Episode 6

       Stay where you want, don’t you leave

 Vincent, can you hear me?

Don’t’ give up what you see.

You live life like part of you is left

on a thrown stone

die you all alone

Vincent … [seven syllables not clearly audible]

Vincent, do you love me?

It’s been an eternity

Learning fast that love is hard to fake.

Will you take a shot?

Tell me what I’ve got.

Anything to show me you’re awake.

Stay where you are, don’t you leave

Anything unspoken.

Stay where you are, they believe

In tearing down the broken

Vincent, you could steal me.

Who do you wanna be?

They will never know you like I do.

The footprint’s on the floor

You never locked the door

You’re afraid they’ll never forgive you.

Stay where you are, don’t you leave

Anything unspoken.

Stay where you are, they believe

In tearing down the broken.

Oooo, do they know what it’s like to be a monster?

Oooo, you’ll never go with them.

Stay where you are, don’t you leave

Anything unspoken.

Stay where you are, they believe

In tearing down the broken.

Vincent, can you hear me?

“Trace,” by Jeff Klein aka Jeffrey Lawrence Klein (on his EP, Put Your Weight On It, Pinnacle Music, 1998)

Played during the final scene of episode 6, at Friendly’s diner, in which Bella first meets Jake and Hamilton and immediately sees through Jake’s gender deception.  Also played during the immediately preceding scene in which Will, Bella and Scout drive to Carson in Ryder’s Corvette.

This is one of two songs by Jeff Klein in the soundtrack of Young Americans, the other being “Five Good Reasons,” played in the beauty salon scene of episode 5.

A 4.2 MB MP3-format recording of "Trace," made from an authorized DVD of Put Your Weight On It, is accessible at the bottom of this page.  A tentative and incomplete original transcription of the lyrics is offered below.  It may contain errors.  Neither lyrics nor a recording of "Trace" is known to be available elsewhere online.

Wait about on the corner with myself, let alone you

No doubt you got these things that you feel that I need to prove

I’ve only been up to myself and I don’t mean to pass it off on you

Off on you

No, such a beautiful, beautiful you 

And I’ll be out covering my tracks, and a trace of, and a trace of – you 

Slow down, I know this feeling wants to blow, yes I know

About time I gave in to my own defenses and let you go

I’m only waiting for the day when I could pass this all off on you

(Line of three syllables not clearly audible.)

No, such a beautiful, beautiful you 

And I’ll be out covering my tracks, and a trace of, and a trace of – you 

Come down, I could hear heaven call, whisper to me

Oh I may know what I could do for you

Oh baby I would see it through, I’d see it through my own misery

(Line of six syllables not clearly audible.)

No, when my situation’s where we call, baby, where we’ve been

Low tide gonna wash away my surface and ride me under this desire

Look, I gotta pocket full of hope and a mind to keep this all in view

All in view of you

No, such a beautiful, beautiful you  

And I’ll be out covering my tracks, and a trace of, and a trace of – you  

Comment: In "Gone," YA's protagonists are "gone" from Rawley during much of the episode.  Will's narrating comments that open and close all other episodes are also conspicuously "gone."  And vocal music is almost entirely "gone," too.  The episode's vocal music is limited to three brief background clips, both identifiable ones by then-obscure artists.  From no other episode of Young Americans is vocal music so absent.

Vocal music is played only during the scenes that substitute for Will's narrative comments in framing the episode:  Bella's opening narrative about stealing Ryder's Corvette, and the diner scenes in which the hitherto non-intersecting Bella-Scout and Jake-Hamilton storylines finally start to converge.  What do the songs, and the absence of songs elsewhere in the episode, add to these "framing" scenes? 

The theme of the two diner scenes that open and close the episode is Jake's discomfort with her gender deception. Part of Jake clearly wants to be come clean with Scout and Will - she first asks them how they like the cross-dressing Hilary Swank in Boys Don't Cry, then launches the "cute coat" behavior that makes Bella see immediately that Jake is a girl.  (Bella says in episode 7 that she'd seen through Jake's disguise when they first met.)

Jake's behavior in those scenes offers a philosophical reflection comparable to what Will usually offers in his narrative comments, namely that love that isolates lovers is - as Will might say - emotionally oxymoronic.  In the final diner scene the whole group seems to underscore that by subtly breaking the fourth wall to celebrate Bella's seeing through Jake's disguise; they engage in double-entendre dialogue clearly applicable to "nothing covering" Jake for Bella and then laugh at their own joke.  Like many things in Young Americans, that's a bit surreal - but one can appreciate its surrealism only after learning from Bella, in episode 7, that she'd seen through Jake's disguise when they first met.

In the two diner scenes, Jake expresses her need to "be herself" with more than just Hamilton; and Will-as-dreamer responds by making the Jake-Hamilton and Bella-Scout storylines start to converge.  Jake wants not to "leave anything unspoken;" Will-as-dreamer, while "covering [his] tracks," responds by giving Jake a friend who sees through her disguise.  Will's love "speaks like silence," underscored by the absence of his narrating comments.  But YA's use of love songs in these two scenes, and only in these two scenes - like the use of "Sail Away" in episode 5 and of "The Way You Look Tonight" in episode 4 - seems to express chiefly Will-as-dreamer's love for Jake and Hamilton, for their dramatization of the possibility and nature of "true love." 

Ichabod Grubb

Created: April 2014

Last updated: April 2014