Yo La Tengo's Cherry Chapstick: Male Suburban Doldrums

Yo La Tengo 

Is “Cherry Chapstick” the funniest serious-sounding song ever? Or is it a song sadly bemoaning lack of skills in the dating department winding up in a cul-de-sac of isolation? It is both an odd tale of randomness and simultaneously of loneliness. What I love about the song is the contrast between the squealing feedback from Ira Kaplan’s Fender Stratocaster and the subject matter straight out of some Gen X version of Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Voyeuristic, the speaker details seeing the naked girl in “someone else’s door but not mine.” She wears only cherry Chapstick, nothing else (odd choice to protect the lips from the elements, but nothing else). How he can see with this level of detail only means that the speaker is far closer than he should be. The song does not mention binoculars, but that is a (creepy) possibility here, let’s be honest. 

There is something cartoonish about this song to me, as though “Cherry Chapstick” is based on a half-lie or off-kilter daydream. The seemingly glow-in-the dark Chapstick dominates the speaker’s mind, transfixing him completely. Is this where fetishes come from (the skin care aisle in CVS)? The other odd detail here to me is that she is wearing Chapstick–not lipstick, Chapstick. Despite the healthy protection from the elements, all I can think of here are cracked dry lips–not necessarily a set ripe for immediate smooching (despite the lack of clothes). But the girl refrains entirely from looking back at the speaker–he is seemingly invisible, a kind of modern day Quasimodo.

But she is all-too real to him. This is a song told through a reverse one-way mirror. He can only stare; he can only ogle. So why the prolonged, beautifully inelegant Sonic Youth inspired jam (I personally love their dissonance most of all)? To me it speaks to the loss of self on the narrator’s part. He has no security. He has no confidence. Girls do not consider him. He is left to run in circles all day long. He is Beck’s “Loser.” He can only watch the splendor of others, a kind of modern day J. Alfred Prufrock perhaps, sans peaches. “Cherry Chapstick” is a masterpiece of navel gazing and the male gaze. Both. 

Yo La Tengo has, for thirty plus years created an impressive array of songs that give the listener both great background music for lounging or working at the computer–what with their long-play aesthetic and low-tempo, mellow strains. Yo La Tengo churns out pleasant-to-the-ear songs of secular life in Twenty-First century America. Songs of disappointment. Songs of yearning. Coming from their album, And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out, Yo La Tengo’s “Cherry Chapstick” has become one of their “hits” over the years, a testament to the song’s catchy riff, ragged guitarwork and sense of wistful (almost middle aged) case of the blahs. The entire album is a gem. 

Yo La Tengo has a bunch of songs like this in their catalogue–songs with quirky titles or a sense of failure at the root. “Cherry Chapstick” comes from one of their best albums, one featuring in its artwork by Gregory Crewdson, a seemingly mundane dusky suburban scene (which actually features, if you look hard enough, what looks like an alien abduction), and a nearly twenty minute song about Hoboken, New Jersey of all places. It is a meandering album with lots of slow pockets built for exploration–but “Cherry Chapstick” is the one that pops. In “Cherry Chapstick” the girl is unattainable, “belonging” to someone else, just like so many other things in current society. That is the whole point. Oh, we can look but we cannot touch. It is not ours. And, you know what, even the glance is questionable. Watch it, buddy.