Music / Have One On Me

Speak my name, and I appear.

Have One on Me is the third album by harpist and singer-songwriter Joanna Newsom, released February 23, 2010. In stark contrast to its predecessor, Ys, which only contained five very long songs, Have One on Me is a triple album, with eighteen total tracks at two hour long runtime. Three singles, "'81," "Good Intentions Paving Co." and "Kingfisher" were released to promote the album.

Preceded by Ys in 2006. Succeeded by Divers in 2015.

Tracklist:

Disc One

1. "Easy"
2. "Have One on Me"
3. "'81"
4. "Good Intention Paving Co."
5. "No Provenance"
6. "Baby Birch"

Disc Two

1. "On a Good Day"
2. "You and Me, Bess"
3. "In California"
4. "Jackrabbits"
5. "Go Long"
6. "Occident"

Disc Three

1. "Soft as Chalk"
2. "Esme"
3. "Autumn"
4. "Ribbon Bows"
5. "Kingfisher"
6. "Does Not Suffice"

Tropes:

• Animal Motif:
  • Spiders in "Have One On Me." The song is based on Lola Montez, who was famed for her erotic "spider dance" and there's several lyrics references to spiders, tarantulas, and daddy-long-legs.
  • Rabbits on "Baby Birch."
• Biblical Motifs: "'81" describes setting up a place to stay in the Garden of Eden. There's also a little bit of blasphemous humor in Newsom commenting that the place is "hotter than hell."
• The Blue Beard: "Go Long," complete with a visit to "a terrible room / Gilded with the gold teeth of the women who loved you." Alo explicitly referred to in-song: "Run away from home; your beard is still blue".
• Bookends:
  • Have One On Me opens with "Easy," a song about how she is "easy to love." The closer "Does Not Suffice" calls back to that with these lyrics:
  And everything that could remind you
  Of how easy I was not
• Body Horror:
  • On the final verse of "Baby Birch," she describes chasing the rabbit down, skinning it alive, and holding its writhing body in her arms. Given the song's story, it's likely an allegory for the trauma of a miscarriage/abortion and the moment when Baby Birch was lost for good.
  I thought it'd be harder to do but I caught her
  Skinned her quick, held her there
  Kicking and mewling, upended, unspooling
  Unsung and blue
  • One unsettling lyric from "Go Long:"
  I was brought in on a palanquin
  Made from the many bodies of beautiful women
• Break Up Song: "Does Not Suffice" paints a dreary picture of a relationship fizzling out, with the lyrics describing her packing her things to move out of her ex-lover's house.
• Concept Album: Can be argued to be one, with some sense of continuous narrative, telling the tale of a woman entering a relationship under false pretenses, following the relationship and the narrator's emotional turmoil, and ending with a breakup; all the relations to fictional and historical tales, such as those of Bluebeard, Dick Turpin, and Lola Montez, can be seen as allegorical in this sense, especially since a great deal of their respective songs are somewhat fictionalised or invented by Newsom.
• Dark Reprise: Arguably, "Does Not Suffice" to "In California."
• Distinct Double Album: Averted; While the album is split into three discs, the album remains a cohesive sound throughout.
• Downer Ending: The album ends with "Does Not Suffice," in which the relationship that is sung about all over the album ends, and all Newsom can do is hope that the other person knows she tried her best.
• Epic Rocking: The song lengths vary from more conventional to ten minutes long.
• Foreshadowing: "On a Good Day" opens with the lines "Hey, hey, hey, the end is near / On a good day, you can see the end from here." Since the song is about their love being in a state of limbo after the loss of their baby it could be hinting that their relationship isn't going to last.
• Freudian Excuse / Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: The narrator of "Go Long" wants to know who made Bluebeard the way that he is; she learns that he'd been hurt badly by others in the past, which reinforces her "I can fix him" attitude—until she learns the extent of the violence he's inflicted on other women and has to draw the line.
  You have been wronged, tore up since birth
  You have done harm, others have done worse
• Grief Song: "Baby Birch" is a song mourning a baby lost either to miscarriage or abortion.
• Historical Domain Character: Lola Montez on the title track.
• I Can Change My Beloved: "Go Long" uses The Bluebeard fairytale as a metaphor for this relationship dynamic. She even starts to grow fond of him, until she finds the terrible room.
  We both want the very same thing
  We are praying I am the one to save you
• Last Note Nightmare: The last moments of "Does Not Suffice."
• Minimalistic Cover Art: The initial cover featured only the text on a black background without the picture of Newsom. With the picture of her, surrounded by many antiques and furs, it becomes the opposite of this.
• Miniscule Rocking: "On a Good Day" is under two minutes, and Newsom's shortest song.
• Never Trust a Title: "Go Long" is emphatically not about football.
• New Sound Album: Drops the sweeping orchestras from Ys in exchange for piano and some more culturally diverse instruments, such as the mandolin, tambura, kora, lyra, and kaval.
• One-Woman Song: "Esme," named after a newborn baby. You could also count "You and Me, Bess" though the Bess in question is a horse.
• Parental Love Song:
  • "Baby Birch" is a tragic version of this, being an ode to a child that didn't make it to birth.
  • "Esme" is related to this trope, since the song is about a newborn baby, just not Newsom's. The song itself goes into her conflicted feelings of being happy for her friends and adoring their baby, but still struggling with the grief of losing her own child.
• Shout-Out: "Go Long" references three albums by Will Oldham, Ease Down the Road, Master and Everyone, and The Letting Go.
• Regional Riff: When Newsom sings the lyrics "A princess of Kentucky," a banjo briefly comes in.
• Title Track: Her first album to have one. Newsom says that the title reflects a Central Theme of the album, namely sacrificing too much of yourself for other people for very little (or nothing) in return.
• Vocal Evolution: Newsom underwent surgery for vocal cord nodules in early 2009, with the side-effect that her voice and singing style changed considerably.