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Authors: Matthew LeMay
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not debased, dismissed or destroyed—just difficult.
“Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands”
Though it didn’t surface in Smith’s live repertoire until 1997, “Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands” is actually one of the oldest songs on
XO,
its basic musical underpinnings dating back to Harum Scarum, a band that Smith was in with Tony Lash before the two played together in Heatmiser. (Harum Scarum had also worked on a version of “Sweet Adeline” with different lyrics.)
The subject matter that inspired the final version of “Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands” is well documented, and does not bear too much elaborating here. Before the recording of XO, Smith briefly stayed at a rehab center in Arizona, and was none too pleased with the people responsible for sending him there, nor with the experience itself.
Larry Crane has a distinct memory of hearing a rough mix of “Everybody Cares” and being takenaback by how specifically pointed its lyrics were:
I went down for about a week to LA, and hung out with Tom and Rob and Elliott at Sunset Sound as sessions for
XO
were happening. And the first thing [Elliott] did was, he picked me up at the airport, and he said “here’s something we’re working on,” and he played me “Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands” and I thought “that’s mean.” And I knew what it was about and it was like, “ooh, wow.” And there was even a line that was slightly different, that was even more direct to the person it was about. And I was like “oh man, that’s pretty tough. You’re gonna put that on the record?”
This early mix of “Everybody Cares” has long leaked to the Internet, and indeed its lyrics do indeed allude more directly to Smith’s stay in Arizona:
Everybody cares, everybody understands—
Yes, everybody cares about you—as a matter of fact I’m sure they do.
But if you don’t act just right, they kick you in the head.
But I wouldn’t take it offensively—they’re doing it out of sympathy,
And you’re the one who’s bringing it all about.
So here I lay dreaming, looking at the brilliant sun
Raining its guiding light upon everyone
For a moment’s rest I leaned against the banister
After running upstairs again and again from a place you people, you’ve never been,
With all of Fear City’s finest following behind
Who with the greatest skill and resourcefulness, after putting me under a wrongful arrest,
Stepped me out to the desert to dry and die
Here I lay dreaming, looking at the brilliant sun
Pushing it’s guiding light upon everyone
The dream-killing doctor says to describe my dream.
But some things are for no one to know and for you, twelve-stepping cop, to not find out.
Ultimately, via what Schnapf calls a “last-minute change of heart,” Smith revised these lyrics. But Smith’s final revisions, though less narratively and geographically specific, certainly don’t dull the song’s sharp edges. As with many of Smith’s songs, “Everybody Cares” gets more emotionally pointed as it veers
away
from personal specificity. The final version of the song’s closing line: “You say you mean well, you don’t know what you mean/You fucking ought to stay the hell away from things you know nothing about” is one of the most direct and stinging on all of
XO,
encapsulating Smith’s disdain for self-serving good will and unfounded certainty alike.
Similarly, the song’s opening verse becomes more pointed in its final iteration:
Everybody cares, everybody understands—
Yes, everybody cares about you, yeah, and whether or not you want them to.
It’s a chemical embrace that kicks you in the head
To a pure synthetic sympathy that infuriates you totally
And a quiet lie that makes you wanna scream and shout.
“A chemical embrace that kicks you in the head” is a prime example of Smith’s use of substance abuse imagery to describe a force (like a romantic “embrace”) that overrides intellect and
“Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands”
Though it didn’t surface in Smith’s live repertoire until 1997, “Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands” is actually one of the oldest songs on
XO,
its basic musical underpinnings dating back to Harum Scarum, a band that Smith was in with Tony Lash before the two played together in Heatmiser. (Harum Scarum had also worked on a version of “Sweet Adeline” with different lyrics.)
The subject matter that inspired the final version of “Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands” is well documented, and does not bear too much elaborating here. Before the recording of XO, Smith briefly stayed at a rehab center in Arizona, and was none too pleased with the people responsible for sending him there, nor with the experience itself.
Larry Crane has a distinct memory of hearing a rough mix of “Everybody Cares” and being takenaback by how specifically pointed its lyrics were:
I went down for about a week to LA, and hung out with Tom and Rob and Elliott at Sunset Sound as sessions for
XO
were happening. And the first thing [Elliott] did was, he picked me up at the airport, and he said “here’s something we’re working on,” and he played me “Everybody Cares, Everybody Understands” and I thought “that’s mean.” And I knew what it was about and it was like, “ooh, wow.” And there was even a line that was slightly different, that was even more direct to the person it was about. And I was like “oh man, that’s pretty tough. You’re gonna put that on the record?”
This early mix of “Everybody Cares” has long leaked to the Internet, and indeed its lyrics do indeed allude more directly to Smith’s stay in Arizona:
Everybody cares, everybody understands—
Yes, everybody cares about you—as a matter of fact I’m sure they do.
But if you don’t act just right, they kick you in the head.
But I wouldn’t take it offensively—they’re doing it out of sympathy,
And you’re the one who’s bringing it all about.
So here I lay dreaming, looking at the brilliant sun
Raining its guiding light upon everyone
For a moment’s rest I leaned against the banister
After running upstairs again and again from a place you people, you’ve never been,
With all of Fear City’s finest following behind
Who with the greatest skill and resourcefulness, after putting me under a wrongful arrest,
Stepped me out to the desert to dry and die
Here I lay dreaming, looking at the brilliant sun
Pushing it’s guiding light upon everyone
The dream-killing doctor says to describe my dream.
But some things are for no one to know and for you, twelve-stepping cop, to not find out.
Ultimately, via what Schnapf calls a “last-minute change of heart,” Smith revised these lyrics. But Smith’s final revisions, though less narratively and geographically specific, certainly don’t dull the song’s sharp edges. As with many of Smith’s songs, “Everybody Cares” gets more emotionally pointed as it veers
away
from personal specificity. The final version of the song’s closing line: “You say you mean well, you don’t know what you mean/You fucking ought to stay the hell away from things you know nothing about” is one of the most direct and stinging on all of
XO,
encapsulating Smith’s disdain for self-serving good will and unfounded certainty alike.
Similarly, the song’s opening verse becomes more pointed in its final iteration:
Everybody cares, everybody understands—
Yes, everybody cares about you, yeah, and whether or not you want them to.
It’s a chemical embrace that kicks you in the head
To a pure synthetic sympathy that infuriates you totally
And a quiet lie that makes you wanna scream and shout.
“A chemical embrace that kicks you in the head” is a prime example of Smith’s use of substance abuse imagery to describe a force (like a romantic “embrace”) that overrides intellect and
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