A Hayakawan Analysis of Father John Misty’s “Bored In The USA”

Among the multitude of methods by which we humans communicate with each other, communication through music can be one of the most effective, yet subversive, ways to do so. With 12 million Spotify plays, solo artist Josh Tillman’s hit single “Bored In The USA,” released in 2014 under the alias Father John Misty, has been able to reach a huge number of young American listeners to communicate its biting critique of American materialism, aestheticism, and politicism. Tillman pays homage to Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A” with his song’s title and denunciation of life in the United States, but the tone of both the lyrics and the instrumental are much more subdued, more “bored.” Where Springsteen’s song condemns America’s involvement in the Vietnam war—and the maltreatment of the war’s veterans during and after—Tillman’s song complains of the more minute, less dramatic problems faced by the American middle class in the twenty-first century, like student loan debt, pharmaceutical abuse, and the mindless wage labor that exists under capitalism. S.I. Hayakawa, in Language in Thought and Action, notes this stark change in postwar American culture: “In the ‘80s, an apparent wave of materialism and fascination with purchased symbols of success seemed to have engulfed the American public” (142). In analyzing the message of “Bored In The USA,” relative to that of “Born in the U.S.A,” Hayakawa’s concepts of contexts and intensional significance are central to understanding the underlying meaning of the song as a method of communication, rather than a mere Top-100 Billboard hit.

To begin with, the message of “Bored In The USA” was denounced as painfully obvious at its release, especially in relation to Tillman’s preceding album, which was riddled with deep and obscure allusions and metaphors (Schube)—the marks of Hayakawa’s modern “unsponsored poets” (140). While Tillman’s language is nothing very scholarly, the context in which his words are communicated give his message an intensional significance that is self-aware, contemplative, and assertive. What many critics neglect to glean from Tillman’s lyrics is the satirical, self-depreciative tone that simmers underneath the obvious, denotative message; in complaining merely of life as a middle-class American—especially in the context of comparison to life as a mistreated war veteran in “Born in the U.S.A.”—Tillman is denouncing the quintessential “first-world, white people problems” that have recently begun to permeate the American middle and upper classes, especially in social media. The speaker struggles with taking “all morning to obsessively accrue / A small nation of meaningful objects” (3-4) disregarding the fact that he has the wealth to participate in American consumerism and materialism. He complains of being given “a useless education” (21), yet ignores the privilege he has in having access to higher education. He is married, living in a comfortable “craftsman home” (22), whining that he is aging and becoming less beautiful (8-10). Further, behind these last few lines plays a laugh track, highlighting the triviality of the speaker’s issues—it is as if he is a character on a sitcom whom an audience watches to laugh at, to escape from their real problems, like poverty, divorce, or foreclosure, like fighting a losing war, only to be shunned and ignored on arrival home. There is a double entendre to Tillman’s lyrics; the denotative significance of Tillman’s words protests against modern American capitalism, Big Pharma, and the false hope of the American Dream, while the intensional significance of the lyrics condemn the American middle-class man for denying his own privilege. As Hayakawa states, “all words in a given context interact with each other”; if one ignores the contexts in which Tillman speaks through his song, like its self-comparison to “Born in the U.S.A.” and its cynical tone, one is at risk of “[wasting] energy in angrily accusing [Tillman] of intellectual dishonesty or abuse of words” (40-41), like Tillman’s critics.

In sum, in evaluating the efficacy of Tillman’s communication, one must first look toward his audience, which is not very clear; Tillman is indicting the whole of United States society and culture, but surely, as an indie rock musician, he cannot be endeavoring to enter the mainstream to the point that the entire nation, from the children to the elderly, from poor to rich, hear his message—it would be simply impossible. He must understand that his main listening demographic are young people who have access to music streaming, so perhaps his audience is that young, middle-class American who complains about trivial issues, ignorant of the suffering of the world’s lower classes. If this is the case, his communication is fairly effective—that is, if the listener understands the satiric double meaning of his words. That young, middle-class American listener might interpret Tillman’s lyrics while ignoring his contexts; in such a circumstance, Tillman fails to enact reform, merely feeding into the naive, deluded mind of the privileged boy. On another hand, if the audience is someone with whom Tillman identifies, someone who is self-aware of the ignorance and triviality of the privileged, his communication is quite effective. He and his listener may poke fun at the young, middle-class American together. On the whole, however, a communication’s efficacy is most dependent on what the listener gathers from the interaction—at least, more than on what the author intended, or, in the case of an internationally-accessible, artistic communication, like a song, whom the author intended to hear it. If the privileged listener hears support for his own insignificant grievances, and is comforted by it, even though Tillman might not have intended that response, one cannot say that the communication is ineffective, simply because it has an effect on the listener. Any communication that is affective is effective.

Lyrics

“Bored In The USA”

Father John Misty

[Verse 1]

How many people rise and say

“My brain’s so awfully glad to be here for yet another mindless day

Now, I’ve got all morning to obsessively accrue

A small nation of meaningful objects and they’ve gotta represent me too

By this afternoon, I'll live in debt                                                                                                                              5

And by tomorrow, be replaced by children?”

[Verse 2]

How many people rise and think

“Oh good, the stranger’s body’s still here, our arrangement hasn’t changed

Now, I’ve got a lifetime to consider all the ways

I grow more disappointing to you                                                                                                                         10

As my beauty warps and fades

And I suspect you feel the same

When I was young, I dreamt of a passionate obligation to a roommate?”

[Pre-Chorus]

Is this the part where I get all I ever wanted?

Who said that?                                                                                                                                                                 15

Can I get my money back?

[Chorus 1]

Just a little bored in the USA

Oh, just a little bored in the USA

Save me, white Jesus

Bored in the USA                                                                                                                                                            20

[Bridge]

Oh, they gave me a useless education

And a subprime loan on a craftsman home

Keep my prescriptions filled

And now I can't get off

But I can kind of deal                                                                                                                                                    25

Oh, with being

[Chorus 2]

Bored in the USA

Oh, just a little bored in the USA

Save me, President Jesus

I'm bored in the USA                                                                                                                                                     30

How did it happen?

Bored in the USA

Works Cited

Hayakawa, Samuel Ichiyé, and Alan R. Hayakawa. Language in Thought and Action. Edited by Alan R. Hayakawa, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990. Accessed 6 May 2024.

Schube, Will. “Bored in the USA with Father John Misty.” Passion of the Weiss, 2014, https://www.passionweiss.com/2014/11/07/bored-in-the-usa-with-father-john-misty/. Accessed 6 May 2024.

Tillman, Josh. “Father John Misty – Bored in the USA.” Genius, 2014, https://genius.com/Father-john-misty-bored-in-the-usa-lyrics. Accessed 6 May 2024.