At almost 17 minutes long, Joanna Newsom’s “Only Skin” can tell many stories, and it does! In this post, I will discuss the motif of youth attraction in this song.
This post is not an attempt to argue that “Only Skin” is about youth attraction. It is about womanhood, and youth attraction is just a part of that. Yes, I believe the imagery of youth attraction is intentional.
One of Joanna Newsom’s favorite books is Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, and she references this book in her music—“I saw a star fall into the sky like a chunk of thrown coal as if God himself spat like a cornered rat”—alongside lyrics such as, “Helpless as a child as you held me in your arms.” She knows what she’s doing. Perhaps she is evokes this imagery purely figuratively, or perhaps she means to write about actual youth attraction: this is up for debate.
“Only Skin” begins with the focus of the narrator’s affection having a nightmare about war. Some listeners believe he is an ex-solider, but he doesn’t have to be. I get the impression that he’s an amalgamation of people, sometimes a man and sometimes a boy, agefluid due to representing more than one person in the narrator’s life, the object of semi-incestuous, semi-pedophilic attraction (I use pedophilic loosely here as there is no way to determine an objective age range).
OK, but which lyrics evoke both the narrator’s amourous attraction towards her youthful focus?
Press on me, we are restless things. Webs of seaweed are swaddling. And you call upon the dusk of the musk of a squid: shot full of ink, until you sink into your crib.
I have got some business out at the edge of town, candy weighing both of my pockets down till I can hardly stay afloat, from the weight of them (and knowing how the commonfolk condemn what it is I do, to you, to keep you warm: Being a woman. Being a woman.)
With your hands in your pockets, stubbily running to where I’m unfresh, undressed and yawning —
These stanzas are the best examples. Attraction is implied with pressing, restlessness, keeping warm, and strangely enough, pockets, which hold lust in Joanna Newsom’s music. From the same song that evoked the cornered rat that is Humbert Humbert, “Have One On Me”:
Here’s Lola — ta da! — to do her famous Spider Dance for you! Lighten up your pockets! Shake her skirts and scatter, there, a shrieking, six-legged millionaire with a blight in his sockets.
(“Have One On Me” is about Lola Montez, not Dolores Haze, the Lola in slacks from Lolita. It’s just a coincidence-- ah who am I kidding! We’ve got another amalgam on our hands.)
Youth is implied in swaddling, the crib, and stubby running, sure, but those guilty, candy-filled pockets are my favorite. Picturing the narrator, who I imagine as Joanna Newsom, a stereotypical pedo creep holding candy and worrying about normies… It’s humorous and refreshing in the context of this 17-minute masterpiece.
This isn’t the end of youth attraction in this song. Far from it. The narrator calling her focus “son” and treating him as such, the narrator’s internal conflict of surrounding womanhood and mapmisia, the imagery of cherry fruit and blossoms… There is a lot for a YAP and/or AAM to like in “Only Skin.”
I was planning on combing through the entire song, listing each and every example, but I think it’s more effective if you give the song a listen yourself.
Semi-related, I ought to advertise our Ao3 profile as our writing can get heavily inspired by Joanna Newsom’s music. It’s mostly Breaking Bad fanfiction. Since we are radqueer, our ideology comes through in our writing sometimes. Especially in Peach, Plum, Pear, and yes it’s named after a Joanna Newsom song.
Our profile, two_faced_hydra.