999,841: Toad the Wet Sprocket - Walk On the Ocean

There is a school of lyric interpretation which holds that vague abstractions are very artistic indeed, because they allow the listener to attach their own meanings to the work. There isn't just one right answer, man! This aesthetic allows the terminally lazy to avoid focusing their thoughts and spew stream-of-consciousness nonsense, which often passes for poetry among the sort of people who like poetry not for the sensory specifics the language evokes, but because they think it is deep. Many of these lyric writers have learned all the wrong lessons from classic R.E.M. Sure, the lasting effect of their subconscious abstraction is still dreamlike, but not in the hazy and hypnotic way – more in the way where someone is droning on and on about how they had this dream, and it was full of incomprehensible personal symbols, and you cannot wait for them to shut the hell up about it and go back to talking about organic produce or political theories that don’t work in real life or whatever the fuck.

With this in mind, we begin to unravel the enigma that is Toad the Wet Sprocket’s wistful 1991 modern-rock hit “Walk on the Ocean.” First, there is the enigma of the band’s name, which was lifted from an obscure recorded Monty Python sketch called “Rock Notes.” This Toad was not even the first band to name themselves after this reference; that honor goes to a barely known New Wave Of British Heavy Metal band which never released a full album, largely because (based on the one track of theirs I’ve heard) their music wasn’t very good. Despite borrowing their name from one of the 20th century’s greatest comedy ensembles, the better-known Toad has no discernible sense of humor in their music. This paradox helped pave the way for Simpsons-watching eyeliner-emo stars Fall Out Boy.

A melancholy sense of loss and mortality pervades “Walk on the Ocean” from beginning to end, but it’s never quite clear what or who has been lost. A summer fling? Childhood friends? The darling old couple who ran the beachfront bed and breakfast? It’s OK; just attach your own meaning to it. The first verse starts with this indeterminate group glimpsing the ocean from a trail. “And somebody told me that this is the place/Where everything’s better, everything’s safe,” sings Toad. Really? Somebody else told you that? That wasn’t just your way of shoehorning an unrelated emotion into the song, without taking responsibility for it? And this "other person" told you this about the ocean? Oh, to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation!

DUDE: “Hey man, you know the ocean?”
TOAD: “Yeah.”
DUDE: “Man, that’s the place where everything’s better.”
TOAD: “Oh totally, like the boardwalk, with the hot rollerbladers?”
DUDE: “Well no, the ocean is the place where everything’s safe.”
TOAD: “Oh. But can’t people drown? Isn’t that why are there lifeguards all over the place? What about riptides? What about stinging jellyfish? I know shark attacks are rare, but -- ”
DUDE: “No man, you don’t get it. It’s, like, poetic.”
TOAD: “Oh. Oh, yeah, I get it.”
DUDE: “You should put that in a song, man. Hey, do you have a quarter, I’m trying to get something to eat.”

The chorus is full of the strong imagery that theoretically makes good poetry: “Walk on the ocean/Step on the stones/Flesh becomes water/Wood becomes bone.” But what the hell is going on here? What is this trying to evoke? What does this metaphor represent? Why, in one line, does a body part become some common natural substance, but in the next line, a common natural substance turns into a body part? Did Toad get confused about exactly what was happening in his metaphor? If our earth meat melts away and disappears, why does something else come out of nowhere and turn into a skeleton? Or is this intentional, because once we become one with eternity, eternity also leaves its essence in us? Or did Toad just need a word that rhymed with “stone” and would sound really deep? I don’t know, man, just attach your own meaning.

In the second verse, “they” smile about Toad and his indeterminate group promising to keep in touch, and “they” apparently have already forgotten that this group visited the beach. “They,” of course, are never identified. Perhaps “they” are the darling old couple that run the bed and breakfast, and are, sadly, a bit addled with the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Perhaps “they” have been spying on Toad’s hot friend in the bikini. Perhaps “they” are the unseen angels of the cosmos, watching these silly humans hurtle inexorably toward death, indistinguishable from the billions who have come before them and joined the ocean of eternity. Perhaps “they” are those gnarly skeletons that just morphed out of driftwood while Toad’s friend/lover/whatever melted into the sea like the Wicked Witch of the West. I don’t know, man, just attach your own meaning.

The last verse finds Toad back at “the homestead,” which is not a plot of land settled by pioneers, but rather a large impersonal city with polluted air that makes you choke (“And people don’t know you/And trust is a joke”). Clearly, Toad is jaded about the hurly-burly of modern life and the judgmental fickleness of young urban professionals. But next comes, perhaps, the key to the song: “We don’t even have pictures/Just memories to hold.” Maybe that’s what they’ve lost! Maybe that’s what this whole song is so sad about! We went for a nice walk on this beautiful beach, and nobody remembered to bring the camera! Cue the weeping strings! Sure, our memories grow sweeter each season as we slowly grow old, but if that doddering old couple with Alzheimer’s is any indication, we’d better take photographs if we want things to be a little more permanent. Or maybe not. I don’t know, man, just attach your own meaning.

Walk On The Ocean (album versi...