Angela & Uncle Jerry analyze the title track 'evermore' from the evermore album (2020), exploring its depiction of depression, its echoes of Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Raven,' and Uncle Jerry's theory that the bridge represents an internal dialogue with the speaker's Jungian animus.
Key Insights
Uncle Jerry argues that the bridge's dual voices represent an internal dialogue between the speaker and her Jungian animus — the logical, assertive, contrasexual side of her psyche — rather than simply a duet with another person. The 'dog days' image is unpacked through multiple folklore traditions: bodies of water that breed poison, wounds that don't heal, and the classical association of Sirius (Canis Major) with ominous portents in Homer and Seneca. The song's progression from gray November through December to the final chorus enacts a recovery arc, with the speaker reintegrating the two halves of herself. Angela & Uncle Jerry also discuss the Eras Tour mashup of 'evermore' with 'Peter,' arguing that both songs are conversations with the self — one with the animus, one with the childhood self — and that the pairing underscores the theme of self-reintegration.
Literary Analysis
Uncle Jerry frames the song primarily through C.G. Jung's concept of the anima/animus from Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, the contrasexual spirit guide that appears in the monomyth (Athena as Odysseus's anima, Obi-Wan Kenobi as Luke's guide). He reads the male voice in the bridge not as an external person but as the speaker's own animus: the rational, assertive half of herself that pulls her out of depression. He connects the open window and the word 'evermore' to Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Raven,' noting that Poe's speaker also converses with an entity perched on the bust of Pallas Athena (goddess of the mind), suggesting a similar internal dialogue. Shakespeare's Sonnet 29 is offered as a poetic parallel, a speaker in disgrace who recovers through thinking of another and whose state rises 'like to the lark at break of day.' Uncle Jerry also applies folklore analysis to 'dog days,' drawing on classical literature (Achilles killing Hector as Sirius rises in the Iliad, Seneca's tragedies, Virgil's bucolic poetry) and folk traditions about poison water, wounds that won't heal, and miasmic swamps. The apostrophe device (addressing inanimate objects/months) is traced across verses: 'Gray November' and 'Hey, December' as the speaker addressing the passing months. The literary tradition of burning letters is explored through Gerard Manley Hopkins, William Somerset Maugham, Jane Austen (via Cassandra), Lord Byron, Emily Dickinson, and Charles Dickens's 1860 bonfire.
Concepts Explored
Literary Devices
References
Literary Quotes Referenced
Edgar Allan Poe
The Raven: 'for the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore
nameless here forevermore.' William Shakespeare
Sonnet 29: 'When
in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes
/ I all alone beweep my outcast state / And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries / And look upon myself and curse my fate... Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising
/ Haply I think on thee
/ And then my state
/ Like to the lark at break of day arising / From sullen earth
sings hymns at heaven's gate. / For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings / That then I scorn to change my state with kings.' Fats Waller: 'I'm going to sit right down and write myself a letter
and make believe it comes from you.' Caroline Lamb on Lord Byron: 'mad
bad
and dangerous to know.'
People & Figures Mentioned
Connections Across the Work
Shared themes appear across the archive
Recommended Reading
The Hero with a Thousand Faces; I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter
In the Archive
In the archive:
evermoreView song →4 themes traced
14 motifs traced
30 literary devices explored
7 literary references noted