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Justin Eckman

Professor Brogan Sullivan

English 101

24 October 2020

The Special Boy, The Normal Man:

A Rhetorical Analysis Of Helplessness Blues By Fleet Foxes

I’ve always struggled to sleep at night. This is in large part due to anxiety and it’s

something that I’ve dealt with since I was a teenager. To help deal with it, I’ve found that music

has been a great way to take my mind to a place where I can’t be hurt. I remember one summer

night about 2 years ago. My friend Malcom had just told me earlier in the day about a song he

had just listened to called Helplessness Blues by Fleet Foxes. He loved it, so, I decided that it

would be something that I would listen to that night. I was in awe after the first time I heard it. I

couldn’t believe that someone had so successfully conveyed the same thoughts about life that I

was starting to realize. I played that song on loop until I fell asleep. I didn’t even bother to listen

to the whole album until later in the week. Helplessness blues changed everything about how I

viewed myself in our great big blue world. I no longer felt alone in my struggle to find a role in

life. Helplessness Blues is an amazing triumph in building trust and emotion to convince the

listener that it’s ok to not be special.

In the song Helplessness Blues by Fleet Foxes, Robin Pecknold presents the idea that we

should accept the fact that we are not half as special as we think we are and that it’s ok for it to

be that way. In the first verse, Pecknold tells a tale about being raised up believing he was unique

and that one day he realized that was not true. This realization made him want to become apart of

something greater as a whole even if he didn’t know exactly what that is yet. The second verse is
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about wanting to be told what to do. Pecknold wants this, but he doesn’t want to bow down to

the people making the decision for him. In his third verse, he’s learned from his experience

trying to find his way. The true nature of this world reveals itself to him and it’s difficult for him

to believe. Lastly, Pecknold dreams about a reality where he gets the world he wants, but he

questions if he can be the person he wants to be.

The main songwriter for Fleet Foxes is Robin Pecknold. Pecknold was born in Seattle in

1986. The idea for Pecknold to write Helplessness Blues came after interviewing Graham Nash

from the group Crosby, Stills Nash and Young. He wanted to write a protest song like they used

to do in the days of old. Mr. Pecknold also stated in an interview with the UK newspaper

Independent in 2011 that Helplessness Blues was about growing up being a white male in

America. He realized that he was among the most privileged groups of people in the world and

that he wasn’t doing enough with the things he has been given. Since he himself says that this

song came from the heart, the audience he is trying to reach with this song are people like

himself, white males who grew up in America to a privilege that most people in the world don’t

have.

Rhetorically, this song builds trust very convincingly. This is due in large part due to the

fact that Pecknold made himself the main character of the song. The first verse of this song is

where he really establishes that he is at the center of this song. Pecknold talks about how he was

raised up and how he changed his mind about being unique after he thought about it. To a

listener like me, that made me believe that the words he was about to say for the rest of the song

were true and that I could trust that he was being honest with me. It is so easy much easier to

trust someone in a song when the song is so blatantly about themself. The main message of the

song just becomes that much clearer and easier to relate too. Yeah, I too was raised up believing
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I was special and yeah, I too realized that was a lie. By making this song about himself, Pecknold

opened up a pathway of honesty that would have never opened if the song was about someone or

something else.

Helplessness Blues also does a great job appealing to your emotions during the course of

the song. The section that stands out to me the most is the outro portion of the song. The very last

line “Someday I’ll be like the man on the screen” hit’s the hardest. It leaves so much open to

interpretation that it’s impossible to not feel something after listening to the entire song. Is the

man on the screen me? Is it somebody else? Someone I know? For me, it is the idea you don’t

need to be special to be happy. It’s ok to not be the man you want to be yet. The man you see on

the screen. This is what I found to be so emotionally powerful. The open-ended nature of the last

line creates a chance for the listener to reach their own conclusion about what Pecknold means. It

may not have been what Pecknold wanted but it was a much more personal and emotional end to

the song.

This was a significant, life changing song for me. I was really struggling with what to do

with myself. It provided me a great deal of clarity about the difficult choices I was going to have

to make in life. Choices like if I should go back to school or if I should have kids one day. I

learned that it would be ok to let go of the person that I thought I was. I wasn’t as special as my

parents told me but that doesn’t mean that I can’t be happy. Pecknold gave me a confidence that

is hard to find, the kind that you hold onto until the end of your days. An emotional grip so heavy

that you never forgot about it. Robin Pecknold wrote a song that forever changed my life. It will

be a song that I share with generations to come. I can sleep at night a little easier now because of

it.
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Works Cited

“Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues.” Genius, 16 Apr. 2011, genius.com/Fleet-foxes-helplessness-

blues-lyrics.

Gill, Andy. Fleet Foxes: Homegrown Harmonies, Going Back to Nature and the Blues. 23 Oct.
2011, www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/fleet-foxes-homegrown-
harmonies-going-back-to-nature-and-the-blues-2258464.html.

ShieldSquare Captcha, www.songfacts.com/facts/fleet-foxes/helplessness-blues.