“’Mary Mary” is a lovely mystery, a small piece of heartbreak poetry that sneaks up on you with its slippery grove, punctuated string section and spectral lyrics.”
So says the songwriter, in his release notes for his American Beauty EP. Released on Record Store Day in 2014, American Beauty featured four songs that didn’t make the cut for the High Hopes album a few months earlier.
Apparently “Mary Mary” came pretty darn close, but it’s easy to see how this light, quiet love song would have been overpowered by the fierce rockers and deep musings on the album.
Set (presumably) in Boston’s Charlestown neighborhood, “Mary Mary” is the story of a lost love.
We never learn why Mary took flight, and we’re never quite sure how the narrator feels about it, but we do know that it was serious:
All I got’s a book of love with pages worn clean through
A circle of gold and one bleeding tattoo
There’s a lot of information in those two lines: the two have enough history to have filled a book; they were married (he still has the wedding ring), and his devotion to her was strong and recent enough for him to get a still-bleeding tattoo.
Whatever the circumstances, the two ex-lovers are separated in a neighborhood large enough to lose each other but small enough to never lose word of each other.
This town’s a secret shared and shattered in a sad song
Just torn and tattered pieces of a love gone wrong
The song fades out on the same line it begins with:
I heard they seen you yesterday in Charlestown…
Like the narrator, we’re destined to never know where Mary’s gone to, but we’ll never stop hearing about her sightings.
“Mary Mary” trails off, but it does not end.
Mary Mary
Recorded: 2007
Released: American Beauty (2014)
Never performed
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