For the Record: "XO"

To title an album “XO” is a bold statement. A kiss and then a hug—a simple, casual valediction reserved for the closest relationships, the letters “xo” seem to be most at home carved into the weathered wood of park benches. “xo” means memories and being stuck between youth and growing up.

Fortunately, Elliott Smith was a master of devastatingly personal songwriting, and his 1998 album, named after the sweetest two letters to ever be left on a page, is both the salt and ointment to the wound of heartbreak. It’s an album about breaking up, but not just losing a lover; “XO” is an album about breaking up with someone you love and then breaking up with yourself. The 14 tracks could be considered an autobiography of sorts—from the casually impassioned “Sweet Adeline” to the defeated “I Didn’t Understand,” Smith explores every nook and cranny of his despondent and often sequestered mind.

Over the years, I’ve built a home among the most beautiful moments that populate “XO,” and the carpet is marked with Smith’s shoe prints. He taught me that breaking up with myself is easy to do. “Cut this picture into you and me / Burn it backwards, kill this history” are the lines that open the album, and this idea of forcibly excising something slowly evolves and takes on multiple meanings throughout the record. On “Waltz #2 (XO),” Smith’s repeated plea, “You’re no good, you’re no good, you’re no good” becomes one of the most matter-of-fact and cutting lines from the album. What better way to stop loving yourself than to convince yourself that you’re not worthwhile?

Despite the occasional stunningly delivered line, though, Smith isn’t an incredible lyricist. He creates an atmosphere dependent not on any particular phrase, but on the emotional pathos that saturates the album as a whole. Smith avoids detailed personal sketches that might isolate him from his listeners, making his music all the more relatable. Because of this accessibility, I gradually adopted “XO” to be a story about my own life. Elliott Smith and I had a long distance relationship, but the distance was more through time than through space. Ten years after the release of “XO,” Smith’s claim on the fifth track, “Pitseleh”—which lyrically  works to deconstruct the system of endictment in relationships—that “no one deserves it” helped me imagine a blameless world, safe from the accusations of others, but mostly from the accusations of myself. All people are too hard on themselves, and I knew that—but it was different hearing that assertion come out of someone else’s mouth. But throughout “XO,” Smith chooses to deny hope, instead sounding resigned and, occasionally, regretful. After all, he has nothing to prove—despite this album being his first on a major label, “XO” retains the close, intimate feel of the multi-instrumentalist’s solo work.

The album’s greatest strength is epitomized by the quiet piano intro to “Waltz #1,” which is marked by magical, shimmering overtones of the earlier waltz on the album. The sparsely amalgamated instruments provide the perfect backdrop to Smith’s characteristically double-tracked vocals, which themselves carry a certain honesty and sadness. A minute or two into the track, a single piano line accompanies his voice as he offers a striking lament, “What was I supposed to say?” It is in this moment that the album’s defining and greatest characteristic becomes clear—that, at the end of the day, the best word to describe the doubt-filled, ever-questioning “XO” might be “human.”

Being at a loss for words is not what you might expect from a songwriter, but it is this humble uncertainty that breathes life into “XO.” The moments that stuck most closely with me were when he seemed the most unsure—the ambiguous discontent of “Oh Well, Okay” and the glorified ambiguity in “A Question Mark.” Even the pop-influenced tracks such as “Bled White” that disappointed Smith’s biggest fans upon the release of “XO” retain a sense of intimate honesty. In truth, all of these tracks are organic products of a man whose career was born through raw emotion and acoustic guitar.

Although “XO” is an album that taught me the art of breaking up, it ultimately helped me put myself back together. At the very least, it helped me come to terms with the part of me that wanted things to fall apart and for me to forget. I wouldn’t be exaggerating very much if I said that every day comes with a reminder that I won’t be hearing from Elliott ever again—this October will be the 10-year anniversary of his death. Although two of Smith’s studio albums were released—one posthumously—after “XO,” I consider its final track, “I Didn’t Understand,” his goodbye, if not to the world, then at least to me. Sometimes, I revisit the album, but other times, the shoe prints on the carpet stop me from making it past the foyer. The freshest of them all is on this final track, when his voice tiredly declares through the warm blanket of a capella vocals, “There’s nothing here that you’ll miss, I can guarantee you this.”

Elliott, you couldn’t have been more wrong.

xo