Flying
Flight as an image of altitude (exhilaration, escape, romantic intoxication, transcendence) repeatedly tested by what brings the speaker back down. Across the catalogue flying takes several registers: literal travel by aircraft, figurative elevation (the rush of a new relationship, the thrill of being shown the world), and the falling-as-flying figure where the speaker recognises the high as continuous with the crash to come. The image typically pairs ascent with the prospect or actuality of descent (paper airplanes, jet streams, gravity) and the song's argument often turns on whether the speaker chooses to come down, is pulled down, or persists in the air.
Flying carries the doubled charge of liberation and danger - altitude that is both freedom and precarity. The image shades between flight-from (the getaway, the abandonment, the runner), flight-toward (the lover, the dream, the escape), and the embodied high that the song refuses to separate from what it costs at the descent. Sits in dialectical relationship with the ground-imagery of getaway cars (escape by surface) and the ascent-as-transcendence of heaven, between which flying occupies the most ambivalent register - bodily, elective, and never quite sustained.
Appears in 32 songs
“Sometimes it gets me, when crossing your jet stream”
Crossing the jet stream as the residue of two separate flights, Wendy and Peter who once flew together now fly in different directions, their paths occasionally intersecting as turbulence rather than as a shared journey. Operates within the Flying motif's image cluster (alongside Call It What You Want's 'fly like a jet stream') as the variant where flight is fragmented into divergent vectors that occasionally cross.
“And I didn't wanna come down We said it was just goodbye for now”
Flying represents the magical state of the Peter Pan fantasy, the high of childhood love and wonder. The speaker didn't want to come down from either the literal flight with Peter or the emotional high of the relationship. Coming down represents the inevitable grounding that accompanies growing up.
“Spread my wings like a parachute I'm the albatross I swept in at the rescue”
The speaker spreads her wings, the great curved white wings of the albatross, as a parachute to catch and save the addressee. The flying imagery shifts from the destructive omen of the earlier choruses to the rescue figure, with Uncle Jerry connecting it to Baudelaire's L'Albatros where the bird is 'the prince of clouds.' The wings represent both literal flight imagery and the transformation from ill omen to savior.
“I'm still on that trapeze”
The trapeze and tightrope as figures of the performer suspended between success and catastrophic failure, elevated, visible, and always at risk of falling. The hanging imagery connects to the mirror ball's own pendulous suspension on a single wire.
“Flying in a dream, stars by the pocketful”
“And my flight was awful, thanks for asking”
“Flying in a dream, stars by the pocketful”
“And my flight was awful, thanks for asking”
“I watch superman fly away”
“And I watch you fly around the world”
“It was not an invitation, but I flew home anyway with so much left to say”
“Two paper airplanes flying, flying, flying”
“Once the flight had flown, with the wilt of the rose”
“He spends most of his flights getting pulled down by gravity”
“I wish I could fly, I'd pick you up and we'd go back in time”
“The beautiful kind, making up for lost time, taking flight, making me feel like”
“Criticize the way you fly when you're soaring through the sky”
“Flew me to places I'd never been”
“One last kiss, then catch your flight”
“Loving him is like trying to change your mind once you're already flying through the free fall”
“Come on baby with me, we're gonna fly away from here”
“I don't like that falling feels like flying 'til the bone crush”
“And you're the hero flying around, saving face”
“Flew in all her Bitch Pack friends from the city”
“Remember how I'd fly to you?”
“So I fly 'em all around the world and I let them think they saved me”
“We were flying, but we'd never get far”
“Two paper airplanes flying, flying, flying”
“Flew me to places I'd never been”
“The beautiful kind, making up for lost time, taking flight, making me feel like”
“One last kiss, then catch your flight”
“Loving him is like trying to change your mind once you're already flying through the free fall”
“I was a flight risk with a fear of falling”
“And then you're on your very first date and he's got a car and you're feeling like flying”
“Maybe I'm just a girl on a mission, but I'm ready to fly”
“Don't wanna fly if you're still on the ground”