20 years after Elliott Smith

a (belated) tribute to the man and also the myth and the legend

Elliott Smith left this planet on October 21, 2003, aka 20 years ago last weekend. So I wanted to write something here in his honour to (belatedly) mark that anniversary, even though I was barely a month old when it happened. I’ll probably look back on this essay in a few years and mumble something about how immature I was and how pretentious this reads, but whatever. Y’all signed up for this.

I thought I was someone who could talk about Elliott’s music all day, but I’ve spent half a week on this essay and can barely string 1,000 inadequate words together. That’s why you’re getting this in your inbox today instead of this past Saturday like I initially hoped.

I just feel this pressure to do him and his legacy justice — this sort of desire to write something he’d appreciate reading, even though I know he never will. And I don’t think I’m a good enough writer or critic to succeed in that regard.

Then there’s also the fact that I wasn’t around to see him live while he was alive, so I can’t cheat and give you a schmaltzy preamble about how cool the 90s were.

But what I can tell you is when I first stepped into Elliott’s world and heard “Between the Bars” for the first time five years ago, it made me want to believe in magic.

That song had 30 or 40 million Spotify steams back then, a mere fraction of what it’s got now. I’m not trying to spin this into a “I knew him before he was cool” thing, but just saying. I actually don’t know too many people who listen to Elliott. He’s always felt like my little musical secret to me.

The general perception is that all his music is depressing, but I don’t think that goes deep enough. It’s also clouded by grief and anger and resistance and understanding and vulnerability and nonconformity and reflection. Sometimes even joy and comfort — which he brings to me often.

It was less about him always being sad, and more that the world always made him sad, which so many of us can relate to. He saw through it, the futility of it all. His music was an attempt to fill in the gaps of the earth the only way he knew how — with a quiet rawness, a passing chord, a whisper.

This was a guy deeply at odds with his surroundings. Someone who knew deeply of his flaws and how much they affected others. It’s not that he was more emotional than anyone else, but that he just felt those emotions deeper than others and sought out an equally raw way to express those feelings. For these reasons and more, I see a lot of myself in Elliott.

These days he’s more popular than ever. You hear his influence all over Frank Ocean’s Blonde, Clairo’s Sling, Flatsound’s Sleep. Also cue the inevitable comparisons to Connor Oberst, Sufjan Stevens, Alex G, though all of them have carved out unique sounds of their own, which you can’t say about every guy with a guitar (hi, John Mayer). This paragraph would also suck if I failed to mention the title track of Phoebe Bridgers’ last album, which was a song about her reverence for Elliott, and beautiful even with that context removed.

The other thing I’ve noticed is so many young songwriters on TikTok going viral for their attempts to slowly chisel at a sound of their own while also sounding irrefutably like Elliott. I’m not against this at all. For the world to keep spinning it needs art that is raw, authentic, human — exactly the kind of stuff Elliott was making during his time with us.

And, like, why wouldn’t you want to write songs like Elliott Smith? Hell, even I wish I could write songs like Elliott Smith. His lyrics have always cut deep but I’ve long been transfixed by the way he played guitar, the parts he came up with. They sound simple but deceptively so. His discography is full of songs in alternate tunings, dissonant bar chords, fancy fingerpicking. Sometimes all three in the same song. Most of this stuff goes above my head because I don’t play guitar, but he and his music has never struck me as trying to sound virtuosic. For him it feels like the goal has always been not to melt faces, but brains. To communicate. That’s what feels natural to him. That’s his instinct. That’s his genius.

I definitely unlocked a new level of understanding and reverence for Elliott by trying to learn some of his songs back in my piano-playing days. Sure, immaculate 4-chord songs exist, obviously (see: Taylor Swift). But sometimes I would pick out “Pictures of Me” or “Waltz #1” and wonder how he came up with this stuff. It wasn’t jazzy or anything — a lot of critics have noted how Beatlesque some of his songs are — but it fell within the confines of the singer-songwriter ear while also pushing against those boundaries in a hauntingly beautiful, double-tracked way.

One thing that has kept me fresh and alive and renewed is this blip in the universe every few months or so, during which I fall in love with a new Elliott song. In January it was “How to Take a Fall,” in April it was “Bled White,” in July it was “Everything Reminds Me of Her,” and these days it’s “Stained Glass Eyes”.

Every time it happens it‘s as if I’ve discovered something vibrantly new and surprising about myself, and also about him. Like we’re having this conversation with each other, him whispering in my earbuds, telling me everything’s going to be okay.

Wherever he is nowadays, ‘cause I have no idea if his spirit is floating around in Portland or whatever, I wish I could hug him and say thank you, parasocial as that may be to say. “Don’t you know that I love you?” he asks on “Angel in the Snow”. Surely it is our job to answer.