup songs, the theory that Newsom concerns herself with an infant loss is directly evidenced through her lyricism. Speculating Callahan to be the subject of “Only Skin,” on the other hand, is borderline inappropriate. It’s not like Newsom describes her partner on “Only Skin” as a wiry man who makes lo-fi tapes. Newsom actually doesn’t detail much about her partner on “Only Skin,” as the entire song is addressed directly to him.

Sure, Callahan provided the duet on “Only Skin,” and his lines directly place him in the boots of Newsom’s abusive partner. However, they are label-mates, rendering such collaboration easily explainable. And yes, the two were dating at the time, but it’s difficult to picture Callahan voluntarily singing about his own abusive behavior for Newsom’s record.

I say all of this because I have a personal respect for the artistry of Newsom & Callahan (and Georgeson too I suppose), and have a strong personal distaste for speculation about the lives of real people which goes unfounded in their own accounts. While this essay is often quite speculative on what Newsom songs mean, I tried very hard to make sure all of my claims were clearly evidenced by the songs themselves.

Although I do believe that “Only Skin” was based on/influenced by a real-life relationship, it’s also possible it’s just a broad-spectrum metaphor. Although I, like many fans, would be interested in knowing what events inspired these songs, we may forever be in the dark. These tracks could just as likely be about Georgeson, Callahan, an individual Newsom never publicly dated, or a patchwork of people from throughout Newsom’s life.

While we’re on the topic, let’s briefly discuss a theory that would imply the relationship is in of itself a metaphor. We haven’t discussed Ys’ second track “Monkey & Bear,” although its narrative actually concerns itself with an abusive relationship, just like “Only Skin.” While the Bear character longs for freedom from her captivity as a dancer, Monkey seeks to possess and profit off her by stringing her along through lies and deceit. Bear eventually escapes from her entrapment, by ascending through the night sky and becoming the constellation Ursa Major.

Two apparent differences from “Only Skin” immediately appear. For one, the narrative is far more fantastical in nature, concerning itself with two talking animals who roam the countryside. This lends to the idea that Monkey & Bear is a story of greater thematic meaning than literal meaning. And unlike “Only Skin”, which is delivered in ‘I’ and ‘you’ statements, “Monkey & Bear” is discussed as two characters (‘they’), neither of which clearly represents Newsom. The pair could thus be a metaphor for something as simple as a romantic relationship, or the obligations of artists, or a more complex dynamic like the exploitation of the proletariat by the bourgeoise.¹⁰⁴

If “Only Skin” seeks to connect four life events, and the narrative on “Monkey & Bear” is rarely bound to the constraints of reality, this could imply the relationship of “Only Skin” may too have more elaborate, thematic significance, than portraying a beat-for-beat realistic story. While I do personally believe “Only Skin” was about a real relationship, I’ve still leaned heavily in this essay on its metaphorical meaning, rather than its meaning taken straight.

Conclusion

To wrap it all up, what is “Only Skin” about? Like any great Charlie Kaufman movie which I barely understood, it’s about life. And death. Although I’m being duplicitous, it is legitimately pretty hard to summarize “Only Skin” in any brief way, considering it touches on just so much. The length of my essays always borders on parody, but there just was this much to say about “Only Skin” (frankly, I still want to say more). While its themes are evidently about hope and self-preservation, we’ve perhaps seen even more just how sprawling its narrative is, how worldly its scenes are, and how intangibly it leaps, lows, and shifts from line-to-line.

As much as I love “Only Skin” for its complexity and existentiality, I also listen to it so much for a reason much more immediate: it’s a beautiful song. It’s utterly gorgeous in grand strokes like its heavy orchestration, or in the minutiae of the timber of Newsom’s harp. Her story is grand but her squeaks are tiny, yet both are equally awe-inspiring. My conclusion from “Only Skin” is that life moves on. That Newsom overcame these great hurts gives me hope, but that they bore such preposterous art is just as wowing. Ys would be my desert island disc, unless I needed to save space in my luggage, considering I’ve basically memorized every verse, vocal quirk, chord change, and tempo shift through working on this project.

My best friend keeps joking as I endlessly edit this essay that I’m one of the world’s foremost Joanna Newsom scholars. I get where she’s coming from, but I have to disagree. After all, “Only Skin” isn’t an essay about Newsom’s discography, it’s about just one song! She only has like, 40 more. In March this year (2023) she unveiled five new songs live, which would probably give me enough material to write a book about.¹⁰⁵ While the scope of some of Newsom’s material is as narrow as an insomnia-ridden night, or a man riding a horse, they still have so much metaphor to feast upon that I pale in the face of them. She’s undeniably a modern great, and just because what she makes and what she writes isn’t the first time we’ve been graced with such themes, doesn’t change the fact. After all, isn’t music about innovation, just as much as invention? Do we ask that each sunrise beats the last, or do we live to see as many as we can?

1. [“The Book of Right-On”: verse 4]
And the signifieds butt heads,
with the signifiers.
And we all fall down slack-jawed
to marvel at words!

2. youtube.com/watch?v=Q2Uih2YoEqE

3. https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/interviews/joanna-newsom.1

4. [lines 1-2]
And there was a booming above you,
that night black airplanes flew over the sea.
[all lyrics quoted in this essay are taken from the official lyric-book]

5. [lines 3-10]
And they were lowing and shifting like
beached whales,
shelled snails,
as you strained and you squinted to see
the retreat of their hairless and blind cavalry.

You froze in your sand shoal,
prayed for your poor soul;
sky was a bread roll, soaking in a milk-bowl.

6. [lines 19-21]
while you’re left to explain them to me –
released
from their hairless and blind cavalry.

7. [lines 14-21]
[And] then there was a silence you took to mean something:
mean, [sic.] Run, sing,
for alive you will evermore be.
And the plague of the greasy black engines a-skulking
has gone east,
while you’re left to explain them to me –
released
from their hairless and blind cavalry.

8. [lines 130-131]
I said a sort of prayer for some rare grace,
then thought I ought to take her to a higher place.

9. https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/6488-joanna-newsom/

10. [“Sawdust & Diamonds”: lines 1-4]
From the top of the flight,
of the wide, white stairs;
for the rest of my life,
do you wait for me there?

11. [line 29]
when you were sleepwalking.

12. [lines 22-27]
With your hands in your pockets,
stubbly running,
to where I’m unfresh,
undressed and yawning –

Well, what is this craziness?
This crazy talking?

13. [lines 30-33]
It was a dark dream, darlin;
it’s over.
The fire breather is beneath the clover.
Beneath his breathing there is cold clay, forever;

14. [line 34]
a toothless hound-dog choking on a feather.

15. [lines 134-135]
Then in my hot hand, she slumped her sick weight.
We tramped through the poison oak, heartbroken and inchoate.

16. [lines 136-137]
The dogs were snapping, so you cuffed their collars,
while I climbed the tree-house…

17. [lines 138-139]
Cause she’d lain, as still as a stone, in my palm, for a lifetime or two;
then saw the treetops, cocked her head, and up and flew.

18. [lines 142-143]
dogs still run roughly around
little tufts of finch down).

19. [lines 35-40]
But I took my fishing pole (fearing your fever),
down to the swimming hole, where there grows a bitter herb,
that blooms but one day a year, by the riverside –
I’d bring it here:

Apply it gently
to the love you’ve lent me.

20. [“Emily”: line 66]
Come on home. The poppies are all grown knee-deep by now.
[“Cosmia”: line 6]
In the cornfield,
when she called me

21. https://earthlingering.wordpress.com/2020/03/28/the-mysteries-behind-the-cover-art-and-title-of-Ys-2006/

22. Although referred to in popular discussion as a “crow”, a “raven”, or a “blackbird”, no species of bird exists with a slender black body and a large, curved, yellow beak. This bird is definitively and intentionally non-realistic, if you couldn’t tell that by its name (the ‘chim-choo-ree’).

23. [lines 41-42]
While the river was twisting and braiding, the bait bobbed,
and the string sobbed, as it cut through the hustling breeze.

24. [lines 43-45]
And I watched how the water was kneading so neatly,
gone treacly, nearly slowed to a stop in this heat –
frenzy coiling flush along the muscles beneath.

25. [lines 46-51]
Press on me:
we are restless things.
Webs of seaweed are swaddling.
You call upon the dusk
of the musk of a squid –
shot full of ink, until you sink into your crib.

26. [lines 52-53]
Rowing along, among the reeds, among the rushes,
I heard your song, before my heart had time to hush it!

27. https://allthebirds.tumblr.com/post/4925906649/i-dont-know-any-goddamned-colleen-naming-and

28. [lines 54-55]
Smell of a stonefruit being cut and being opened.
Smell of a low and of a lazy cinder smoking.

29. [lines 56-59]
And when the fire moves away,
fire moves away, son.
Why would you say
I was the last one?

30. [lines 164-168]
Through fire below,
and fire above,
and fire within,
sleep through the things that couldn’t have been,
if you hadn’t have been.

31.  Newsom, in an interview in The Wire, around the release of Ys: “I think I'm content in every other regard. I'm a lazy pig most of the time, and unambitious, and not a big traveller [sic.] - if I wasn't a big traveller [sic.], I'd probably never leave my town. There's so little that I want to do in this life - I want a little family, I'm really domestic.” Joanna Newsom - The Wire

32. https://www.distractify.com/p/andy-samberg-daughter#:~:text=Andy%20Samberg%20Has%20One%20Daughter,four%20years%20into%20their%20marriage.

33. [line 179-180]
Weep upon the spot for the starving of me!
Till up grows a fine young cherry tree.

34. The original rhyme goes like this:
“rock a bye, baby, on the tree-top,
When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,
When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall,
And down will come baby, cradle and all.”
https://historydaily.org/rock-a-bye-baby-the-origin-stories

35. [lines 62-63]
[And] when I cut your hair, and leave the birds all the trimmings,
I am the happiest woman among all women.

36. Bible, New Living Translation

37. [line 64]
And the shallow water stretches as far as I can see.

38. [lines 65-67]
Knee deep, trudging along –
the seagull weeps ‘so long’ –
I’m humming a threshing song –

39. [lines 71-76]
I have got some business out at the edge of town,
candy weighing both of my pockets down
till I can hardly stay afloat, from the weight of them
(and knowing how the commonfolk condemn
what it is I do, to you, to keep you warm:
Being a woman. Being a woman).

40. Culture in the United States didn’t used to be this way. Abortions used to be commonplace and socially normalized before the 1800s, when male lawmakers worked to outlaw and demonize their practice. https://www.plannedparenthoodaction.org/issues/abortion/abortion-central-history-reproductive-health-care-america

41. https://nymag.com/arts/popmusic/features/24069/, final par.

42. https://nymag.com/arts/popmusic/features/24069/, para. 12

43. https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/interviews/joanna-newsom.1

44. In the aforementioned interview, Newsom states outright “there are little nods to the fact that it's [Ys] not supposed to have existed any time but now”

45. [lines 77-78]
But always up the mountainside you’re clambering,
groping blindly, hungry for anything;

46. https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/sassafras-uses-herbal-medicine-zmaz83jazshe/

47. [“Emily”: verse 10, partial]
You came and lay a cold compress upon the mess I’m in;

48. “Emily”: line 49

49. [“Emily”: lines 42-43]
And the mail is late, and the great estates are not lit from within.
The talk in town’s becoming downright sickening.

50. [“Sawdust & Diamonds: lines 31-36]
Push me back into a tree.
Bind my buttons with salt.
Fill my long ears with bees
praying please please please love
you ought not
No you ought not

51. [“Emily”: chorus, partial]
That the meteorite is the source of the light,
And the meteor’s just what we see;
And the meteoroid is a stone that’s devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee.
And the meteorite’s just what causes the light,
And the meteor’s how its perceived;

52. [“Emily”: remaining chorus]
And the meteoroid’s a bone thrown from the void, that lies quiet in offering to thee.

53. [lines 82-83]
I see the blossoms broke and wet after the rain.
Little sister, he will be back again.
Source on Emily being her little sister: NYMag, par. 8

54. [lines 84-89]
I have washed a thousand spiders down the drain:
spiders’ ghosts hanging soaked and
dangling silently from all the blooming cherry trees,
in tiny nooses, safe from everyone –
nothing but a nuisance; gone now, dead and done –
Be a woman. Be a woman.

55. [lines 90-93]
Though we felt the spray of the waves,
we decided to stay, ‘till the tide rose too far.
We weren’t afraid, cause we know what you are,
and you know that we know what you are.

56. [lines 94-101]
Awful atoll,
O, incalculable indiscreetness and sorrow!
Bawl, bellow:
Sibyl sea-cow, all done up in a bow.
Toddle and roll;
teeth an impalpable bit of leather,
while yarrow, heather, and hollyhock
awkwardly molt along the shore.

57. An atoll is very small island, surrounded by open ocean.

58

59. [lines 102-104]
Are you mine?
My heart?
Mine anymore?

60. “Cosmia”: line 64

61. [lines 105-112]
Stay with me for a while.
That’s an awfully real gun.
I know life will lay you down,
as the lightning has lately done.

Failing this, failing this,
follow me, my sweetest friend,
to see what you anointed,
in pointing your gun there.

62. [lines 113-117]
Lay it down! Nice and slow!
There is nowhere to go,
save up;
up where the light, undiluted, is
weaving, in a drunk dream,

63. [lines 144-145]
The cities we passed were a flicking wasteland,
but his hand in my hand made them hale and harmless.

64. [lines 146-147]
While down in the lowlands, the crops are all coming;
we have everything.

65. [lines 195-198]
And if the love of a woman or two, dear
could move you to such heights,
then all I can do
is do, my darling, right by you.

66. [lines 151-153]
You stopped by;
I was all alive;
In my doorway, we shucked and we jived.

67. [lines 154-155]
And when you wept, I was gone;
see, I got gone when I got wise,

68. [lines 176-178]
[alone] Suck all day on a cherry stone.
[together] Dig a little hole not three inches round –
[alone] Spit your pit in a hole in the ground.

69. [lines 179-180]
[together] Weep upon the spot for the starving of me!
[alone] Till up grows a fine young cherry tree.

70. [line 181]
[together] When the bough breaks, what’ll you make for me?

71. https://theshakespearecode.blog/2011/08/06/violas-willow-cabin-speech-de-coded/

72. [lines 158-162]
Then down and down
and down and down
and down and deeper,
stoke, without sound,
the blameless flames,

73. [lines 192-194]
Clear the room! There’s a fire, a fire, a fire.
Get going,
and I’m going to be right behind you.

74. https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/6488-joanna-newsom/, para. 39

75. Ys takes its name from the story of the mythical city of Ys, which sunk into the ocean under the weight of its princess’ debauchery. Some versions of the story extend its ending; the princess transforms into a mermaid, whos song can be heard during low tide.

76.  https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/interviews/joanna-newsom.1, para. 13

77. [lines 60-61]
Scrape your knee: it is only skin.
Makes the sound of violins.

78. This trick may have been influenced by an album of great influence to Ys: Stormcock by Roy Harper. Its final track “Me and My Woman” has a moment where its orchestra climbs and climbs, until Harper sings ‘can I break through the silence’. At this point, his voice is the only thing heard on the track. This is just my conjecture though. https://bombmagazine.org/articles/joanna-newsom/

79. https://pitchfork.com/features/interview/6488-joanna-newsom/

80. “The Myth of Sisyphus”, p. 24 para. 4

81. “The Myth of SYsyphus”, p.14 para. 1

82. https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/interviews/joanna-newsom.1

83. [“This Side of the Blue”: lines 7-10]
and I find myself knowing
the things that I knew
which is all that you can know
on this side of the blue.

84. [“This Side of the Blue”: lines 26-30]
And Gabriel stands before forest and moon.
See them rattle & boo,
see them shake, see them loom.
See him fashion a cap from a page of Camus;
see him navigate deftly this side of the blue.

85. https://www.npr.org/2015/10/24/448996970/joanna-newsom-on-nabokov-songwriting-and-music-journalism

86. “Only Skin”: lines 122-123

87. [Pale Fire: lines 99-102]
My God died young. Theolatry I found;
Degrading, and its premises, unsound;
No free man needs a God, but was I free?;
How fully I felt nature glued to me

[“Sawdust & Diamonds”: lines 85-87]
So: enough of this terror.
We deserve to know light,
and grow evermore lighter and lighter.

88. [“Sawdust & Diamonds”: lines 1-4]
From the top of the flight
of the wide, white stairs,
through the rest of my life,
do you wait for me there?

89. [lines 971-978, Pale Fire]
I feel I understand
Existence, or at least a minute part
Of my existence, only through my art,
In terms of combinational delight;
And if my private universe scans right,
So does the verse of galaxies divine
Which I suspect is an iambic line.
I’m reasonably sure that we survive
And that my darling somewhere is alive,

90. [line 999, Pale Fire]
Trundling an empty barrow up the lane.

91. In the documentary “Family Jams,” Newsom notes that she missed part of her 2006 tour to attend the funeral of a friend who passed away in a car accident. Vinyl editions of Ys are dedicated to her “dear Cassie.”

92. [“Cosmia”: lines 5-8]
In the cornfield,
when she called me*.
Moths surround me.
Thought they’d drown me.
*this phone call represents Newsom learning of her friend’s death in the vocabulary of the song

93. [“Cosmia”: lines 35-38]
Can you hear me? Will you listen?
Don’t come near me. Don’t go missing.
In the lissome light of evening:
Help me, Cosmia. I’m grieving.

94. [“Sawdust & Diamonds”: lines 85-87]
So: enough of this terror.
We deserve to know light,
and grow evermore lighter than lighter.

95. [“Sawdust & Diamonds”: lines 83-84]
I wasn’t born of a whistle, or milked from a thistle at twilight.
No; I was all horns and thorns, sprung out fully-formed, knock-kneed and upright.

96. [lines 119-120]
back on the patio,
watching the bats bring night in.

97. [“Clam, Cockle, Crab, Cowrie”: lines 8-10]
There are bats all dissolving in a row;
into the wishy-washy dark that cannot let go.
And I cannot let go,

98. https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/andy-samberg-engaged-to-joanna-newsom-2013252/

99. On the 2005 album A River Ain’t Too Much to Love, released under the name Smog

100. https://www.popmatters.com/72925-bill-callahan-sometimes-i-wish-we-were-an-eagle-2496026849.html, https://www.propellermag.com/Feb2017/StahlmanNewsomFeb17.html (not to insult either of these articles which I consider reasonably expressed)

101.  Off of the 2010 album Have One on Me

102. Callahan seems to use the same premise as Newsom’s bird story on “Only Skin” for his song “The Wind and the Dove”: ‘And when the wind just dies; and when the wind just dies; and the dove won’t rise; from your window-sill’.

103. Another example is “Make Hay” (‘where wind made us, and sin made the snake; And Mama made us, but what did I make?’)

104. Here’s another great essay which details this interpretation: https://hpmains.medium.com/theres-a-place-for-us-a-marxist-analysis-of-joanna-newsom-s-monkey-bear-e92b5b4d7aa5

105. https://www.nylon.com/entertainment/joanna-newsom-new-songs-fleet-foxes-concert#:~:text=The%20new%20songs%20are%20reportedly,of%20her%20whimsical%2C%20storybook%20sound.