Day 21: I Know How to Speak – Manchester Orchestra (Updated March 2023)

Update, March 2023: Wow y’all. I did not expect to become one of the internet’s leading experts on this song! What a huge responsibility. This post was published over three years ago and continues to be one of my top-performing posts. I figured it might be time to revisit what I wrote here and update my thoughts on this song—so I stay true to the meaning that the band tries to communicate in this song and the album. Enjoy!

I choose a lot of songs for these series based on context. Songs have seasons, in my opinion. That’s why people have playlists. Certain occasions garner certain songs. And you’d better believe I have a playlist for basically every season.

That’s the point of music – to make you feel something. If a song about fall makes you feel like you’re sitting outside on a crisp autumn day, it has succeeded (check out Autumn by the Pawnshop Kings and you won’t be disappointed.) Love songs make you feel. Breakup songs make you feel.

The first time you hear a song (or the first season in your life) can define the song for you as well. Even if a song is meant to be happy, if you heard it in a sad context, you’ll always have that memory attached to it. If you hear a song in the summer but it’s about the winter, it might still be a summer song for you.

The best thing about songs is no matter the lyrics or the intended meaning, they have a different story for everyone who listens to them.

Day 21: I Know How to Speak – Manchester Orchestra

This is not a breakup song, even though parts of it feel like that. It came to me last fall after a breakup, and in my brooding, I came back to this song a lot. The atmospheric and almost chilly quality of the song lends itself to brooding (I know from experience.) A simple, falling piano melody, a plucked guitar, and spatial production quality make it cerebral. It almost made it onto Manchester Orchestra’s 2017 album “A Black Mile to the Surface,” but Andy Hull wasn’t satisfied with it. It was released later in “The Black Mile Demos.” The meaning behind it, according to Hull, is the “impending weight of the future.”

I know how to speak
And I know where I’m going
I wanted to seek
But I got distracted

Hull’s lyrics for the Black Mile album lean heavily on familial and childhood trauma, and the things we carry with us even when we’ve grown up. The lyrics of “I Know How to Speak” lean into this idea as well. “No one knows me like you.” Who knows us better than our families?

It’s a mirage
That leaves me embarrassed
Cause no one knows me like you
You know there’s nothing left for ya
So I continually move
Try to pass it through for ya

My first thought was that “no one knows me like you” was pretty breakupy. But looking at this song in the context of the Black Mile album, it feels much more tied to memories and pain from the past, and the willingness to let go.

The pest about pain
Is timeless and honest
Let go of your shame
It’s a dead dampening blanket
It’s a façade
Go back and look at your training

The past has a hold on all of us, if we’re being honest. Our pain and shame is ingrained in our past. It can prevent us from having meaningful relationships. Hull says it’s better to just let go of it and remember what you’ve been taught.

I want your name
It’s burnt in my ceilings
And I want it all
An unpredictable wonder
You gave it all hope
That all of this is a circle

This really is a unique little song. Manchester Orchestra gets really cerebral really fast. As far as moods go, it’s a very rainy-day-in-autumn song. Mostly because that’s the first context in which I listened to it. Check out this haunting melody if you’re in the mood for some brooding.

Since I’ve got you here…I wrote a fantasy book—think Game of Thrones meets Robin Hood. Order it here.