Going To Georgia

My home state finds it way into song titles all the time, from Ray Charles to John Mayer to Jim Croce, not to mention Atlanta’s countless references in its capacity as the epicenter of Southern Hip Hop. Unfortunately for fans of The Mountain Goats, John Darnielle doesn’t like “Going To Georgia.” It’s been documented on a number of occasions that he feels the song is misogynistic and glorifies gun violence in a way that he is no longer comfortable with. In 2012 he says:

I honestly don’t want to play Going to Georgia ever again. I really confronted my old catalog because I began getting more and more engaged with my feminism, and I think Going to Georgia is a bullshit song. Bottom line: I know it’s got a nice melody, and it’s got a cool vibe, but that dude is bullshit and I don’t want to be involved with him anymore. I’m not saying I’ll never play it, I probably will, especially when the three of us are playing it kind of rocks, but I wish its lyrics were different, I don’t know what to do with that. I don’t like what’s going on in that song. It seems daring and edgy to a 26-year-old dude to have a guy who goes down with a gun for unknown purposes to see somebody he claims to love, but to my present self, that guy is a fucking asshole.

But here’s the thing about “Going To Georgia.” There’s no purely textual reason to accept Darnielle’s version as the gospel truth. As Goats super fan and author John Green likes to say, a text belongs to its readers. Of course, none of this invalidates Darnielle’s feelings about his own song, or is meant to criticize him for feeling that way, but simply to say that he comes to the text of the song from a uniquely personal perspective. He knows who he was when he wrote the song, and this has an inevitable effect on his interpretation of the story he, by his own admission, made up on the spot because he liked the way the A to D progression sounded on his guitar.

The lyrics to“Going To Georgia” have, like the lyrics to nearly every song on Zopilote Machine, two main attributes: they are addressed to an unspecified “you” and are spectacularly vague. I have to admit, I found Darnielle’s revulsion puzzling. To me, “Going To Georgia” doesn’t read as a story of a toxic romantic relationship at all. Although the song doesn’t specify genders, Darnielle’s reading of the song presupposes a romance, as he says to NPR:

So, um, but–but when you are a young writer, boys get this idea that to really… to really show a woman the depth and purity of your love, what you have to do is something drastic and stupid, right? And, uh, and young writers think it would be really intense to have a guy, uh, always harm himself real bad, and y’know, and tell these stories. So, well, I was a young writer once and here’s a story about a guy who travels someplace with a gun.

With due respect to Darnielle, that’s a hell of a lot to read into lyrics that are, as aforementioned, spectacularly vague. Obviously, in a culture like ours, where romances heavily featuring male toxicity and violence are frequently glorified, it’s also an entirely reasonable reading of the lyrics. But there are more ways to skin a cat. As someone who has struggled with mental health, talk of a heart pumping blood and a gun without a safety immediately rings an entirely separate set of alarm bells:

I have two big hands
And a heart pumping blood
And a 1967 Colt .45
With a busted safety catch

I don’t hear a guy about to do something stupid or edgy to impress/frighten the “you” in the song. I hear someone who needs help and knows it, who is looking at their hands and feeling their pulse and needs a strength they do not have but someone else may be able to provide for them if they can reach that person soon enough. Anyone who has been in that dark place can understand the feeling. It isn’t romance, but a mother or father figure the narrator needs, someone who, even if they are only human, are solid and present.

He sings:

The most remarkable thing about you
Standing in the doorway is that it’s you

Depressed people are always surprised to find that those who love them continue to show up. It’s remarkable that the same folks will show up again and again and again, and it always feels like they won’t, because why would they? Depression tricks the brain into forgetting all the times they’ve showed up before, or writing them off as anomalies, surely not to be repeated. But they will be. And it will be remarkable every time.

And you smile as you ease the gun from my hand
And I am frozen with joy right where I stand

It’s the smile and the joy that gave the song a visceral gut punch the first time I heard it. In Darnielle’s reading, the abusive man is talked down by his 1994 version of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but I don’t see it. The juxtaposition of the taking of the gun and the smile is a reminder that those who love us see our best selves even when we can’t. They can recognize us and greet us with a smile even as they do what needs to be done to keep us above water. That is a joy that can freeze you where you stand.