💔✨𝐖𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆, 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐆 𝐎𝐅 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐅𝐄𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐎𝐍 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐕𝐔𝐋𝐍𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐁𝐈𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘✨💔

I’m going to go with a very personal beginning for this post, hope you don’t mind…
I perfectly remember the moment when I was listening to 𝐍𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐋𝐞𝐭 𝐌𝐞 𝐆𝐨 for the very first time. Late night, no one around, headphones and Brian’s photo on the screen… THE atmosphere to completely drawn into music and my own feelings.

Although tears of tenderness, admiration, and overexcitement appeared in my eyes earlier, on 𝐖𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆 I burst into tears fully not even trying to suppress this highly emotional move…
From that night on, it’s not much different every time I listen to this song.

Photo credit: Franz Reiterer

𝐖𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆 audio

🎵 https://bit.ly/3KHORjr 🎵

💔Brian’s fragile whisper makes the words feel like the most honest and vulnerable eye-to-eye conversation ever…

💔“𝑪𝒂𝒏 𝑰 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒂𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏…” – and the heart skips a beat.

💔A slight voice trembling on “𝒕𝒆𝒎𝒑𝒕𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏" gives the word itself a new painful sense.

 
💔𝑺𝒑𝒊𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒔 crushing from the sky become a horribly accurate definition of all the inner fears and insecurities.


It’s not the first time Brian goes bare heart speaking of his addictions in Placebo songs. In this regard, 𝐖𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 is some kind of a continuation of 𝐁𝐨𝐬𝐜𝐨. Although Brian keeps the lyrics very much open for different interpretations, in the interviews, he opens up about the meaning of 𝐖𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 personally to him. And I have to admit, those words sound absolutely as heartbreaking to me as the lines of the song.

𝑰𝒔 ”𝑾𝒆𝒏𝒕 𝑴𝒊𝒔𝒔𝒊𝒏𝒈” 𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒅𝒊𝒔𝒂𝒑𝒑𝒆𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒏𝒄𝒆 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒎 𝑳𝒐𝒏𝒅𝒐𝒏?
📢𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧: “No. “Went Missing” is primarily a contemplation about my close relationship with my addiction therapist. Whenever I relapsed. it became pitch black around me. I kind of disappeared inside and out. When I reappeared, he said: „You must have been off the face of the earth for a while.” The song is also about how my addiction has become visible to the public from time to time. A handful of times in history of Placebo I didn’t make it over the first song. I often stopped the shows in the song “For What It’s Worth.” Hence of this is the line „I fell off the face of planet Earth / I went missing for a living / People were singing For What It’s Worth / When I went missing for a living.”

𝑨𝒓𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒔𝒐𝒓𝒓𝒚 𝒂𝒃𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒔𝒆 𝒅𝒓𝒖𝒈 𝒓𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒕𝒆𝒅 𝒇𝒂𝒊𝒍𝒖𝒓𝒆𝒔?
📢𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧: “Yes, I regret that my addiction kept spirally out of control from time to time until it towered over my public life and profession. I find it disgraceful and embarrassing not always being able to play a concert to the end.”

𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝒅𝒊𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒅𝒓𝒖𝒈𝒔 𝒈𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒚𝒐𝒖?
📢𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧: “The annihilation of the self. The search for this disappearance, so I don’t have to feel myself. Basically, I was running away from myself, from my own personality. I didn’t understand for many years that people who are very close to me are in great fear about me. Anyone who has a close relationship to person who disappears, worries about his life and may fear never seeing him again.”

𝑫𝒐 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒅𝒓𝒖𝒈𝒔 𝒖𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓 𝒄𝒐𝒏𝒕𝒓𝒐𝒍 𝒏𝒐𝒘?
📢𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧: “Let me put in this way: A couple of years I`ve been working towards a lifestyle change which is much, much more moderate.”
(𝑆𝐿𝐴𝑀, 𝐼𝑠𝑠𝑢𝑒 121, 𝐴𝑝𝑟𝑖𝑙 2022)

📢𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐧: "Someone wrote something very interesting about Went Missing, which I thought was pretty prescient really. Somebody said that it was a song about someone who survives through invisibility, someone who exists in the complete opposite way that most people exist today, which is by exposing themselves literally in some cases or presenting to the world a kind of a contrived formatted version of your own life. And the narrator in Went Missing is doing the opposite.

Photo credit: Dieter Jakob

But it's also kind of for me, it's a reflection on my relationship with controlled substances, an addictive behaviour, and all the places that it's taken me. And it’s taken me to places where I felt like I'd lost myself. 𝑨𝒏𝒅 𝒊𝒕'𝒔 𝒂𝒍𝒔𝒐 𝒔𝒐𝒓𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝒂 𝒔𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒐𝒓 𝒄𝒓𝒚 𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆 𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒅 𝒐𝒇 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒕𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏. There's a line in it that talks about secret destroyers, and those secret destroyers could be anything, but they're the things that creep up on you without you even realising that, like an addiction or lheartbreak or cancer, things that we can't control.

It’s one of the most meditative moments on the record, and it was born out of me meditating on my various addictive relationships, I suppose, and the consequences that it had, and how I did become absent, and how at certain points in my life, you know, I would just disappear. And disappear for weeks sometimes. It’s also directed to the people who are left behind, who are left going, ‘well, where's he disappeared to this time? When is he coming back? Is he ever coming back?’ The fact that I went missing for a living meant that it was something that happened a great deal, and like a lot of things in my writings, it's me processing externally a lot of stuff that I've been dealing with internally. And often, because it's your own voice inside, it's all wrapped up in emotion. You can't really make head or tail of what's really going on, you externalise it in a song or any other artistic endeavour. You do get a little bit of a distance from it, and so you're able to understand what's going on with you and what was going on with you in the past, through what you've written. 𝑺𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒕𝒊𝒎𝒆𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒔𝒆 𝒔𝒐𝒏𝒈𝒔 𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒐𝒘 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒕𝒐 𝒈𝒆𝒕 𝒕𝒐 𝒌𝒏𝒐𝒘 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒇 𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒂𝒏 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕."
(𝑀𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑎𝑐𝑠 𝑂𝑛𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑒, 𝑀𝑎𝑟𝑐ℎ 25𝑡ℎ, 2022)


This latest sentence is the most hopeful one, in my opinion. The only deep understanding of the reasons and consequences of addictive behavior makes the way out possible.
I also think, 𝐖𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 is a good test for everyone’s ability for empathy and compassion.
𝑨 𝒄𝒓𝒚 𝒐𝒖𝒕 𝒇𝒐𝒓 𝒑𝒓𝒐𝒕𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏… That’s what it is.
Not a permission for judgement.

Post by Olga