Sleater-Kinney, “A Quarter to Three” (The Hot Rock, 1999)
Elliott Smith, “2:45 A.M.” (Either/Or, 1997)
Seventeen-year-old me freaked out when he realized two of his favorite artists had written songs about the same alarmingly specific thing. Neither is especially cheery, but Sleater-Kinney’s take is definitely the more anxious, perhaps because its bleary narrator never quite lets go of the doomed hope that things will get better. Smith, on the other hand, is serene—reality seems to crumble around him, and yet he strides ahead with conviction, strangely at peace in his own self-destruction.
