Melanie

[LaikaComeHome]

It's sad how many people I know IRL that remind me of the singer in this song......... Still a catchy-ass fun song!

[YankoSwag 8888]

It's sad how many people I know IRL that remind me of the singer in this song......... Still a catchy-ass fun song!

I know a guy like this.

[Yankovic-Gretzky]

What does IRL stand for?

[Big Spoon]

"In real life."

[TMBJon]

Listening through Squeeze Box now and just got to Melanie. I am wondering if this narrator is the same guy as in Jackson Park Express. Both of them seem to have the same dissociative disorder where they think they are involved in two way relationships when in fact only the narrator is engaged in any intentional way.

[minnick27]

"Now I may be dead but I still love you"

Even Patrick Swayzes ghost did t stick around for 26 years

Sent from my LG-K550 using Tapatalk

[TMBJon]

Two possibilities: either Jackson Park Express happened first, or -- hear me out on this one -- the narrator of Melanie never actually died. Think about it. He's singing the song in a recording studio. So it's possible that his mental disorder caused him to think he died when actually he just got badly injured in the fall (maybe further impairing his judgement).

[stardrop]

I think the Jackson Park Express narrator and the narrator of Melanie have different coping mechanisms.

The Jackson Park Express narrator seems to have his rich inner world that digests the reality into time accelerated dream life experience. He still needs some real life inputs to trigger his imagination, but he does not need much interactions to get things going within his head.

While the narrator of Melanie is desperate to get what he wants, do everything(he thinks best) to get that. He might have some sweet fantasy with Melanie in his mind, but he is still feeling threatened by how things are going in reality, and he fights against it. Well, he would be a very unhappy guy. He may be dead, he still loves Melanie, but he probably knows Melanie still does not love him back.

If they are the same person, I'd say Melanie first, then Jackson Park Express. He did not die, but the incident left him not being able to move for some time - that changed how he sees and approaches his life.

[Stardraw123]

I wonder if the character in Jackson Park Express and Melanie might also be the same character in Airline Amy? Because in that song he also sings about his thoughts on a girl and talks about it as if they were in a relationship even though there's no proof that she has the same feelings for him. I think the order of the songs would be Airline Amy, Melanie, and then Jackson Park Express, with it starting off with him seeing airline Amy and trying to get her in an "upright locked position" and gets banned from flying the airline, so to see Amy again he buys a telescope to look in the plane windows from his apartment building and see her but he ends up seeing Melanie and gets the same feelings when he first saw Amy so he tries harder to get her attention, falls off the building thinking he died, and rides the Jackson Park Express to work since he's too injured to drive his car. He might also be the same character from Everything You Know Is Wrong since he says he dies near the end too and maybe the song could be about what he sees because of his mental illness. All of this just really makes me want to try and make a timeline for Al's songs and see if all, or at least most of the songs can be connected to one or more characters in some way

[TMBJon]

Yes! I was totally thinking this as I listened to Airline Amy yesterday. It's all the same deranged loon!