With an Oscar nomination, the song ‘Miss Misery’ changed Elliott Smith’s life forever, it catapulted him into the public eye and got him signed to the major label Dreamworks. It also stands apart in Elliott’s work because it was especially written for a movie, ‘Good Will Hunting’ and does not figure in any of his album, except for an early version, with different lyrics, on the posthumous New Moon. Obviously the song contents many references to the storyline of the movie, but it works perfectly by itself.
Elliott felt forced to perform the song himself at the 1998 Academy Awards ceremony, after it was threatened that “someone like Richard Marx” would play his tune, if he would not do it. That day he appeared on everyone’s TV set, wearing a white suit and feeling completely out of it; he told a journalist:
“Everything was in slow motion, and I didn’t feel particularly nervous. I just felt like I was in some odd dream that was probably meant for someone else. Everyone was really nice, but the point of the show is the show. It’s certainly not me. The point of it is to have a big parade of celebrities.”
One of these nice people was none other than Celine Dion who, of course, won the oscar that night with her Titanic song. I cannot resist posting a part of another interview recollecting that moment:
“She was really sweet, which has made it impossible for me to dislike Celine Dion anymore. Even though I can’t stand the music that she makes-with all due respect, I don’t like it much at all-but she herself was very, very nice. She asked me if I was nervous, and I said, ‘Yeah,’ and she was like, ‘That’s good because you get your adrenaline going, and it’ll make your song better. It’s a beautiful song.’ Then she gave me a big hug. It was too much. It was too human to be dismissed simply because I find her music trite.”
In the music video, made by one of his friend Ross Harris, he is dressed in the same kind of white suit he wore at the Academy Awards. For most of the video he is followed by a police officer and feels very uncomfortable by the whole situation. It has to be seen as a joke, may be a reminiscence of the Oscar ceremony, or may be a metaphor for Elliott’s misery which is constantly chasing him around.
The song evokes the same melancholy already present in Either/Or, a melancholy a la Kierkegaard that does not want to leave him, even when he is supposedly happy.
People have come up with many stories to make sense of ‘Miss Misery,’ stories about someone ending a relationship that leaves him torn up inside, about someone who got dumped and is following his love interest around. However the song seems addressed to his own misery, as if he was directly talking to it,… thus to himself. The ‘Miss,’ which personifies his own depression, makes the song evolve into a poetic description of depression.
The double meaning of the title intentionally leads to confusion between the source of his affection (who may have caused the depression) and the depression itself. And this is the genius of Elliott, if the depression and the lover become one, he admits being in love with the depression itself.
‘Do you miss me, Miss Misery/Like you say you do?’ the repetition of the ‘mis’ brings an unique harmony to the chorus and evokes the eventual regret that could result in breaking up with Miss Misery. Do you miss me? He asks, as if he was regretting her, as if it was abnormal for him to feel happy. Missing Miss Misery morphs into a complaisance in being miserable, familiar grounds for many artists
The song is haunted by two important characters in Elliott’s life: depression/Miss Misery and alcohol/Johnny Walker Red, two old friends, one of them leading to the other and vice-versa. Two old friends that cannot leave him, and as uncomfortable as he seems to be in this video, that he cannot leave himself.