When it comes to lyrics, musicians tend to paint broad, abstract notions that often can only be puzzled out by a crack squad of their keenest fans using handwritten liner notes and access to the musician’s childhood diary. Sometimes half the fun is leaving those lyrics open to individual interpretation. But sometimes, like with Ryan MacGrath‘s single, “Scorpion,” those lyrics are far more literal than you’d expect.
Who hasn’t spent a least a moment considering what David’s “secret chord” was in Leonard Cohen‘s “Hallelujah,” cyphered through the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s to solve the possibility of Paul’s death, or sought even out a deeper meaning in Snow’s “Informer”?
With a title like “Scorpion” you’d probably expect MacGrath’s song to be about some back-stabber, or at least a toxic lover. But sometimes life provides you with experiences that don’t need muddying. “Scorpion” is quite literally what it sounds like.
The Halifax-born artist may have had to travel all the way to South France for the experience, but one must occasionally suffer for one’s art. After a night of terror trying to first identify, then cope with, and finally stalk the scorpion through his rooms like a small game safari hunter, armed only with the flashlight of his phone.
“I walked into the room in my bare feet, groggy, wanting to crash into bed and something catches the corner of my eye. And I thought, ‘What is that one the floor?’ I didn’t want it to be true, but the closer I got I realized it was a scorpion.
I had never seen a scorpion in real life, well maybe in a pet shop or something, but not just late at night next to the bed,” says MacGrath.
After some debate over what constitutes a “little bug,” his half-sleeping partner liberated the scorpion from the premises with the aid of a dust pan.
“I spent probably the next hour or so scouring the house with the light on my phone, looking under the furniture and in the closets, praying there weren’t any more scorpions about to attack me. The next day, in my state of terror, I picked up my guitar and wrote this song ‘Scorpion’.”
“Scorpion” is the second single released from Ryan MacGrath‘s upcoming album, That Woods. The album is expected to be released early next year.