Fisking emo

Below is a fisking of the song "As Lovers Go" (Chris Carrabba, Dashboard Confessional; A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar; Shrek 2).  It's the only emo song I know, so I'll assume its faults are typical of the entire genre.  Here are all the lyrics.  Don't expect any great insights from me: in high school English my worst subtopic was poetic analysis.  Apparently I just don't see anything in poems.

She said "I've gotta be ¹honest, you're wasting your time if you're ²fishing round here."

Starts well.  ¹"Honest" is well-sung as /ʡʌ.n̩.ɪst/, clearly audible despite all the plucking, strumming, and drumming of the other instruments.  ²"Fishing" introduces the central conflict: the girl has already said "No" before Carrabba even begins mouthing his pick-up lines.

And I said "you must be mistaken, cause I'm not ³fooling, this ⁴feeling is real."

^3,4What's the word for the sound relationship between "fooling" and "feeling" here?  “Ablaut” doesn't quite fit.

She said "you've gotta be crazy, ⁵what do you take me for, some kind of easy ⁶mark?"

This is her last line in the song.  IRL she probably walks away at this point; the rest of the lyrics are Carrabba's fantasy about what he *should* have said.

⁵The syncopation pattern he's chosen for the song matches up well here with the natural speech-rhythm of this utterance.  Perhaps he's had this line burned into his brain by too many failed pickups, or maybe he just has a good ear.  ⁶In "mark", Carrabba does a great job putting some vibrato(?) into his /ɹ/ without corrupting it into a Europeanish trill.  But the /ʌ/ vowel is too broad, sounding more like /ɑ/ (as in "mahrk").

Sorry about all the IPA symbols in this post.  No wait, I'm not.  It's the only hammer I have and I'm going to whack every mole I can!  Thanks, porsupah, for the link to this handy IPA chart with example sounds.  But I probably got some of them wrong.

⁷No, you've got wits, you've got looks, you've got ⁸passion, but I swear that you've got me all wrong.

Wits, looks, passion?  What is he searching for—a Fame castmember?

⁷Every lyrics site says this verse begins with "No", but I can't hear it.  ⁸I would have expected "passion" to be strongly accented here, as the most-desired feature in the prey he's hunting, but Carrabba mutes this word and slurs it into the following conjunction.  Some phrasal-prosody thing, perhaps?

I'm sorry now that I didn't bother attending the free Music Theory classes offered at the All Newton Music School in conjunction with my piano lessons.  My teacher, Ms. Broughton, thought I should be a concert pianist, but I didn't want to work that hard—computer keyboards are *so* much easier!

All wrong.  ⁹All wrong.  But you ¹⁰got me.

In a typical pop song with A-A-B-A structure, this would be a "bridge".  But this song's structure is more like A-B-C-D-A-B-C-D, so I don't know what to call section B.  Anyway, it's too long for my taste.  ⁹Nice wail, interleaved with fancy drumming, but just too long.

¹⁰"Got" is a pun, compared with its meaning in the previous verse, and it ties in with the hunting-and-fishing metaphor that floats through the background of this song.

I'll be true, I'll be useful; I'll be ¹¹cavalier.  I'll be yours my dear.  And I'll ¹²be-
long to you, if you'll just let me through.

( Fiskars... Australian for shears )