Moar Fanboi!

To continue my squealing fan-girl man-love affair with Maynard James Keenan, here is a song that I played for Mini-Goob, my three year old daughter, while driving home from her grandparent’s house last night. 

She’s big into Disney princesses, because girl. 

So when she heard the words “Sleeping Beauty” in the opening verse, she demanded I play it again and again.  She’d never heard this song before.  She loved it.  She spent all morning doing her level best, in her toneless, pixy three year old voice, to sing every word she could remember, and made some up as she went along. 

The song, itself, is a good example of Maynard’s musical span – he can go from doing the best “metal scream” you’ve ever heard in songs like “Ticks and Leaches” to singing songs like this, where he sings of his experiences while sitting by the bedside of his dying mother while she was in a coma; the titular “Sleeping Beauty”.

Understanding that he’s speaking from personal experience, as he watched his mother die, lyrics like this have so much more meaning:

“Drunk on ego,

Truly thought I could make it right

If I kissed you one more time to

Help you face the nightmare

But you’re far too poisoned for me

Such a fool to think that I could wake you from your slumber

That I could magically heal you

Sleeping beauty”

In that one verse, he wields the core elements of the fairy tale “Sleeping Beauty,” with the magic of true love’s kiss healing all, mixed with the disappointment that reality is not a fairy tale, and the understanding of the futility of attempting to cheat death. 

What other artist is brave enough to put that sort of personal depth into his music, to share with the world? 

Delusional

I believe I can cure it all for you, dear
Coax or trick or drive or
drag the demons from you
Make it right for you sleeping beauty
Truly thought
I can magically heal you

You're far beyond a visible sign of your awakening
Failing miserably to rescue

Sleeping Beauty

Drunk on ego
Truly thought I could make it right
If I kissed you one more time to
Help you face the nightmare
But you're far too poisoned for me
Such a fool to think that I can wake you from your slumber
That I could actually heal you..

Sleeping Beauty
Poisoned and hopeless
You're far beyond a visible sign of your awakening
Failing miserably to find a way to comfort you

Far beyond a visible sign of your awakening
And hiding from some poisoned memory

Poisoned and hopeless
Sleeping Beauty