Listen Again: “I’ll Be There For You” (aka The Friends’ Theme Song)

The other day I was thinking of an interesting project to do as a follow-up to my Good Songs project now that that is over. If there’s one thing that I learned as an English major it’s that every piece of writing can be interpreted in a multitude of different ways. Some interpretations could be directly contrary to what the writer had in mind, but with enough evidence that interpretation can be justified.

This new feature looks at songs you know and love in a new light.

The first song that I’m chosing for this project is “I’ll Be There For You”. Even though you might not remember the group’s name (the song was performed by the Rembrandts and written by “Friends” creators David Crane and Marta Kaufman) you definitely know the song.

If you were alive in the summer of 1995 and had all five of your senses, this tune—much like the Friends themselves—was inescapable. According to Wikipedia, it reached number one on Billboard’s Hot 100 Airplay, Top 40 Mainstream and Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks (of course it did) but reached only 17 on Billboard’s Hot 100, seven on Hot Adult Top 40 Tracks and 23 on Hot Modern Rock Tracks.

A few things before we continue: I have no idea what’s the difference between Hot 100 Airplay, Hot 100 and Top 40 Mainstream. These three lists seem to chart the same things and I have no idea how there could be such a wide discrepancy as all three of these charts seem to overlap one another. Furthermore I have zero clue as to why Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks and Hot Adult Top 40 Tracks are also separated by Billboard. Maybe the guy who owns Billboard needed to find his idiot nephew a job, so he created a list for him to screw around with. I don’t know.

I do like how this incredibly benign-sounding song reeking of 60s bubble gum pop was considered a “hot modern rock” track like. To whit, according to our good friends at Wikipedia some of the groups holding number one in “The Hot Modern Rock” category for 1995 were: Green Day, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Oasis, U2, Live and Silverchair. I’ve said it before, but the 90s were a wonderful time.

Anyway, the purpose of writing this wasn’t to remind you of how popular this song was back in the day. Most of you lived through this time, this song (and the show) was ubiquitous. The song itself was all over the radio (including modern rock stations, I guess) and then you’d turn on the TV and see the cast of “Friends” doing stuff (“They’re all ACTUALLY friends in REAL LIFE!”) or you’d stop by a newsstand and view Joey, Chandler, Ross, Rachel, Phoebe and Monica (or their real-life names) on every magazine cover. It got so that I was seeing TV’s “Friends” more than my real-life friends. And I was in college at the time, LIVING with my friends.

The other day I had this song earwormed into my skull and on it’s umpteenth delivery, I was thinking that this song might not be the uplifting ballad of friendship that we all think it is. The Rembrandts did a masterful job of making it joyous and happy, but underneath all of the bubblegum and sugar lurks something darker and more sinister then is normally found in the Billboards 50,000 different Top 100 lists.

Let’s peer back the shiny, happy veneer by stripping away the instruments and gaze at the song’s words and formulate what was really going on.  

(Lyrics are italicized, but you know these words already.)

So no one told you life was gonna be this way

Your job's a joke, you're broke, your love life's D O A

It's like you're always stuck in second gear

When it hasn't been your day, your week

Your month or even your year but

The opening of the song is the narrator is talking (maybe lecturing) to his friend about what a shitty life he has. His friend is very depressed, about what, we are not privy to, but this depression has lasted a long time and encompasses the person’s entire life.

The narrator begins the song by making his friend’s predicament a twisted surprise, by letting him know that, “No one told (him) life was gonna be this way.” In other words, the narrator is claiming that everyone (aside from his friend) knew that life—to borrow from the Buddha’s teaching—is suffering and that you have to go through a lot of tribulations to be happy. The narrator explains to his helpless friend that people who are functioning adults—and who aren’t Richard Gere—understand  this reality. The narrator admonishes his friend for thinking that life was going to be one cake walk after another and now you’re finding out that your life blows and it’s rocked your incredibly fragile world. So in addition to your depression, you’re also dumb and hopelessly myopic.

The narrator continues to torment his friends by reminding him that his job sucks, it doesn’t pay well at all and he doesn’t have a significant other—he’s alone in this big world without any help or guidance. The unsaid exception, which we will see in subsequent verses, is that the song’s narrator portrays himself as this person’s only friend. Why does he do this? I’m not sure, perhaps the narrator is unbalanced too. Maybe he’s a masochist. Maybe he just likes fucking with his friend with the hopes that he’ll push his buddy over the edge into doing the unthinkable.

The narrator continues to harp on his friend, telling him to get his ass moving (“It’s like you’re stuck in second gear!”) but this prodding is actually doing more harm than good. You can’t just tell a depressed person not to be depressed, much like you can’t tell someone with a broken arm to heal faster. The narrator seems like a bright, articulate fellow, I am sure that he understands exactly what he is doing to his friends, which lends more evidence to my theory that he’s pushing his pal to the edge.

Furthermore, showing how hopeless his life has been in all facets (work and love life) is not blazing a path to better mental health nor is telling him that he’s been acting this way for over a year. The narrator does this to hurt his friend more. Now his friends is validated in his suspicions that his life sucks and to make matters worse, he now has the embarrassment of knowing that his friend(s) also think the life that he is leading is terrible. This isn’t just a little salt in the mental wound, the narrator is dumping the entire Morton’s factory on him.  

I'll be there for you

(When the rain starts to pour)

I'll be there for you

(Like I've been there before)

I'll be there for you

('Cause you're there for me too)

In the chorus, the narrator pulls the reigns back a little bit. He seems to be enjoying messing with his unbalanced friend and confuses him by telling him that he’s there for him. He’s always been there for him, just like his friend is there for him when he gets down. But that last line is more than a bit of bullshit because the narrator’s friend is obviously very depressed and has been for a long time, what solace could he give to the narrator?

But why does the narrator do this? Does he develop a conscious midway through this conversation? No, definitely not. I think that narrator is a very disturbed man who enjoys playing with his sick friend’s psyche.

You're still in bed at ten and work began at eight

You've burned your breakfast so far things are going great

Your mother warned you there'd be days like these

But she didn't tell you when the world

Has brought you down to your knees that

After the respite of the chorus, the narrator is back to admonishing his friend, “Work began at eight o’clock, and it’s now ten! What are you still doing in bed?” Not only is he calling attention to the depression—and it’s well known fact that depressed people find it difficult to leave the sanctity of bed—but he’s also sarcastically calling out his friend’s ineptness:

“You burned your breakfast[.] So far things are going great[!]”

Assuming that the song’s subject finally got the resolve to get up from bed and face an unforgiving world and his shitty job, he probably realizes that he’s late. So as he’s rushing around making sure that he’s getting himself properly prepared for the uncaring world, he jams a piece of bread in the toaster. If he’s already two hours late to work, this is quite literally the quickest and easiest breakfast that he can make, eat on the go and be at his desk within a set amount of time.

It doesn’t take much brainpower to make toast, children and the infirmed perform this task daily, yet the subject can’t seem to do this right. At this point in his life, he’s a hopeless failure and the narrator makes it his job to point that out. And he does it in the most obnoxious way possible by alerting him to that fact and then sarcastically telling him how well things are going. “You’re a simpleton who can’t even toast a slice of bread properly. Your life is just GREAT!”

He then goes for the coup de grace by invoking his friend’s mother. Adding a layer of confusion to his diatribe, the narrator tells him that “[his] mother warned [him] about days like these.” This admonishment comes despite the fact that earlier in the lecture, the narrator specifically told his friend that “No one told you that life was gonna be this way.” Is the narrator purposely confusing his friend or his he giving him another subtle—yet devastating—jab by insinuating that the subject’s mother, much like her son, is a no one?*

He then doubles down on the insult by saying your mother lied to you because she never told you that you we were so weak that you will be brought to your knees—not by famine or war or pestilence but by a burnt piece of toast.

* Comedian Rob Paravonian posed a similar connection between the second verse and the first. I think that my point still stands. 

One can almost imagine the scene of the narrator standing over his friend as he lies curled on the floor in the fetal position as he delivers this audial body blow as disgust drips from his last words. I’ll be there for you, indeed.

I'll be there for you

(When the rain starts to pour)

I'll be there for you

(Like I've been there before)

I'll be there for you

('Cause you're there for me too)

Our psychotic narrator begins to realize that he probably laid it on too thick in that last verse and pumps the breaks slightly. He doesn’t want blood on his hands. Like in the first chorus, the narrator is playing the role of good cop here by bucking up his friend’s spirits. He keeps repeating these thoughts to him that he’ll be there for him over and over again, as if it’s a mantra.

No one could ever know me, no one could ever see me

Since you're the only one who knows what it's like to be me

Someone to face the day with, make it through all the rest with

Someone I'll always laugh with

Even at my worst, I'm best with you, yeah

It's like you're always stuck in second gear

When it hasn't been your day, your week

Your month, or even your year

In addition to the chorus, the narrator continues with the brain games by openly mocking his friend and daring him to end his life. The narrator tells his friend that he should die and the narrator is going to get away with the crime. The reason? “No one could ever know me, no one could ever see me. Since you’re the only one who knows what it’s like to be me.”

Further turning the screw the narrator admits, “even at my worst, I’m best with you. Yeah.” In other words the narrator is basically saying that what he is doing now is probably the worst thing that he’s ever done but at the same time pushing someone to take their own life is also the best salesmanship job he’s ever done. Some day the narrator, whom I am now picturing as Patrick Bates from “American Psycho”, is going to laugh and laugh about today’s events.

To further push his friend into the abyss, the narrator repeats his point verbatim from the first verse: your life is going nowhere and hasn’t gone anywhere for some time. Just do us all a favor and end it.

I'll be there for you

(When the rain starts to pour)

I'll be there for you

(Like I've been there before)

I'll be there for you

('Cause you're there for me too)

I'll be there for you

(When the rain starts to pour)

I'll be there for you

(Like I've been there before)

I'll be there for you

('Cause you're there for me too)

The narrator finishes the visit with the false mantra of being there for his friend. And then finally ends the charade with the sarcastic lie of “knowing” that his helpless friend will be there for him too. His friend can’t get out of bed and he can’t even make toast without screwing it up, how will he be able to lend any support to anyone?

The narrator (and deep down his friend) knows this and loves that he is able to get that last dig in. The final turn of his Machiavellian screw job is done. The friend now understands exactly what the narrator has been telling him all morning. What happens next to his friend is no longer his concern. The narrator wipes the apartment down of his prints and exits the door.