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in: All Hail West Texas songs, All Hail West Texas (Remastered) songs, Video

Jenny

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Jenny
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Album

All Hail West Texas

Released

2002

Artist

the Mountain Goats

Length

2:51

Previous Track

"Color in Your Cheeks"

Next Track

"Fault Lines"

Jenny is the fourth song on the album All Hail West Texas.

Lyrics[]

you roared into the driveway of our southwestern ranch-style house
on a new Kawasaki, all yellow and black
fresh out of the showroom.
our house faced west,
so the big orange sun positioned at your back,
lit up your magnificent silhouette.
how much better?
how much better can my life get?
900 cubic centimeters of raw whining power.
no outstanding warrants for my arrest.
whoa-whoa. whoa whoa.
the pirate's life for me.

I hopped on back of the bike, wrapped my arms around you.
and I sank my face into your hair.
and then I inhaled as deeply as I possibly could.
you were as sweet and delicious as the warm desert air.
and you pointed your headlamp toward the horizon,
we were the one thing in the galaxy god didn't have his eyes on.
900 cc's of raw whining power,
no outstanding warrants for my arrest.
hi diddle dee dee.
god damn!
the pirate's life for me!

Comments by John Darnielle About this Song[]

  • "It's about love, after a manner of speaking." -- 2004-10-11 - The Black Cat - Washington, D.C.
  • "You know, people are always saying to each other, they say, 'You're the only thing that's important in my life.' Saying this to each other all the time. But then sometimes you may meet a couple of people and when you see them, you know that when they say that to each other, that's exactly what you mean. You should guard your wallets around these sorts of people. They don't really care about the things that are out of their immediate sphere, and their immediate sphere is definable by the distance between one another's eyes. This song is sung from the perspective of one such person in such a duality. It takes place in Texas." -- 2006-10-01 - Bowery Ballroom - New York, NY
  • "I didn't practice this one, but I bet I remember all the words." –– 2022-05-03 - Crescent Ballroom - Phoenix, AZ
  • "For me, this Jenny is like, it is and isn't the same person. Usually the three songs I think that she's mentioned in, she is a function of memory, right, she's there for a person to be remembering something. And I think everybody has people like that in their lives who when you say their name, your memory floods with a whole bunch of feelings that you may have worked really hard to move past or that you miss and would like to recall or any number of other things. And that's who Jenny is for the narrators who recall her, as somebody who is gone and whose absence continues to assert itself... She is defined by an absence, she has yet to speak. She's in the song Jenny; the other two songs she's in, she's already gone. She calls on the phone in Night Light and, uh, she calls on the phone in Straight Six. ...She's not there when things are going well, and she's not remembered when things are going well. Often when you're remembering your past, you remember the parts that you were desperate about, right. You seldom- you might reflect on good times in one way, but often, you say, oh, yeah, no, when I was hanging out with so-and-so, you don't want to blame them, but you think, that is a difficult time, right. Jenny is an emblem of more difficult times for people, of wilder times. But also times that they're pretty clearly romanticizing, right, that they're also remembering as the time when they were on a motorcycle with no responsibilities, livin' the pirate's life, right." -- I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats episode 4
  • "So, the story of Jenny begins here and it ends, we know, on previous records. Jenny was a character in a record called All Hail West Texas in 2001. And the scene that we saw her in there, the narrator is hopping on the back of a motorcycle and they’re riding off. This doesn’t actually happen. Right? This is something that he wants. That character is the one we meet in 'Fresh Tattoo.'" -- Aquarium Drunkard interview, October 2023
  • "I generally do not love specific-within-the-song nail-down-the-details questions, as that is not usually the way I think about music/lyrics/fiction, like, at all at all, but as it happens there is an answer to this one. It’s a 1984, the first year the bike was marketed in the U.S. (as the “Ninja”), and the year I became aware of the bike through my biker-boy friends, who actually had and rode bikes, on whose backs I rode. None of them had a Ninja but Ian had a 750 Turbo which to be honest is the one I’d get instead of the GPZ900R – the 900 is more powerful but that 750 Turbo is sharp as hell, less aggro in appearance than the 900 but just really righteous. however I also get that you’re looking to ride Jenny’s bike and that’s 100% valid and besides the Ninja is a hugely important bike, so it’s this one right here, except I imagined it in wicked bee colors, you know, yellow and black with chrome highlights, which I suspect you’ll have to have done yourself, I don’t remember seeing early models in anything other than red and blue but maybe it was just that they were marketing them in those colors. If I were to buy a bike today it’d be an old Norton Commando probably or a Spanish street bike called a Bultaco however all my motorcycle dreams are met around the house here with great skepticism and realistically speaking I will probably never own a motorcycle so I celebrate your purchase and send you best wishes for safe and great riding out there." -- Tumblr

Things Referenced in this Song[]

Live Shows this Song Was Played at[]

Videos of this Song[]


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