Rewriting Ellie Goulding’s “Close To You”

Ellie Goulding, Diplo, Swae Lee – Close To Me

Took me a good long while to realize the reason I like this song is because the intro sounds similar to that System of a Down song about running over a bunny rabbit. It has 2nd rate lyrics. So let’s improve that.

Here’s what I’m fixing

Even though we both know we’re liars and we start each other’s fires
We just know that we’ll be all right
Even though we’re kicked out the party ’cause we both hate everybody
We’re the ones they wanna be like
So don’t let me down
Keep me in trouble
Born to be wild
Out in the jungle
And I don’t wanna be somebody without your body close to me
And if it wasn’t you, I wouldn’t want anybody close to me (yeah, yeah)
‘Cause I’m an animal, animal-al, like animal, like you
And I don’t wanna be somebody without your body close to me (whoo)

Anyway, it’s a great tune, Ellie’s singing is prime for autotune (I hate autotune). But et al (Ellie Goulding / Savan Kotecha / Peter Svensson / Ilya Salmanzadeh / Khalif Brown / Thomas Wesley Pentz) seem to forget what it’s like to be a fresh high schooler discovering marijuana for the first time and like, really listening to a song, man.

Here’s my rewritten version. It’s better. Use it in your language arts classes now, because it’s got some oomph.

Even though we both say that we’re liars and we stole each other’s fires
We just know that we’ll be all right
Even though we’re kicked out the party we just won’t hunt with anybody
They’ve got no pride they wanna be lions
So don’t keep me down
Let me be troubled
Born to be wow’d
Out of this jungle
And I don’t wanna be somebody without your body close to me
And if it wasn’t you, I wouldn’t want anybody close to me (yeah, yeah)
‘Cause I’m an animal, animal-al, like animal, like you
And I’m the scenery, nobody without your body close to me (whoo)

Here’s how I improved it

For one, I mixed up whether this other body-owner was indeed a good match to the owner of the second body. For two, I added more animal imagery which is damn near non-existent aside from a nod to the jungle in the recorded version and saying the word “animal” a dozen times.

In the first line there’s now talk about starting fires. Starting fires separates animals from man. Now it’s got Prometheus imagery in there. BOOM.

And now, there’s talk of other bodies. There’s me, you, and everyone else.

And blending into “scenery” is one of the greatest unused words in modern lyrics. Don’t @ me.