"Bound" is my favourite song on B&C. I'm very touched by the lyrics and the chorus which renders (imho) with a lot of sensitiveness the hesitation of someone unsure of someone else's feelings:

"And I ask... I am asking you... Asking you if you might still want me..."

I also like the last lines:

"When I said: I am bound to you forever

Here's what I meant: I am bound to you forever"

This is part of the rare love songs in which the word "love" is never used...

This is part of the rare love songs in which the word "love" is never used...

Like this sentence. The sound gives me an emotion of insecurity - great strings in the beginning. Maybe she had the thoughts that her love was one-sided in this deep she sensed. A sign in the own heart is only placed by yourself. Sometimes I forgot this, nobody, even the beloved can understand the love inside of me. Great song which I interpret in this way.

 Susanna
 

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There's a bit of magic in everything and then some loss to even things out

 

I read one or two reviewers suggesting Suzanne was singing this to the audience, which I thought a bit strange.  But I do like it as it was intended and written.  Nicely done.

And if Suzanne reads this, and does happen to be singing it to the audience - the answer by the way on behalf of the Undertow crowd is - YES we still do want you to keep making your wonderful music!!  Long may it continue.

Helen. 

 

Hello Helen,

thank you for your thoughts. We are all addicted to her music, and every songs tells us this love is not repelled by her. But Bound is so austere and self reflected. In this great song, I find my own feelings of being bound to someome, but I'm unable to give them voice and music, but she does and in this great unique moment I become her thought.

So If she really speak directly to the audience in "bound"  ... no I don't want that she is taken us so serious!

And Suzanne, YES YES YES we will be listen to you as long as we live.

Susanna

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There's a bit of magic in everything and then some loss to even things out

Hi CasparHauser (are you the one I now as K.?),

I very much agee with you.
I`m so touched of the risk of deep commitment in it. ... Some month ago, a person I really love told me she doesn´t think I know this commitment. I think she took me wrong. Because when I listen to "Bound" I cant help feeling my own commitment - and also the hurt that she didn´t (want to?) see it.    

Well,  I hope this is not too personal. But being with the tow may allow this, I think.  

I don't think that this is one of the stronger songs on the album - I put it somewhere in the middle.  I also don't know that Vega should go for anything quite this symphonic as I don't think that it compliments her voice.  Welll, I wouldn't say that it was a "miss" or a "failure", but it doesn't quite work for me.  And at times, you can barely hear what she's saying against the music.  I also don't think that these are among her stronger lyrics, as heartfelt as they are.

That being said, it is by far the longest song on the album, as well as being the most musically complex.  At 1:21 when she starts to sing "And I ask", it really picks and and becomes more interesting and then later there are other such dramatic changes in the music whole a whole different set of instrumentation.  (The way that the strings are used percussively in this song remind me of Kate Bush's song "Cloudbusting" and I really like that song and feel that I can jam to both it and "Bound", so in that light it is cool.)  And it doesn't just go back-and-forth between one sound and another.  This song was very ambitious, and I admire that, and I think that it it excellent fodder for further experimentation as well as remixing.  It also feels more like SiRaG than B&C, although I know the story behind it is coming from a quite different and later time in her life than the times and events of SiRaG, it's just that it's so lavishly produced and so vulnerable which were two things which marked SiRaG, in particular, among all her albums.

-M

I couldn't think of one single song on B&C that doesn't belong there. (And I guess, miloluvr would agree. Am I right?) I particularly like the evolution of "Bound", the story behind this song, the levels of meaning (husband, fans, audience etc.) and that a song called "Unbound" comes right after it. It is a reflection of the two antipodes in the title of the album, Beauty and Crime. Bound and Unbound. 

That makes many "bounds" in Suzanne's repertory: "Bound", "Unbound", "Ironbound"

@Tanja: Thanks for the message. Sorry I saw someone else had taken a similar username as mine with a "K". He/She was the first. Apologies...

"Bound" is not only a great song because of its lyrics (maybe among the most intimate and explicit lyrics from Suzanne on her recent life), but it is also a gem when it comes to orchestration.

I'd love to hear it live.

actually, i don't see "bound" & "unbound" as opposites, just like i don't see any opposition in the title "beauty & crime". how can one be bound to someone without being unbound ourselves? and the '&' in the title is about what is in-between, not opposite.

and the orchestration/production on this song has nothing to do with the ones on "songs in red and gray". they are absolutely miles apart.

roger and out, fátima  

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chance is the only thing that doesn't happen by chance

Hi Fatima,

hi andi,

no need to be sorry. the word antipodes may mean opposite sides (of the globe) and that's what i understood you were saying. your explanation does clear your meaning and it is what i meant too. thanks for it.

love, fátima

 

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chance is the only thing that doesn't happen by chance

Thanks, Fatima. Isn't it interesting, how talking about a song can not only bring new ideas from others, but also clarify your own thoughts? I maybe making a great jump here, but if we speak of a whole world inbetween beauty and crime, Suzanne on the cover is standing in a round spotlight, round like the world...

in berlin, when suzanne was singing "bound" i thought of "penitent". there were a lot of similarities in suzanne's rendition of these two songs (the way "penitent" was delivered was in my memory from previous concerts).

but it wasn't just that, the live attitude, that made me think of them together. these are songs of someone in lack of something, guidance and love, who asks for them to another someone, be it a "You" or a "you". even so in "penitent" defiance lurks ("would i obey?") whereas in "bound" there's total commitment ("i am bound to you forever"). 

 

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chance is the only thing that doesn't happen by chance

miloluvr:

 I also don't think that these are among her stronger lyrics, as heartfelt as they are.

I'm wondering if this is sort of by design, and also part of a pattern in which Suzanne is deliberately downplaying the singer-songwriter-ness of the B&C songs as compared with SiRaG. That is, the last album had some of the most meticulously crafted lyrics Suzanne has ever produced, awash in metaphors and similes and carefully paralleled structures and precisely chosen words, whereas this time it seems she's going for more of an immediacy of emotion. It also might be why the songs and the album are so short this time, making their statements and then moving on. There's a feeling of urgency here that seems new, or at least stronger than before.

The switch from SiRaG to B&C also reminds me of the transition from Days of Open Hand, another "ambitious" album, to 99.9F, in which she seemed to be paring everything down to essentials.

In "Bound," the words at the start of the song ("ruined by rain, weathered by wind," etc.) feel like the words of someone struggling so hard to say something so deeply important that it's an effort just to get them out, without artifice or any attempt to be overly clever. They also feel like someone hesitating to say what absolutely has to come next, which arrives with the chorus: Do you still want me? (I'm asking ...) I'm bound to you forever. In other words: I'm standing here with my heart in my hands, waiting for you to smash it. And hoping you won't.

I hadn't thought of SiRaG as being "vulnerable," as you put it, but I guess it is. This feels even more so.

I was wondering when there'd be another opportune time for me to discuss this song.  :)

For some reason, I am getting hooked on this song.  Musically, I think it's just so complex and hooking.  Very full-bodied.  Symphonic, even.  As far as I can recall, it's the most full-bodied song of hers beside "Birthday".  Maybe "Penitent" is up there, too.

However, it's the lyrics I have a problem with.  They're sort of not so inspired and often fall flat for me.  I mean, as it is, as I think I understand it, written to/for Paul Mills, and as I don't know their history, I really can't do very much when it comes to guessing the worlds of meaning behind the lyrics.  But I do know that as somebody who is not an Alpha Male and who is somebody who people dump and then want to come back to, a sort of "rebound" boyfriend or somebody who is often viewed as a welcome mat, I do not take kindly to these lyrics.  If somebody had dumped me and came back later and asked if I still wanted them, at this point in time, I might get mad or offended or asked "Well, what has changed?"  I might, at best, take them back and them dump THEM.  Not so much as to teach them a lesson, but that's often how karma works.

I dunno.  Maybe it's not the song itself.  As hooked as i can get on it and as much as it is a song that I can jam to, if I really sit and think about the lyrics and actually listen to them, I relate it to myself and feel like chopped liver.  Although I want somebody who will love me - strengths, faults and all, I want somebody who also wants me and thinks of me as a great catch and not as somebody to fall back on, which is, when I relate this song to myself, what I unfortunately feel like.

-M