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  • 4 hours ago
Chris Robinson of The Black Crowes pulled up to Genius to break down their iconic track “She Talks to Angels.” The frontman gets into how the song came together back in 1988, the story behind its central character, and why he prefers leaving space in his lyrics for listeners to interpret!

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Music
Transcript
00:00People stop me since we wrote the song till today.
00:03They share a lot of their stories.
00:05I use music the same way.
00:07However I'm feeling or whatever is happening is always enhanced by what I need to hear.
00:20I'm pretty sure we wrote the song around 88.
00:23Rich has an idea and then he plays it to me.
00:26That always dictates the theme to me, but in an emotional way more than the lyric themselves.
00:34So there was something melancholy about it and there was something longing about it.
00:38That was really the impetus for where the hatchling comes from.
00:45She never mentions the word addiction in certain company.
00:48The character in the song knows they have a drug problem, but they don't want to talk
00:54about it.
00:54The idea of this song is like in private.
00:58You know, but you're not supposed to.
01:00She'll tell you she's an orphan after you meet her family.
01:03It's a self-deprecating line like, yeah, I have a mom and dad, but I'm an orphan.
01:08You know what I mean?
01:09If you feel out of place in your family.
01:11You're one of those people who are like, how could this be my family?
01:15That's the subtext of where this character is.
01:21She paints her eyes as black as night now.
01:23She pulls her shades down tight.
01:26Yeah, she gives a smile when the pain comes.
01:28The pain's going to make everything all right.
01:31That part of it, you know what I mean?
01:32It's just the way she looks and the way in my mind the character would be easy to realize
01:37that she was into drugs.
01:40And then the other part is, of course, drugs work.
01:43There's a reason people want to blot out the pain in their life.
01:46Since we've been human beings, people find ways to numb themselves.
01:50Part of it is shameful, she's doing it in her own world and she doesn't want people to know,
01:57but everyone knows.
01:58It's kind of like, you think you're keeping it together, but you're really not.
02:01But also knowing somewhere within the character that they want to change, maybe.
02:06That they realize that this is destructive.
02:18The chorus is more about her also being high and being able to access these other realms.
02:24You can call them angels, you can call them spirits or whatever.
02:26Maybe because she's going through this painful episode might even make her more available
02:31to see through the thin veil of reality to other realities around her.
02:35But I put it in this sort of southern gothic context.
02:51I don't know where that came from to be honest.
02:55That she had lost a child.
02:57I'm not saying the child, maybe she had a child and gave it up for adoption.
03:00I don't know.
03:00I like a lot of loose ends in my songs.
03:02I like people to fill in the blanks.
03:04But that line was about, oh, okay, I'm doubling down on why this person is where they are.
03:10And that would be a trauma to lose a child, especially young.
03:24The pinpoint of light in the darkness of the song is that she's in on this too.
03:28And that underneath all of it, she's a good person and she's young and she's going through
03:33this.
03:33In the same way, it's up to her to navigate.
03:37You know, no one else can do those things except you.
03:42I do want to congratulate you on your second consecutive Hall of Fame.
03:46Yeah.
03:46Yeah.
03:47How do you feel?
03:47It feels nice.
03:48It feels nice to be included.
03:50Yeah, I mean, I think especially when you have a new record and you're in this kind of cycle,
03:53it's exciting.
03:54No one more than us realizes the importance and the respect we have for the material that
04:00people love.
04:00I mean, I didn't really dream of this per se or winning awards or stuff.
04:05We dreamed of just being in a band and being on the road and what kind of adventures and
04:11what kind of madness we could get into.
04:13And we chose our art as rock and roll.
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