Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings

Tillman's stated in plenty of interviews that his dad kind of summoned him to his grandpa's funeral, after having missed all the other grandparents' funerals, and how he was kind of sickened by how funerals commemorate people's lives in such a shitty, lifeless way. Later, he was making out with a girl (the blogger from imboycrazy, which they both stated personally on her podcast) in a graveyard on Halloween and how he thought to himself, "This is such a better way to commemorate someone's life. My grandpa's favorite thing was probably fucking my grandma, anyway." So this song IS about sex, really, and he's stated that this album is a conscious effort to NOT make the "sexless male fantasy" album that every other artist is making, and how he intends to be upfront about liking sex and drugs and mischief. (All of which appear in this song, so it makes sense that he would release this track first.)

I remember in an interview a few years back, as J. Tillman, the interviewer asked him what themes he saw running through the album he was touring, and he said, "Just, you know... death." And the people in the room laughed, and the interviewer joked about how that was so uplifting (sarcastically, of course) and Josh shrugged and said, "I think it is." He went on to talk about how the idea of the afterlife kind of substantiates our lives in a figurative sense, not a literal sense. It was an interesting little speech he gave, but it really does go to show that death is that one red thread running through everything he writes, whether in an uplifting way (like Year in the Kingdom) or a macabre way (like this). So his writing style has changed, and the sound of his music has changed, but the thoughts that stand behind all of his work still rings true. (To me, at least.)