Reframing Elliott Smith

This weekend marks twenty years since we lost the wonderful singer-songwriter Elliott Smith. Of course, it’s horrible to lose someone so young and gifted. But what really grinds my gears is the clickbaity use of “tragic”. We all do it, we’re none of us immune to doom scrolling. It’s just… Amy, Billie, Sinead, Janis, Richey, Kurt…all tragic, all somehow rendered as godlike because of the horribly sad circumstances in which they died, and their young ages.

I recently lost my ex-partner, also an amazing musician, to suicide. The pain is indescribable.But he wasn’t tragic. He was complex, funny, sexy, talented, spiky. He’d have sniggered at that word. Reducing people to tragic may sell papers or get clicks, but it’s not the totality of who they were. I want to reframe people like Elliott. Tragic is so limiting, so niche.

l like singers who put their souls in the lyrics. It’s hard enough writing, but to be a musician like that is special. His wispy voice exposed it all: needles, friends,lovers, dreams, memories, drinking, family and disappointed days. There was so much packed into these songs that sometimes you had to switch off and come back in the right headspace to really listen.

Life is tough, and people multifaceted. Can we swap “tragic” for “troubled” , if we must pare down a life to mere adjectives? Some decorum, please. Smith left some beautiful, sensitive music, which sadly and wonderfully will outlast him. That art is enough. He was more than enough, although as befits troubled ones, he didn’t believe that of himself. Drink a toast to him, his songs, and kiss each other, between the bars. There’s only here and now. That’s all, and that is tragic.