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Not one to let a divine album like Titanic Rising fall into the forgotten category just because it’s been five years since its release, Weyes Blood has brought the record back to life (for fifth anniversary purposes) by releasing a video for “Andromeda.” Co-directed by Weyes (a.k.a. Natalie Mering), Ambar Navarro and Colton Stock, the three-pronged storyline follows the chanteuse as a mere mortal roaming the desert, an astronaut in space and some kind of “Queen of the Galaxy” riding an asteroid headed straight for Earth.
As her desert self plods along aimlessly through the abyss of the landscape, she keeps trying to find some sign of life, putting her hand over her forehead in that way that serves as the universal symbol for: “looking for someone (or something).” Then, all at once, she sees that sign of life she was looking for: smoke billowing from an opening in a rock. Not quite a cave exactly, but a chasm. Briefly hopeful, Weyes Blood runs to the source of the smoke as the lyrics, “We all want something new/But can’t seem to follow through/Something’s better than nothing/Or so that I thought” play in the background (in a way, it’s kind of like the inverse sentiment behind the Spice Girls belting out, “Too much of something is bad enough/But something’s coming over me to make me wonder/Too much of nothing is just as tough”). These are fitting emotions for Weyes Blood to express based on her explanation of the song as a deep dive into the meaning, particularly for women, of that abstract concept known as “true love.”
As she told The Believer when Titanic Rising first came out, “True love in ‘Andromeda’ is kind of like this abstract thing to a woman who has accumulated a lot of negative experiences, and maybe not had a lot of support otherwise… There are a lot of wounds that a woman accumulates… That’s really hard to bring into a relationship—that is a total relationship killer. It’s a lot to ask somebody, of a man especially, to be like, ‘Can you please draw me out of my hardened shell and make me soft again?’ ‘Andromeda’ is a bit like that.”
Not one to miss out on a bit of ironic humor with regard to the song’s wistfully romantic aura, it’s no coincidence that the word/name Andromeda applies to the Greek myth about the daughter of King Cepheus, ruler of Aethiopia, and husband to Cassiopeia. The latter, like Andromeda, also has a constellation named in her honor, even though it was Cassiopeia’s fault that Andromeda ended up needing to be sacrificed to Poseidon after claiming that she and her daughter were, like, way hotter than the sea nymphs known as the Nereids. Not one to take kindly to any shit-talking about daughters of the sea, Poseidon sent a sea monster (Cetus) to wreak havoc on the coast until Cepheus consulted his oracle and was told that the only way to stop the madness was to sacrifice Andromeda to the monster.
Thus, she ended up bound to a rock in the middle of the sea, ostensibly doomed until she was saved by Perseus (a.k.a. Hercules’ great-grandfather), who happened to be flying by on Pegasus with the head of Medusa in his hand. And so, a germinal precursor to the conventional fairy tale was born. Not to mention loose inspiration for the reason why the “Queen of the Galaxy” version of Weyes Blood is set against the backdrop of brightly-burning white stars (or “balls of gas,” as Pumbaa would point out).
In the same abovementioned interview, Weyes Blood also added, “The Greek myth is that [Andromeda] is tied to a rock and she’s going to get ravaged by this sea monster and this guy has to come save her. There’s this hope to be saved, and it’s just a little too much to ask of people.” (*cough cough* modern men “experiencing their own masculinity crisis”). Or at least people of the current epoch, who are put-upon if you so much as try to actually talk to them on the phone. WB then continued, “Ultimately, at the end of the song, it’s like, you eventually just have to believe it’s real to make it real. It’s a lot to ask of the universe for something to just show up and blow your mind.” And yet, the minds of mere mortals were blown all the time before the advent of the internet tended to dull all sense of wonder once the initial novelty wore off.
As for the Earth-bound Weyes Blood in the video, the being she pulls from the “smoky hole” is cloaked in black and, in fact, seems to look a lot like Death himself. An interpretation that would make sense within the context of earthly creatures’ time being up if they keep going the way they are. Such imagery is, at times, seemingly in stark contrast to lyrics like, “Love is calling/It’s time to let it through/Find a love that will make you/I dare you to try.” The notion of love “making” a person, as though they’re being carved out of clay, might come across as more than slightly old-fashioned. Or, worse than that, adhering to the trite, Dean Martin-sanctioned adage, “You’re nobody till somebody loves you.” But as Weyes Blood says, you’ll never find anything resembling so-called true love that will make you “somebody” unless you at least take a risk on “putting yourself out there.”
By the same token, she keeps presenting the dichotomies of that ideal, having also remarked to The Believer, “…I’m married to my independence. I’m truly in love with my lack of attachment. For me, pursuing love—I don’t know to explain it. It’s almost like, needing an intimacy, needing a sense of love, but knowing that no one person is ever going to fulfill that blown out ideal that you’ve positioned yourself to believe in. Movie love. But I do think that there’s things that you can do if you want the movie love. Building the bedroom, making the milk and cookies or whatever. You can manifest it.” Ergo, her declarative chorus in “Andromeda.”
Beyond the “leap of faith” chorus, however, there are signs of her, let’s say, “cautious optimism” about love, as exemplified in another verse that goes, “Treat me right I’m still a good man’s daughter/Let me in if I break/And be quiet if I shatter.” To the point of being a “good man’s daughter,” WB also mentioned to The Believer, “[My dad] was very much a man of love and integrity. He made me feel very safe, so I wasn’t really prepared for the reality of the world, and men. I was taken advantage of, and manipulated, and had to walk around with some baggage.” So sure, obviously that would make a girl rather skittish about matters of the heart.
As for the elemental motifs throughout the video—particularly when the “Queen of the Galaxy” crashes into Earth on an asteroid—it all goes back to Weyes Blood’s overarching message about climate change on the album. After all, she didn’t call it Titanic Rising for nothing. In another interview to promote the record when it first came out, she told Flood magazine, “The Titanic is a very symbolic tragedy of the hubris of man [there goes her “Greek myths mode” again], thinking we can conquer nature. It’s ironic that the Titanic would crash into an iceberg and sink, and now the icebergs are melting and sinking the third class of the world. They’re going to suffer at the expense of our wealth.”
Thus, there is a certain layered meaning to many of the lyrics on “Andromeda.” This includes, “Gettin’ tired of looking/You know that I hate the game/Don’t wanna waste any more time/You know I been holdin’ out.” On the one hand, it’s about the quest to find love. Yet, on the other, it applies so clearly to the way in which most residents of Earth have come to hate this game called capitalism, knowing full well it’s a dead-end road leading straight to a bad neighborhood where the outcome is certain death. And that, yes, all of us have been “holdin’ out” on what we’re capable of in order to effect any real change to avoid that proverbial neighborhood. The one we actually wouldn’t have to avoid if it weren’t for capitalism.
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Genna Rivieccio
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