We are all crazy, it is just some of us are better at hiding it.
The singer of the Tanner’s explores this sentiment, describing her fight to keep her animalistic passion contained while she is in a relationship with someone she has completely fallen for.
The Tanners sing:
In the end I am still an animal in a suit, just like you.
I interpreted this as her being blunt with her lover, that no matter how they dress up their love, at its root it is animalistic and raw, just like them.
Despite the message which ties back into our animalistic nature and therefore roots, the vibes of the song come off not as harking to the past but echoing the future. The song has an EDM space jam feel to it. The beat is constantly on the rise, as if it is a ship taking off into the sky. This rising also adds a note of panic to the song, a franticness, since there is only so far that it can go up. Throughout the song, the audience is made acutely aware that a crash will come, and that the singer is on the brink of falling out of control.
The singer repeats:
I have been trying to hide this crazy but I know you can see it in my eyes, in my eyes, in my eyes.
She tries to hide her crazy because she feels like if she unleashed it, it would be too powerful, it would violate society.
That is why she also sings: “Passionate feeling, I come running from the police they never catch me.”
This shows that what she fears is society, since the police are the enforcers and therefore the representatives of society. She knows it is society who put suits on animals, and therefore them who would want to handcuff her “crazy”.
There is a feeling that she is on the loose, that she is getting away with something. Also, the feeling that because of her crazy, she is incredibly powerful. Yet, she sings, “Always pushing I keep falling down on my knees so have mercy on me”
I interpreted this line as her recognizing that the person who has power over her is her lover. He is the root of her crazy, and also the main reason she is afraid to unleash it, because he still caters to society.
On the loose from the truth, but I am crawling until I am black and blue in the dirt in the dark.
She herself is not fully in touch with who she is. Her crawling is not her being degraded, but rather her persevering. She is deceiving everyone, but most importantly herself. She uses past tense when talking about how she hid and lied about her crazy so we know she is emerging from doing that, preparing to unleash it. She does not even know what to expect when this happens.
The “black and blue” plays into the violent imagery that she also uses elsewhere. Her love and passion borders on violent.
Throughout the song, the themes of control and passion are explored and examined as contradicting themes doing battle. Despite this battle, and her slipping grasp on control, her voice remains unperturbed throughout the song.
This is a song of female power, of unleashed passion.
