Lanegan began his musical career in 1984 with Screaming Trees, with whom he released seven studio albums and five EPs before their disbandment in 2000. During his time with the band, he also started a solo career and released his first solo studio album, The Winding Sheet, in 1990. He subsequently released a further 10 solo albums, which received critical recognition but only moderate commercial success. Following the end of Screaming Trees, he became a frequent collaborator of Queens of the Stone Age, and was a full-time member between 2001 and 2005 during the Songs for the Deaf and Lullabies to Paralyze eras.
Lanegan collaborated with various artists throughout his career. In the 1990s, he and Kurt Cobain recorded an album of Lead Belly covers that was ultimately never released. He also joined Layne Staley and Mike McCready in the band Mad Season, and formed the alternative rock group The Gutter Twins with Greg Dulli in 2003, as well as contributing to releases by Moby, Bomb the Bass, Soulsavers, Tinariwen, The Twilight Singers, Manic Street Preachers, and Unkle, among others.
Lanegan struggled with addiction to drugs and alcohol throughout his life, but had been sober for over a decade at the time of his death. Encouraged by his friend Anthony Bourdain, he released the memoir Sing Backwards and Weep in 2020. He followed this up in 2021 with the memoir Devil in a Coma, which focused on his near-death experience with COVID-19. He and his wife Shelley Brien left the U.S. in 2020 and settled in the Irish town of Killarney, where he died two years later at the age of 57. No cause of death was revealed.
Studio albums
The Winding Sheet (1990)
Whiskey for the Holy Ghost (1994)
Scraps at Midnight (1998)
I'll Take Care of You (1999)
Field Songs (2001)
Bubblegum (2004)
Blues Funeral (2012)
Imitations (2013)
Phantom Radio (2014)
Gargoyle (2017)
Somebody's Knocking (2019)
Straight Songs of Sorrow (2020)
Hospital Roll Call
Mark Lanegan Lyrics
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Sixteen, sixteen, oh
Sixteen, oh, sixteen, oh
The lyrics of "Hospital Roll Call" by Mark Lanegan are quite brief and enigmatic. The repetition of the number sixteen implies a sense of urgency or countdown. The counting may even suggest a ritual or ceremony of some sort. The tone that Lanegan uses throughout the song is dark, extremely morose, bleak and monotonic, which further emphasizes the ominous atmosphere. The lyrics could be taken as an invocation of some sort, or as a morbid description of a hospital emergency situation, possible related to a heart attack or other life-threatening event. It may also be interpreted as a raw and pained response to extreme anxiety or a deep sense of foreboding.
In analyzing the song further, we can see that as the repetition of the number sixteen grows more insistent, there is an increasing sense of doom that permeates the lyrics. The listener is left to decipher many possible meanings behind this cryptic chant, perhaps relating it to personal anxieties, the fragility of life, or even a larger societal malaise. One thing that is clear is Lanegan's mastery of mood and tone, as he conjures up an atmosphere of palpable tension throughout the song, using both the melody and the sparse arrangement to great effect.
Line by Line Meaning
Sixteen, oh, sixteen
The number sixteen is being repeated to emphasize a sense of time passing by or a repetitive daily routine.
Sixteen, sixteen, oh
The number sixteen is being repeated again, perhaps to signify a significant event or memory associated with it.
Sixteen, oh, sixteen, oh
The repetition of sixteen continues to suggest that time is either moving slowly or mundanely, with little variation in daily life.
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