Clock Opera’s “Belongings” is a song which I keep finding more and more to love about in the year since it came out as a single. It owes more than the band name’s closeness to “Clocks” and is a similar euphoric trance anthem remix in waiting, but takes on a relationship situation that doesn’t come up in songs much and does so in a very clever and moving way.
“Belongings” is built on a short piano figure that repeats all of the way through. It’s clearly recorded and looped, rather than played, because there’s an awkward clipped fraction of a note every time it restarts. That imperfection bothered me at first, but it’s the key to the song. That catch turns the loop into a representation of being in a routine, going round and round, but with a nagging feeling that something isn’t right.
Over the course of the first verse and chorus is covers three different kinds of belongings. First, physical belongings, and the futility of buying more things than you know what to do with.
I’ll keep my belongings with me at all times
I know what I need, I know what is mine
I’ll keep my belongings with me at all times
Until I can carry no more
Then it makes a short leap. What’s another word for things that you carry around with you? Oh yes, baggage.
I’ll put all my papers and records in piles
I’ll store all my secrets in boxes and files
I’ll keep my belongings with me at all times
Until I can carry no more
Finally, it twists with a lovely warmth into the verb to belong, and a feeling that elevates you above those cares.
Sometimes when I wonder about you leaving
The shape of the hole when you’re gone
You give me something that I can believe in
You give me somewhere that I can belong
That lack of specifics about his partner (It doesn’t even say what gender but I’ll go with female just because it will make pronouns easier) at the same time as proclaiming how she improves his life means we’re kind of close to “Video Games”/“A Woman Like You” total neediness territory. The second verse is the important thing that makes “Belongings” something a bit different:
We move our belongings, we surround ourselves
With duplicate copies of books on our shelves
And too many mirrors combine in our lives
Until we can’t tell them apart
And sometimes I crowd you and step on your toes
Sometimes I will go out in yesterday’s clothes
But I show you a side that no-one else knows
And hope that you’ll carry me on
Maybe I’m being generous because I love the song so much, but it feels like the specifics aren’t in the song not because they don’t matter, but just because they’re irrelevant. It’s completely one-sided because it’s about an internal dilemma, about whether it’s worth putting his hopes and fears and innermost thoughts out there any more. It’s about reaching a point where long-term routine and closeness have made the differences between them recede into the background and where he’s stopped thinking about them. ‘Duplicate copies of books on the shelf’ is a neat turn of phrase for combined baggage brought into a relationship and of feeling a lack of space. I’ll give Guy Connelly the benefit of the doubt and assume that ‘yesterday’s clothes’ is not something he’s been told not to do and consciously keeps doing anyway (because, WELL) but there as a pointer to a sometime lack of self-esteem and feeling that life isn’t exciting enough any more.
The verse sheds new light back onto the chorus when it crops up again. He’s lost sight of what he’s getting out of the relationship and now imagining ‘the shape of the hole when you’re gone’ is the only way of getting back to it. That stark thought and reminder has an effect and brings out the song’s message, a ‘hope that you’ll carry me on’ because it is still worth it. Routine happiness might be routine and imperfect, but such as it can be found it’s still happiness, and still an amazing thing.
There’s no great resolution lyrically that says this, but there doesn’t need to be. Throughout the song so far, the music has been slowly building up with the clockwork intricacy that is the band’s trademark, but with that slightly broken piano loop always clearly audible. After the second chorus, Guy starts singing ‘oh oh oh oh oh-oh’ to that same melody, but without the broken bit. After a section of teasing where the drums and synths get increasingly frenzied but don’t quite take off, eventually thick bass kicks in and the song bursts into technicolour joy. That same melody carries on being repeated, but with new happiness and purpose, and if the negative catch is still in there it’s completely drowned out.
