Song Analysis 1

Lyrics: "Landfill" by Daughter

Portraying the image of a relationship gone wrong in "Landfill", Daughter uses loathsome imagery, emotional irony, and bitter metaphors to display the horrific acts of a boy who uses an innocent girl and the internal conflict of "torturous" emotions within herself.

In this song, Daughter utilizes countless examples of loathsome imagery to show the hateful emotions the speaker now harbors for a boy who used her. “So leave me in the cold / wait until the snow covers me up” she commands, already knowing that the boy no longer cares about her and will leave her no matter what. The majority of Daughter’s lyrics contain imagery that portray the harsh feeling the speaker feels towards her past lover. She feels as though the boy no longer cares about her at all, like he couldn’t care less what happens to her now that he is through with her. She shows how uncaring he is when she says: “leave me on the tracks / to wait until the morning train arrives.” Clearly, the speaker holds a lot of resentful feelings towards the boy, and the lyrics show that she believes that now he has left her, he wouldn’t even mind if she disappear completely. To her, it seems her presence has already disappeared from his mind. He gave her false hope and then chose to “leave [her] at the altar / knowing all the things [he] just escaped.”

Along with loathsome imagery, Daughter also uses emotional irony to display the conflicting feelings of the deeply hurt speaker. The speaker proclaims: “I love you so much / but I hate your guts.” The girl has been hurt badly by the boy she used to love, and it causes internal conflict between her head and her heart. She knows that she should hate him, and most of her does resent him for being so awful to her and leaving her so suddenly. But another, very small part of her conscious doesn’t want to give up the love she has for him. She is holding on to the memories that she once had with him. It is so ironic because the listener knows how much the speaker despises her past lover, so you would not expect her to still love him as well. Daughter portrays this mysterious past boy as a heartless human when the speaker says, “wipe away your tear stains / thought you said you didn’t feel pain.”

The final device that was used by Daughter when writing this song was bitter metaphor. The speaker is very resentful and bitter, for she has a mix of emotions and many of them are hatred towards the boy she used to love. “Throw me in a landfill / don’t think about the consequences” the speaker says, comparing herself to a piece of trash in the eyes of the boy she used to know so well. The boy just tosses her aside, as if she was some useless piece of garbage. She speaks indirectly to the boy when she says: “Throw me in the water / don’t think about the splash I will create.” The speaker knows that the boy just used her and the left, not giving a second thought to the outcome of his terrible actions. He isn’t literally throwing her in the water, but rather metaphorically tossing her aside, as he is done with her and doesn’t want anything to do with her. Daughter compares the girl to things that no one would give a second thought to, just like the boy isn’t giving a second thought to her either. Instead he chooses to “walk away / [and] catch up with the sunrise.”

Showing how a boy used and mistreated the speaker, Daughter utilizes loathsome imagery, emotional irony, and bitter metaphor to provide the image of a girl, hopelessly conflicted between her head and her heart, scarred by the harsh acts of a lover who just intended to use her.