When I first heard this song, I started crying and almost had to pull the car over. I realized suddenly who she was singing this to, because I could have written it - to my own mother, especially in this time of my life when I have separated myself from her and her toxic crap. Listen to it again, as an adult woman who was once a little girl, neglected and abused by your mother, not protected and allowed to be abused by someone else. Walking the line between now and then, that's the memories coming back, having to face them is like deep sea diving...I've never heard it put this way and it's so freakin' accurate...hiding behind her eyes, that's going inside (or out of) your head when it's too hard to take, needing mom there to save you...but she never came. I understand this one, because I lived it. Thank you, Deb, for sharing something so personal and difficult. I hope that it will help other survivors to sever the bonds with family still locked in toxic patterns, as well as to recognize that we're not alone.
Seven years after @truemidge offered this interpretation, Deb Talan confirmed the essence of it. In a 2021 piece on Deb (and the dissolution of The Weepies) in Saratoga Living, journalist Will Levith wrote, "Two years later [in 2015], during an interview I conducted with her for a Refinery29 story about her band The Weepies’ latest album and her bout with cancer, she revealed for the first time publicly that she had been a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, and for that reason, had been estranged from her family for a decade. All of that was captured in her song \'Orbiting.\'"...
Seven years after @truemidge offered this interpretation, Deb Talan confirmed the essence of it. In a 2021 piece on Deb (and the dissolution of The Weepies) in Saratoga Living, journalist Will Levith wrote, "Two years later [in 2015], during an interview I conducted with her for a Refinery29 story about her band The Weepies’ latest album and her bout with cancer, she revealed for the first time publicly that she had been a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, and for that reason, had been estranged from her family for a decade. All of that was captured in her song \'Orbiting.\'"
I found the 2015 interview with Deb Talan referenced in my earlier comment. Here\'s an excerpt about "Orbiting":\r\n\r\n[I]t’s the band’s downhearted numbers that offer the most fodder for interpretation. One such song is “Orbiting” from 2008’s Hideaway, in which the song’s narrator confronts an anonymous subject: “You named me judge/the day that I was born/You asked too much/to fix what you had torn.” More than any other song in the band’s catalog, it will haunt you. When asked what it’s about, Deb starts to answer then freezes. After talking with her husband, she summons the courage to continue. “So,...
I found the 2015 interview with Deb Talan referenced in my earlier comment. Here\'s an excerpt about "Orbiting":\r\n\r\n[I]t’s the band’s downhearted numbers that offer the most fodder for interpretation. One such song is “Orbiting” from 2008’s Hideaway, in which the song’s narrator confronts an anonymous subject: “You named me judge/the day that I was born/You asked too much/to fix what you had torn.” More than any other song in the band’s catalog, it will haunt you. When asked what it’s about, Deb starts to answer then freezes. After talking with her husband, she summons the courage to continue. “So, I’m a double-survivor now,” she says. “I survived cancer, and before that, I survived sexual abuse in my family.” She explains that a number of the songs she’s written throughout her career — including “Orbiting,” written for her mother — have contemplated this dark period in her life, one that all but destroyed her relationship with her family. (She hasn’t been in contact with them for 10 years.)
When I first heard this song, I started crying and almost had to pull the car over. I realized suddenly who she was singing this to, because I could have written it - to my own mother, especially in this time of my life when I have separated myself from her and her toxic crap. Listen to it again, as an adult woman who was once a little girl, neglected and abused by your mother, not protected and allowed to be abused by someone else. Walking the line between now and then, that's the memories coming back, having to face them is like deep sea diving...I've never heard it put this way and it's so freakin' accurate...hiding behind her eyes, that's going inside (or out of) your head when it's too hard to take, needing mom there to save you...but she never came. I understand this one, because I lived it. Thank you, Deb, for sharing something so personal and difficult. I hope that it will help other survivors to sever the bonds with family still locked in toxic patterns, as well as to recognize that we're not alone.
Seven years after @truemidge offered this interpretation, Deb Talan confirmed the essence of it. In a 2021 piece on Deb (and the dissolution of The Weepies) in Saratoga Living, journalist Will Levith wrote, "Two years later [in 2015], during an interview I conducted with her for a Refinery29 story about her band The Weepies’ latest album and her bout with cancer, she revealed for the first time publicly that she had been a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, and for that reason, had been estranged from her family for a decade. All of that was captured in her song \'Orbiting.\'"...
Seven years after @truemidge offered this interpretation, Deb Talan confirmed the essence of it. In a 2021 piece on Deb (and the dissolution of The Weepies) in Saratoga Living, journalist Will Levith wrote, "Two years later [in 2015], during an interview I conducted with her for a Refinery29 story about her band The Weepies’ latest album and her bout with cancer, she revealed for the first time publicly that she had been a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, and for that reason, had been estranged from her family for a decade. All of that was captured in her song \'Orbiting.\'"
I found the 2015 interview with Deb Talan referenced in my earlier comment. Here\'s an excerpt about "Orbiting":\r\n\r\n[I]t’s the band’s downhearted numbers that offer the most fodder for interpretation. One such song is “Orbiting” from 2008’s Hideaway, in which the song’s narrator confronts an anonymous subject: “You named me judge/the day that I was born/You asked too much/to fix what you had torn.” More than any other song in the band’s catalog, it will haunt you. When asked what it’s about, Deb starts to answer then freezes. After talking with her husband, she summons the courage to continue. “So,...
I found the 2015 interview with Deb Talan referenced in my earlier comment. Here\'s an excerpt about "Orbiting":\r\n\r\n[I]t’s the band’s downhearted numbers that offer the most fodder for interpretation. One such song is “Orbiting” from 2008’s Hideaway, in which the song’s narrator confronts an anonymous subject: “You named me judge/the day that I was born/You asked too much/to fix what you had torn.” More than any other song in the band’s catalog, it will haunt you. When asked what it’s about, Deb starts to answer then freezes. After talking with her husband, she summons the courage to continue. “So, I’m a double-survivor now,” she says. “I survived cancer, and before that, I survived sexual abuse in my family.” She explains that a number of the songs she’s written throughout her career — including “Orbiting,” written for her mother — have contemplated this dark period in her life, one that all but destroyed her relationship with her family. (She hasn’t been in contact with them for 10 years.)