Am I Missing Something?

Album: Beyond the Pale (2020)
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Songfacts®:

  • Here, Jarvis Cocker reflects on the meaning of life.

    This body's a temporary home
    This body wants to take your body home


    The "body is a temporary home" line came from Alan Watts, a mid-20th century British writer known for popularizing Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism for a Western audience. Cocker explained to Q magazine that he discovered Watts on a tour bus driving towards San Francisco in the mid-2000s.

    "The idea opened up to me then," he explained. "You're an energy that's just inhabiting your body and you will go off somewhere else after. If you're brought up in the punk times, my year zero you've got a reflex action to say hippie tripe. But a lot of things since then I hold very dear, like Richard Brannigan, who I dismissed for years as hippy dippy. You just need to get over yourself. And the idea that you've got a universe inside you, now is the perfect time to discover that!"
  • This song was recorded at Narcissus Studios in Neasden, London for Jarv Is' debut studio album Beyond the Pale. Cocker formed the band in late 2017 to perform at Sigur Ros' Norður og Niður festival in Iceland. Encouraged by others to record the music they were coming up with, Cocker set about creating a record with his new bandmates. This is the first track he started to work on.
  • Cocker co-wrote this song with his harpist/pianist Serafina Steer, and with co-producer Jason Buckle, who is best-known for his releases under the name All Seeing I. Former Pulp bass guitarist Steve Mackey programmed the strings.
  • At first Cocker seems to be singing about the 21st century curse of fear of missing out (FOMO), before the listener gradually realizes what's missing might be something more essential. He explained to Uncut magazine: "That's a fundamental question as you get older – you've done a certain number of things in your life and you think, 'OK, what haven't I done? Is there something I should try that I haven't?'"

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