Pictures of Me
Elliott Smith Lyrics


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Start stop and start
Stupid acting smart
Flirting with the flicks
You say it's just for kicks

You'll be the victim of your own dirty tricks
You got yourself to tease and displease
Doors swinging wide
You walked in to hide

Looking at your feet
Failure's complete
Saw you and me on the coin-op tv
Frozen in fear every time we appear

I'm not surprised and really, why should I be?
See nothing wrong
See nothing wrong
So sick and tired of all these pictures of me

Completely wrong
Totally wrong
Go walking by
Here come another guy

Jailer who sells personal hells
Who'd like to see me down on my fucking knees
Everybody's dying just to get the disease
Hey hey hey hey

I'm not surprised and really, why should I be?
See nothing wrong
See nothing wrong
So sick and tired of all these pictures of me

Completely wrong
Totally wrong
I'm not surprised and really, why should I be?
See nothing wrong

See nothing wrong
So sick and tired of all these pictures of me
Oh everybody's dying just to get the disease
Everybody's dying just to get the disease





Everybody's dying just to get the disease

Overall Meaning

The song "Pictures of Me" by Elliott Smith appears on his album "Either/Or" released in 1997. The lyrics are introspective and describe a person who is being judged and put under scrutiny by the public eye, in this case, through pictures. The opening lines, "Start stop and start, Stupid acting smart" paint a picture of someone who is unsure of their actions and is trying to play it cool. The line "Flirting with the flicks, You say it's just for kicks" refers to the person's actions being misconstrued as flirtatious when they are only having fun. However, the lyrics imply that this person is not as innocent as they appear, with lines like "You'll be the victim of your own dirty tricks" and "Jailer who sells personal hells, Who'd like to see me down on my fucking knees." The song suggests that this person is ultimately responsible for their actions and should not complain about the consequences.


The chorus of the song has a repetitive verse - "I'm not surprised and really, why should I be? See nothing wrong, See nothing wrong, So sick and tired of all these pictures of me." It conveys the idea that the person is tired of being scrutinized and judged constantly, and is not surprised by it, as if they have come to expect it.


Line by Line Meaning

Start stop and start
Beginning and ending things without reason


Stupid acting smart
Being foolish while pretending to be intelligent


Flirting with the flicks
Showing off and trying to impress others


You say it's just for kicks
Justifying bad behavior with flimsy excuses


You'll be the victim of your own dirty tricks
Facing consequences for your own manipulative actions


You got yourself to tease and displease
Causing your own discomfort and dissatisfaction


Doors swinging wide
Opportunities presenting themselves


You walked in to hide
Entering situations to avoid dealing with reality


Looking at your feet
Being ashamed of oneself


Failure's complete
Having already given up and accepted defeat


Saw you and me on the coin-op tv
Watching ourselves in a cheap, artificial medium


Frozen in fear every time we appear
Feeling paralyzed and helpless whenever we are seen


I'm not surprised and really, why should I be?
Expecting negative outcomes


See nothing wrong
Being in denial about one's problems


So sick and tired of all these pictures of me
Experiencing fatigue and discomfort from constantly having to face oneself


Completely wrong
Being entirely mistaken


Totally wrong
Definitely incorrect


Go walking by
Continuing to move forward


Here come another guy
Being replaced by someone else


Jailer who sells personal hells
Feeling trapped by one's own self-destructive thoughts and behaviors


Who'd like to see me down on my fucking knees
Taking pleasure in seeing someone else suffer and submit


Everybody's dying just to get the disease
Everyone is desperately trying to avoid facing their own problems and negative traits


Hey hey hey hey
A meaningless, dismissive expression




Lyrics ยฉ Universal Music Publishing Group
Written by: Steven Paul Smith

Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
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Most interesting comments from YouTube:

@Keiran19

Lyrics :
Start, stop and start
Stupid acting smart
Flirting with the flicks
You say, "It's just for kicks."
You'll be the victim of your own dirty tricks
You got yourself to tease and displease
Doors swinging wide
You walked in to hide
Looking at your feet
Failure's complete
Saw you and me on the coin-op TV
Frozen in fear every time we appear

[Chorus]
I'm not surprised at all and really, why should I be?
See nothing wrong
See nothing wrong
So sick and tired of all these pictures of me
Completely wrong
Totally wrong

[Verse 2]
Go walking by
Here come another guy
Jailer who sells personal hells
Who'd like to see me down on my fucking knees
Everybody's dying just to get the disease

Hey, hey, hey, hey

[Chorus]
I'm not surprised at all and really, why should I be?
See nothing wrong
See nothing wrong
So sick and tired of all these pictures of me
Completely wrong
Totally wrong

I'm not surprised at all and really, why should I be?
See nothing wrong
See nothing wrong
So sick and tired of all these pictures of me

Oh, everybody's dying just to get the disease
Everybody's dying just to get the disease
Everybody's dying just to get the disease



@roiybenkel682

Start stop and start
Stupid acting smart
Flirting with the flicks
You say it's just for kicks
You'll be the victim of your own dirty tricks
You got yourself to tease and displease
Doors swinging wide
You walked in to hide
Looking at your feet
Failure's complete
Saw you and me on the coin-op TV
Frozen in fear every time we appear
I'm not surprised and really, why should I be?
See nothing wrong
See nothing wrong
So sick and tired of all these pictures of me
Completely wrong
Totally wrong
Go walking by
Here come another guy
Jailer who sells personal hells
Who'd like to see me down on my fucking knees
Everybody's dying just to get the disease
Hey hey hey hey
I'm not surprised and really, why should I be?
See nothing wrong
See nothing wrong
So sick and tired of all these pictures of me
Completely wrong
Totally wrong
I'm not surprised and really, why should I be?
See nothing wrong
See nothing wrong
So sick and tired of all these pictures of me
Oh everybody's dying just to get the disease
Everybody's dying just to get the disease
Everybody's dying just to get the disease



@user-ip9yu7lp1q

Pictures of me
๋‚ด ์‚ฌ์ง„๋“ค

start, stop and start
์‹œ์ž‘ํ•ด, ๋ฉˆ์ถฐ ๋‹ค์‹œ ์‹œ์ž‘ํ•ด
stupid acting smart
๊ตํ™œํ•˜๊ฒŒ ํ–‰๋™ํ•˜๋Š” ๋ฐ”๋ณด
flirting with the flicks
์ฑ„์ฐ์œผ๋กœ ํ›„๋ ค๊ฐˆ๊ธฐ๋Š” ๋†€์ด
you say it's just for kicks
๋„ˆ๋Š” ๊ทธ๊ฒŒ ๊ทธ์ € ์ฆ๊ฑฐ์›€์„ ์œ„ํ•œ ๊ฒƒ์ด๋ผ๊ณ  ํ–ˆ์ง€
you'll be the victim of your own dirty tricks
๋„ˆ๋Š” ๋„ˆ ์ž์‹ ์˜ ๋”๋Ÿฌ์šด ์†์ž„์ˆ˜์— ๋‹นํ•˜๊ณ  ๋ง๊ฑฐ์•ผ
you got yourself to tease and displease
๋„ˆ๋Š” ์Šค์Šค๋กœ ๋„ˆ์ž์‹ ์„ ๊ดด๋กญ๊ณ  ๊ธฐ๋ถ„๋‚˜์˜๊ฒŒ ํ–ˆ์–ด

doors swinging wide
๋„“๊ฒŒ ํ”๋“ค๋ฆฌ๋Š” ๋ฌธ์ง
you walked in to hide
๋„ˆ๋Š” ์ˆจ์œผ๋ ค๊ณ  ๋“ค์–ด๊ฐ€
looking at your feet
๋„ค ๋ฐœ์„ ์ณ๋‹ค๋ด
failure's complete
์‹คํŒจ๋Š” ์™„๊ฒฐ๋˜์—ˆ์–ด
saw you and me on the coin-op tv
๋™์ „๋„ฃ๋Š” TV์—์„œ ๋„ˆ์™€ ๋‚˜์˜ ๋ชจ์Šต์„ ๋ดค์–ด
frozen in fear every time we appear
์šฐ๋ฆฌ ์ž์‹ ์ด ๋‚˜์˜ฌ ๋•Œ๋งˆ๋‹ค, ๊ณตํฌ์— ์–ผ์–ด๋ถ™์€์ฑ„๋กœ

I'm not surprised at all and really, why should I be
๋‚œ ์ „ํ˜€ ๋†€๋ผ์ง€ ์•Š์•„, ์™œ ๊ทธ๋ž˜์•ผ๊ฒ ์–ด?
see nothing wrong, see nothing wrong
๋ด, ์ž˜๋ชป๋œ๊ฒŒ ์ „ํ˜€ ์—†์–ด, ์ž˜๋ชป๋œ ๊ฒƒ์ด ์—†๋Š”๋ฐ
so sick and tired of all these pictures of me
์ด ๋ชจ๋“  ๋‚ด ์‚ฌ์ง„๋“ค์ด ๋„ˆ๋ฌด ์—ญ๊ฒจ์›Œ
completely wrong, totally wrong
์™„์ „ํžˆ ํ‹€๋ ธ์–ด. ์™„๋ฒฝํ•˜๊ฒŒ ํ‹€๋ ธ์–ด.

go walking by
์˜†์œผ๋กœ ๊ฑธ์–ด์ง€๋‚˜๊ฐ€
here come another guy
๋‹ค๋ฅธ ๋‚จ์ž๊ฐ€ ๋‹ค๊ฐ€์˜จ๋‹ค
jailer who sells personal hells
๊ฐœ์ธ์šฉ ์ง€์˜ฅ์„ ํŒŒ๋Š” ๊ต๋„๊ด€
who'd like to see me down on my fucking knees
๋ˆ„๊ฐ€ ๋ฌด๋ฆŽ๊ฟ‡๊ณ  ์žˆ๋Š” ๋นŒ์–ด๋จน์„ ๋‚˜๋ฅผ ์ณ๋‹ค๋‚˜ ๋ด์ฃผ๊ฒ ์–ด?
everybody's dying just to get the disease
๋ชจ๋“  ์ด๋“ค์€ ๊ทธ์ € ๋ณ‘์— ๊ฑธ๋ฆฌ๊ธฐ ์œ„ํ•ด ์ฃฝ์–ด๊ฐ€

hey hey hey hey
ํ—ค์ดํ—ค์ดํ—ค์ดํ—ค์ด



All comments from YouTube:

@killrockstars

Check out this rare live footage of Elliott's 1999 New Year's Eve performance at The Knitting Factory: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6KwzgIePF4Dy7347Om6Ijcsr4vh6JJjP

@cjbforever

Yโ€™a d la qq

@BHAKTIBROPHY

I photographed Elliott for Option mag upon the release of this album. What a beautiful man... he was so kind and, after breaking through his shyness, incredibly funny. God, I loved his smile.

@salchaos

He must have been a unique individual. A genius, I would say.

@BM-yr1lc

BHAKTI BROPHY he's absolutely gorgeous when he smiles

@giangarciamusic

elliott has the prettiest smile.

@opheliajade1986

@@BM-yr1lc for sure

@jahread3322

he was a beautiful man...its si easy to see from out here, but that feeling of sickness, the knee jerk cringe when you let your guard down and slipped up, letting a thought of yourself creep in just long enough to snap you back into defense with a shudder and a cringe. the dreadful feeling alone makes working to forget worth not having to remember. shit sux

10 More Replies...

@appleswithsauce4412

2:45 "So sick and tired of all these pictures of me" Picture goes away

@oddmuch6267

appleswithsauce i love you

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