Song Analysis 4 Mirel Wagner: No Death

This morning I listened to Mirel Wagner, a young singer-songwriter from Finland, but adopted from Ethiopia. She sort of sounds like a mixture of Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits, and Billie Holiday. The song, the music video, her performance; everything is stripped down. In the music video Wagner portrays a woman that is ugly and beautiful, fragile and strong, restrained and bare. “No Death” is a dark lullaby with a simple bluesy old-school arrangement, and it is heavy and raw as heavy metal can’t be.

It is refreshing to know that there is a young Finnish woman who can write convincing folksy-blues songs about subjects like hanging on to a dead lover and kissing her rotten tongue, because death can’t tear them apart. Just…wow. She has a prescence, even if a bit haunting, and her whispered delivery lifts her songs to a whole other level.

Even though the song is rugged and sad, it has a cathartic healing quality. I couldn’t stop listening to it over, and over; fascinated by the conflicting woman in the video. A real woman, vulnerable, but determined and tough.

I don’t know if Mirel is gay, but her lover in the song is a woman, and the character of death is a man; who she outwits, who she outruns. She clings to her lover, even death cannot separate them.

Lyrics: 

my baby has a swollen face
long stiff limbs
them eyes are black pits
of a place where I've been
her hair is long
still smells like mud
she answered to my kiss
with a rotten tongue
no death can
tear us apart
her body is cold
well its gonna get colder
but my love will ignite
what was left to smoulder
I move my hips
in her I am home
I'll keep on loving
till the marrow dries from her bones
no death
can tear us apart
all day
I stay by her side
but death has a claim
and a right to my bride
I shut the doors
pull the curtains and hide
I heard something moving
somewhere outside
no death can
tear us apart
but death comes a sneaking in
trough the keyholes
he's clever and he knows
what's beneath the floorboards
death comes to feast
like a greedy hungry beast
he wants it all
and here he crawls
and here he crawls
and here he crawls...