Photograph by The Verve Pipe

Album: Villains (1996)

Charted: 53

License This Song

lyrics

Songfacts®:

Take a picture... it will last longer.

Verve Pipe lead singer Brian Vander Ark wrote this song, where he offers himself up in photographic form. In a Songfacts interview with Vander Ark, he explained: "The idea behind the lyric was that you can freeze me in some way and I will stay that way for you forever. And meanwhile, I'm doing so many other things, and whether they're good things or bad things, your perception of my life is confined in that photograph."
This was released to radio as the first single from The Verve Pipe's 1996 album Villains, but in an effort to boost album sales, it wasn't available for sale. A few radio stations played it and the song rose to #53 on the Airplay chart (it was ineligible for the Hot 100 because you couldn't buy the single), but it did little to shift units of the album. The breakthrough came the following year when a new version of "The Freshman," a song originally released in 1992 and included on Villains, was released as a traditional single in 1997. That one took off, reaching #5 on the Hot 100 and pushing the album to over 1 million in sales. Many fans preferred "Photograph," but "The Freshman" was the hit.
The video was directed by Lawrence Carroll, who also did Jewel's "You Were Meant For Me" and Counting Crows' "A Long December." It has a very '90s look, with white flashes, sepia and brooding. Vander Ark told us about one idea came in for the clip: "We had a video treatment that came in for that that was pretty funny. The band was going to be in Chinatown and we were going to come out of a factory down conveyor belts, each of us frozen in coffins and ice. Then when we reach the bottom, Chinese women come out to chop us out. We didn't choose that one, but conceptually that was pretty much what it was. The video director who wrote the treatment really got what the song was about."

Comments: 2

Will C. from New YorkSomeone posted this on songmeanings.com and it seems like a pretty accurate interpretation:
I think that this song is about photographs, and their interplay with our perceptions of people. When the speaker says "if you want beautiful, pitiful, have me in a picture," he's suggesting to the listener that she cannot make him be what she wants (beautiful, pitiful), but she can have a picture of him, and imagine that the person in the picture has those qualities. Similarly, the listener cannot really make the speaker dance, but she can make the picture "dance" by spinning it around.

When the speaker says "if there's a crease in my face over time, there's plenty more where that came from," he's responding to the unspoken objection that a photograph can become creased and aged by pointing out that he, as a person, is sure to wrinkle and age himself. A simple crease in the photo is relatively insignificant. If the listener wants the speaker perfect, she's better off with a creased photograph than an aging person.

"Words, frozen, will thaw when I am wasted; I am better shut up" speaks to the fact that a moment in time characterized by something the speaker says will pass, as he goes on to do or say something that undermines those words. But moment itself and what the words represent can be frozen in time in the picture.

When the speaker says "when I'm alone and the world is a fist, and I am weightless," I think he's referring to himself not as an actual person, but as the person that is in the photo. He's alone, the world is a fist, and he is weightless because "he" is merely a picture being waved around in somebody's hand. "He" is fearless because, of course, he's not real. The act of "spin[ning] the sky surrounding" has a literal and a figurative meaning. Literally, the sky surrounding the person in the picture can be spun because the picture itself (and all of its contents) can be physically spun. Figuratively, "spin[ning] the sky surrounding" is recontextualizing the picture's scene in the listener's own mind. For example, if you have a picture of a person in front of a sky, you can imagine that sky is the sky of Alaska, Kyoto, Texas . . . it doesn't matter. You can contextualize what is in the picture any way you wish.

This song is really about the fact that pictures never lie, but we can use the pictures as tools to lie to ourselves.
Chris from Germany boring. typical for a one hit wonder. a great song which they couldn’t repeat (the freshmen)

see more comments

More Songfacts:

HelloAdele

Adele isn't a ghost when she sings, "Hello from the other side" - it means the "other side of becoming an adult."

Scooby SnacksFun Lovin' Criminals

The Scooby Snacks in the Fun Lovin' Criminals song aren't dog treats, they're Valium pills.

How Big, How Blue, How BeautifulFlorence + the Machine

The title of Florence + the Machine's "How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful" was inspired by the Los Angeles skyline.

WomanKesha

Kesha's 2017 track "Woman" was the first song titled "Woman" sung by a woman to reach the Hot 100. The prior "Woman" singles to reach the chart were all recorded by male acts.

David Bowie's "Space Oddity" tells the story of an astronaut who cuts off communication and floats into space. The BBC used it extensively in their coverage of the 1969 moon landing - an odd choice considering the lyrics.

Smells Like Teen SpiritNirvana

Teen Spirit was a kind of deodorant marketed to young girls. That's where Kurt Cobain got the title "Smells Like Teen Spirit."