Polyaneurism

Album: Ur Fun (2020)
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Songfacts®:

  • The title is a play on polyamorism, which means having multiple lovers. A polyamorist relationship may seem wonderful in theory, but it's a lot harder to pull off in practice, as Of Montreal leader Kevin Barnes explains in the song. "Something about open couples doesn't feel real serious," he sings.
  • Kevin Barnes, who made all the sounds on the Ur Fun album himself, says this song is "seeing the perspective of the other person in the party of three." Barnes, who was dating the musician Christina Schneider when he wrote it, based the story on a friend who was in a polyamorous relationship. In a Songfacts interview, he said: "It seems like polyamorism is becoming more common and more accepted. When I wrote it I was just starting my relationship that I'm in currently, which I'm happily monogamous in, but I never knew that I could be happily monogamous - I always felt like I would lean toward polyamorism. But from other people's experiences and through my own dabbling in it, I realized it's very problematic and it actually requires more work, more emotional labor than just a conventional monogamist relationship. That's why it's a bit more critical of it: because if you are the third person it could be frustrating if you feel like you've got to spend the night alone because your girlfriend is going out with her girlfriend or her other boyfriend. So it's a song about that."
  • There are no humans in the video, only dogs. It was directed by Clayton Rychlik, but Kevin Barnes came up with the concept.
  • The line, "Three months later, vibes are something out of Liquid Sky" is a reference to the 1982 movie Liquid Sky, a sci-fi comedy about aliens who come to Earth and get addicted to sex. Obscure references are a hallmark of Of Montreal's lyrics.

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