A Grove of Ashes and Aspens

Now Playing: A Cloak of Dusk by Elvenking

When writing music, lyrics can get a little tricky. Between balancing the story, the rhythmic quality of the words, and how the words sound together overall, it’s not a task that comes easily to everyone. But there is a trick that some people use to make it a bit easier.

Reusing lyrics or titles from other songs that have been written before is one way some songwriters, especially if they’re writing for their own bands, can make little callbacks to older songs and reward fans for paying attention to the lyrics.

Aydan and Damna, the two primary songwriters for Elvenking, regularly do this in ways that are subtle and yet so beautiful every time. One of my personal favourite examples is found in the song Reader of the Runes – Book I.

This song is the title track of Elvenking’s 2019 album Reader of the Runes – Divination. While I don’t know this for sure, the entire song and album trilogy feels like a love letter to a song called Runereader of their album Red Silent Tides, but that’s a matter for another time. Within Reader of the Runes – Book I itself, there is a slower acoustic section towards the end of the song. This slower section contains a very unique set of lyrics, and is a major part of the reason I think this song, and album trilogy, is a love letter to Runereader. The lyrics read as follows:

Read the lines that no one reads

They are written everywhere

See the things that no one can see

The things that God forbids

There were runes that can still be called

Under thirteen Moons of Fall

Magic, Spirits and a Sunset

Reader of the Runes

http://www.darklyrics.com/lyrics/elvenking/readeroftherunesdivination.html

This is, word for word, the chorus of Runereader. Now, once again, I’m not in the minds of the songwriters, so I don’t know the reason they included this for certain. There is, however, a certain degree of intentionality that comes with including the chorus of a previous song in its entirety in a newer song that can’t be ignored. And unless the songwriters discuss the process for this song or album in an interview, no one can ever say for certain how far that intentionality extends. Reader of the Runes – Book I also makes reference to a previous song on the same album, Diamonds in the Night, with the chorus being the same across both songs, with the same clear intentionality.

Another very clear example of a callback to their past is the song King of the Elves. Not only is the song directly about their past (mentioned briefly in this Instagram post from Aydan, the guitarist), but it makes a couple direct references to the song White Willow, off their debut album Heathenreel (2001). One such line is “One night I heard the owls say / Find the truth beneath the stars and travel back to heaths of green,” taken directly from the opening of White Willow, and followed immediately by the line “A memory from long ago.” The last lines of King of the Elves are also a direct reference to White Willow, with the lines in King of the Elves reading “With tears in my eyes I now follow my heritage / I have been crowned the new Elvenking” acting as both a callback and a response to the stanza in White Willow reading “Back to my world, home I return : / And the birds cry out ‘The old king has died’ / With tears in my eyes I follow my heritage / Now I am to be new Elvenking!”

The second example, between King of the Elves and White Willow, is a comparison I did not notice how deep it went until I actually looked at the lyrics side by side. Honestly, I’m kind of mad about how clever it is. Like, what gave those two the right to hide such a well done throwback right in front of us and have it work so well. I’m mad about it, but because it’s so good.

I know there are others I’m missing, but if I looked for every single time it happened, this post would be way too long. I’m mostly just looking forward to seeing if there’s more stuff like this in the new album when it eventually comes.