yoshi’s island represents the transfem community by detailing a trans girl’s relationship with her parent, society, and a third party who is also transgender. This is a transfem anthem with lyrics that can hit extremely hard for any trans person, like “I won’t say she even though I know you want me to, I know that it’s hard but I swear I still love you”. It encapsulates how it feels to be trans in such an amazing and accurate way, with a bouncy, energetic vibe that sounds and feels like the joy that comes with learning who you are.
Youtube link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElkuSVwNx_o
Full song lyrics:
One, two, three, four
One, two, three, four
One, two, three, four
Five, six, seven, eight
I can’t take the pressure
Yeah, everybody thinks that you just need to grow up
I know it’s hard, it’s fucking impossible
tryna make sense of the things that you feel now
With spiro and estro from Vanuatu
What the hell do you think that’ll do to you?
I won’t say “she” even though I know you want me to
I know that it’s hard but I swear I still love you
I can’t take the pressure
Cry on the bathroom floor when you look in the mirror
Cover your neck or they’ll cut your head off
J, you’re only cute with your heart eyes and legs crossed
Write the things you think when you’re out of your body
Run yourself out of words to say you’re hopelessly lonely
And don’t leave the city and don’t leave the covers too
I know it’s hard but I swear I still love you
I am never gonna understand
I am never gonna understand
I am everything you think about her
Behind her back, the whole truth
Does it hurt to say you love her like a son?
The world could kill her just cause she can’t fit in right
Yeah, they’ll make it so dangerous
When they leave no room to breathe in the space they carved out for us
When the get inside your head, give you white lies and black eyes
When they try to change your shape until your sense of self dies
But you make me feel like I’m out of my body
We ran out of words to say we’re hopelessly lonely
So don’t leave the city, please don’t leave the covers too
Just stay right here babe, let’s live life like lovers do
I am never gonna understand
I am never gonna understand
I am everything you think about her
Behind her back, the whole truth
Does it hurt to say you care about your son?
The world could kill her just cause she can’t fit in right
You take spiro and estro from Vanuatu
You say you won’t think about nothing but loving you
We’re sleeping harbor seals on the seaside of Malibu
Okay, I won’t think about nothing but loving you
Spiro and estro from Vanuatu
You say you won’t think about nothing but loving you
We’re sleeping harbor seals on the seaside of Malibu
Okay, I won’t think about nothing but loving you
Analysis*
This song seems to have a perspective shift halfway through, shifting from the perspective of J’s mother/father/relative, who doesn’t support their identity, and their lover, who is likely also genderqueer.
The first part of the song reads exactly like something an unsupportive parent of a trans person might say. “I can’t take the pressure, yeah, everybody thinks that you just need to grow up” (making it about themself, saying that it’s stressful for them, the parent), “I know it’s hard, it’s fucking impossible, tryna make sense of the things that you feel now” (as if they’re saying ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about, you’re not trans you’re just confused’), “Write the things you think when you’re out of your body, run yourself out of words to say you’re hopelessly lonely” (don’t talk about it, just write about it in a journal), “I won’t say she, even though I know you want me to, I know that it’s hard, but I swear I still love you” (I don’t support your identity, but I still love you, I swear), the lyrics all paint a clear picture of J and the singer’s relationship. The lyrics of the second half of the song, however, have an entirely different tone, being more supportive, and using “us” at times when singing about trans issues. With lyrics like “Just stay right here, babe, let’s live life like lovers do”, it’s pretty clear that this half of the song is from the perspective of J’s lover and their relationship with J. The song ends with “Okay, I won’t think about nothing but loving you”, to represent J accepting that, okay, we may both be in constant danger from society, but at least we have eachother.
*This is just how I’m interpreting the song, to the best of my ability and in the way that I think makes the most sense, alot of it’s pretty straightforward and I’m very confident my analysis is correct.
Sidenotes:
- A demo version of this song exists, titled “yoshi’s island things”. This version is very different, with some chunks of the song not even making it into it’s later version, but is just as amazing as it’s counterpart, with some lyrics that hit hard in ways the other doesn’t.
- This song has connections to “bedroom community”, “glass beach and blood rivers,” “cold weather”, “classic j dies and goes to hell”, “dallas”, “(rat castle)” and “soft!!!!!!”, some of glass beach’s other songs, which, together, tell a beautiful story with complex character relationships and themes. bedroom community details the relationship between a trans girl’s relationship with her father, and has similar themes to “yoshi’s island”.
- For example, bedroom community’s lyrics “she writes emo songs, she so depressed, her lyrics are naive, but she still sings here heart out, the only way she knows how to confess” could connect to yoshi’s island’s “write the things you think when you’re out of your body, run yourself out of words to say you’re hopelessly lonely”. Because of the lyrics about the father’s attitude towards his daughter’s identity, it seems that the first half of yoshi’s island is not sung by him, as the tone and attitude is somewhat different, with more religious themes and a harsher attitude. yoshi’s island can connect to glass beach and blood rivers as the relationship between the two transgender characters in the two songs seems to be similar, and it seems that the narrator of the second half of yoshi’s island may be the same as the narrator from glass beach and blood rivers, as the words they say and the sort of vibe to what they’re saying feels similar.
- The lyrics in bedroom community “Melancholia can spread like a virus, I know you got it from that stupid girl” may reference J’s friend/lover, as there’s no other specific girl mentioned in the song. This verse sticks out like a sore thumb, as the mention of some girl doesn’t mesh with any of the themes or lyrics in the rest of the song, but through a later connection to this song in cold weather, this being a reference to J’s friend can only make sense. bedroom community is a song where we learn that J spends alot of time in an online group, the “bedroom community” where they feel like they can truly be themself, and in “cold weather”, we get the lyrics “I love the way you make me feel when I’m staring at my screen, at four A.M., trying not to fall asleep”, which is reminiscent of this bedroom community. Also in cold weather, we learn that J developed feelings for their friend, during this period where they were communicating online, with the verse “I wanna say I think it’s OK if we just don’t both feel the same way, but I feel like we’re more than just friends”, and this leads to the relationship we see between the two in yoshi’s island.
- However, from the lyrics and themes in soft!!!!!!, we find that J’s mental health was spiraling, with their gender dysphoria becoming cripplingly intense, and, as J sings, “I know, know what you’re thinking, it seems like I just can’t stop making everything about myself”, implying that J’s spiral was bringing their friend down as well, leading to strain on their relationship. (rat castle), which seems to be part of the story as the term “rate castle” referenced in “dallas”, consists of only the verses “These days I don’t know what to do” and then “these days I don’t know what to do with you”, repeated twice, which I believe to be the internal thought of J’s friend, not sure what to do about J’s rapidly spiraling mental health. dallas shows us what J’s friend decided to do, driving out of town, to start a new life anywhere else, driven away by J’s issues and the lack of support from their own parents. As they drive away, the friend reminisces about the way that their circumstances made them feel small, and how J pushed them away.
- We see that these two had lost touch for quite some time in glass beach and blood rivers, which I believe to be J’s bestie telling J what happened after a long time of disconnection between them. cold weather tells us explicitly that there was at least a six month period of time where they were out of touch, and tells us that it took this entire six months for J’s friend to realize “I didn’t miss the cold weather, I just missed you”. classic j dies and goes to hell, with the same idea conceptually as cold weather but from the perspective of J rather than their friend, centers around J attempting to make a life for themself without their friend, finding a decent job, moving into an apartment they know they’ll never own, and having trouble sleeping, filled with guilt over how things turned out. The title of this song is also how we know that J is the one left behind, and their friend was the one that ran away, as it includes J’s name.
- glass beach and blood rivers seems to be the last song chronologically, and is from the perspective of J’s friend, explaining what happened when they left, and promising J that they’ll never leave again, while finding J at the bottom of a downward spiral and sitting with them through a panic attack. J’s friend is back for good, admitting their feelings, in lyrics “so please listen clearly, I love you dearly” and “I love you, okay?”, and promising that they will always be here for J. They propose that they should “forget about the places that we should be”, and run away together. This is where the story ends, and I can only hope that they did, and lived happily ever after, together. 🙂
Personal sidenote: This is my favorite song of all time!!!!!! It hits really hard for me and it’s relatable to me because of my relationships with my mom and grandparents, and WOAH yeah some of these lyrics rock me to my core, like “I won’t say she even though I know you want me to, I know that it’s hard but I swear I still love you”, WOAHHHHHHHH THATS ROUGH –Sylvie <3
