fuck it emily lyric meta. long ass shit under the cut.
for those who don't know, emily is a demo off of living with ghosts. the superficial storyline is about the narrator of the song feeling guilt over presumably murdering a young girl named emily. my reading, knowing gerard's writing, is that the storyline is just a veneer to translate gerard's internal dialogue with himself à la most of the art gerard's ever made.
same as not that kind of girl, bury me in black, drowning lessons, and the entirety of revenge, emily personifies the feminine side of the narrator they are both terrified of and desperately yearn for. like the demo lovers, emily and the narrator are both gerard.
in drowning lessons, the narrator tries and fails to kill the woman night after night, both wishing her away and wanting her back. in bury me in black, the narrator feels anger and desperation over not being able to attain their desired femininity, with lyrics about war-worn lipstick and intravenous lip gloss. all of these songs are self-dialogue, and both of the characters are a projection of the narrator. even though emily is set up to be a conversation with emily's ghost/grave/etc., the narrator repeatedly likens themself to emily as if they're the same person with the same wishes and fears.
'we' in these lines refer to both emily and the narrator, establishing them as mirrors of each other. emily gave the narrator the gun - she's not an oblivious victim. she holds the trigger just the same as the narrator. 'we'll both never be afraid', telling the audience that the narrator and emily have the exact same fears and comforts.
@milfygerard is the originator of this next idea; the structure of this song doesn't actually confirm whether emily is dead or not, and flips back and forth between calling her a corpse and a lost child.
'come home' 'far from home' etc. rather than 'dead'.
emily is an intangible figure; she's not a literal girl. once again, she is a projection of the narrator's desired femininity.
onto the part that makes me go bonkers: the narrator greatly regrets killing emily, and believes that she'll come back home once the narrator stops being terrified and confused over their identity.
the narrator killed emily because they needed to survive, and believes their fear and loss will vanish if they could just figure it out.
this is essentially a song about suicide, or rather the pain of having to kill a side of yourself just to function in this world. the pain of having a gun forced into your hand by the girl inside of you and desperately trying to claw her back once she's gone. the bridge of the song has gerard repeatedly singing 'come home!' in a high, clear voice; despite knowing she had to die for them to keep on living, all the narrator wants is for her to come back to them and ease their fear and confusion. emily is essentially a prayer and a vigil, going hand in hand with mcr’s theme of femininity as the unreachable ideal as well as a vice.
i recommend looking over all the lyrics in conjunction with drowning lessons and bury me in black to fully understand why i am so insane about this.
areudirty
yousharknotpass
kianamaiart
pixelskylines
andulkaphoto
blakekathryn
theartofmadeline
