A Little Piece

"A Little Piece" is the third track on Paper Monsters.

Lyrics

Dave's Take

"['A Little Piece'] was the one song on the album when I was literally walking down the street and the whole thing came in my head — like kind of overwhelmed me. I always carry this little dictaphone around with me and I pulled it out and I'm walking down the street; people are looking at me and I just started singing into this dictaphone — the whole melody, all the words. By the time I got home, I had the whole song and I picked up the phone, I called Knox and I played him the dictaphone down the phone to him. I saw that song as like...to me it's got a real gospel feel about it but it's turned out quite different, the way we recorded it. But I always heard this big, gospel-y choir, and stuff, and it didn't end up like that but I think it's come out pretty good and again I think it's got a pretty universal feel about it."¹

My Take

This is an underrated song of Dave's that I think deserves a closer listen. You can almost feel the raw, melancholy expressed by him as he sings this song. I have an image in my mind of him singing this all alone in a small, cold, and dark room. I couldn't even begin to interpret what the lyrics mean, but for me, personally, I can imagine feeling these words after having a fight with someone and stewing alone in my anger. The idiom, "giving someone a piece of my mind," comes to mind as in the heat of the moment, you really can get carried away and say the first words that come to mind, and oftentimes they can be hurtful. The "piece of God" bit is interesting because it alludes to a third party- namely, the divine; though, it could also mean anger expressed so intensely that it puts the "fear of God" in a person. Those are really just guesses. Finally, I should also mention that the somber-sounding piano and background beeping noise that sounds like a telegraph emitting Morse code in the intro gives me chills because it almost sounds like it's spelling "SOS." I am not an expert in Morse code, though, so that's just me probably reading too much into it.

Music Video

There is no music video for this song.

References

1. Paper Monsters EPK, Mute IPKSTUMM216, 2003