on the genius.com page for “autoclave” by the mountain goats someone left an annotation where they were extremely baffled by the line “sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name,” because it’s (likely) a reference to the cheers theme song, which this contributor found jarring and out of place, and it’s like, dude, i don’t think it’s really that hard to understand the meaning of the line in this context. “autoclave” is a song about a person whose heart incinerates every possibility of happiness, leading to them secretly dreaming of incinerating everyone else around them. that verse literally starts with “i dreamt that i was perched atop a throne of human skulls.” in that context, it’s clear that “where everybody knows your name” is meant to be taken in a cynical way— everyone will know who the narrator is once they’ve burned all of their relationships to the ground.
but also, even if you were to fixate on the cheers reference, you can look at the lyrics to the theme song and pretty easily draw connections to “autoclave”. in the cheers theme, the line “sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name” is presented in a straightforwardly positive light; it’s a song about wanting to escape from a life of turmoil and rejection to a place where everyone is happy to see you. when john darnielle takes this line and inverts its connotations to be negative, he’s using a device called “irony.” the narrator of “autoclave” can’t imagine everyone being happy to see them; they can only imagine everyone staying away from them out of fear and disgust.
and even aside from that, there’s other lyrics from the cheers theme that could be thematically tied to “autoclave”. for example, there’s, uh. wait, hold on a second,
post canceled, someone get the “husband” from the cheers theme song some estrogen
