Interpreting Vampire in the Corner by Magdalena Bay
In which the pursuit of love is built on vacant foundations.
I present to you the seventh installment in my interpretation of Magdalena Bay’s 2024 album, Imaginal Disk. In this one, I will be breaking down the lyrics of Vampire in the Corner and trying to connect it into the larger narrative of the album, using hints from the map world. This series is mainly a creative exercise for me; I do not think that I am uncovering the intentions and meanings of Mica and Matt, rather I am pinning down what the album and its story means to me. In the spirit of David Lynch, this is the point of art, to find our own meanings in it.
For the last song, Fear, Sex, I argued that the song depicts Blue True and Ghost communicating with each other during the transition from one to the other during the imaginal disk procedure. Blue True wears blue makeup and a blue jumpsuit, and she is who we are following from the start of the album. Ghost wears a ballet leotard and a blonde wig, and I think she represents the ideal version of Blue True that is the result of the disk. The physical reality of the two is still a little unclear to me, whether one replaces the other or they are metaphorical representations. As the album goes on, I hope to come to a more concrete belief about one or the other.
"Vampire in the corner, am I scaring you off? Oh, I wanna dance, I wanna learn how to love"
The song opens with Blue True addressing the ‘vampire,’ her presumed love interest of the song. She worries that her feelings are scaring him away from their relationship. She wants to dance and learn how to love using their current or future relationship as a tool.
We know that this song is sung from Blue True due to the map world. Lyrics from this song appear when you click into the town icon and accept the invitation to the town play. On stage is Blue True with a sunflower framing her face.
"Someone call the coroner cause you're breaking my heart My god, I think I might have loved you too much"
It sounds like the vampire is, in fact, being frightened off by Blue True’s intentions. She says that he is breaking her heart, she thinks she loved him too much. I think this song is about pursuing the ideal of love and a relationship for its own sake, without the underlying connection and genuine care to support it. As the song goes on, I interpret the lyrics as Blue True being too preoccupied with wanting love because it is something that she is supposed to want, something that should make her full.
"Baby on a burner, am I throwing things off? Oh, I didn't mean, I didn't mean to make a fuss"
The phrase “baby on a burner” metaphorically represents a vulnerable person in a very dangerous situation. It is being used to represent Blue True putting herself out there in her pursuit of love, putting herself in the position for heartbreak and disappointment. She minimizes the scenario, in contrast to the grand declarations of the previous lines, saying she didn’t mean to cause any trouble. I see irony in this phrasing, that she is really asking a lot from the vampire, to teach her how to love and reciprocate her own feelings, but she describes it as a small mishap, a fuss.
"Vampire in the corner, just a bump in the dark My god, it's only cause I love you too much"
The choice that her love interest is described as a vampire is very important in the song’s narrative. In this context, I think a vampire represents a void of a person, something that sucks her in and feeds off of her but doesn’t have many defining features. We do not hear anything about the vampire that would make Blue True be so entranced by him. She describes him as a “bump in the dark,” indiscernible, blending into his background, unimportant, even.
Blue True claims that she cannot help herself, she loves the vampire too much and cannot contain this. I believe that she thinks it is a deep, interpersonal love, but I do not see this love as a genuine care for the vampire. To me, it is a misplaced urgency to feel validated as the recipient of another person’s love.
Vampires often have incredible abilities to seduce, which is used as a hunting tactic, in vampire media (Dracula, Twilight, Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Diaries). These vampires have a hypnotic seduction power, rendering their victims entranced and infatuated right before the predator attacks and drains their life force. I see the vampire in this song not as a specific, seductive person, but as the symbolic ideal of love. The intense desire that Blue True has for love is the hypnotic, seductive vampire to me.
"I, I wanna make you mine Told you a thousand times I'm your valentine Oh, I, I wanna show you round Don't wanna let you down You're my valentine"
This is the chorus. Blue True wants ownership and belonging from the vampire, making him hers and her his. She wants them to be each other’s valentines, the holiday for love that is commonly criticized for the commercialization and commodification of romance. This represents a superficiality in her intentions to me, a performativity in the act of love, rather than a brave and emotional baring of her feelings.
This opinion is strengthened by the map world. The representation of Vampire in the Corner is literally a performance in this. Blue True is up on stage with two others for the Town play, performing to an audience of three.
These declarations of love do not take place in the privacy of True’s home, they take place in the town center on a stage.
"Sorry like a flower that never gets any sun I hang my head down, let the bees do their buzz"
Blue True is a flower for this song, a wilting flower that has been neglected. The light of love has not chosen her, something that, as a flower, she has no control over despite her attempts. She is dejected and disappointed, letting the natural world continue on. Buzzing bees literally vibrate to shake off pollen as they visit flowers, performing the act of reproduction for flowers via pollination. Blue True hopes that one day, nature or divinity or action will shine down on her and allow her to find love.
"Baby, you're my rainy day that's starting to flood
My god, it's only cause I love you too much" The relationship between Blue True and the vampire has gone sour. Metaphorically, the rain has passed the point of containment and normalcy, turning into a flood. I see in this line another interpretation of this song, that the vampire and Blue True are in a tumultuous, unhealthy relationship. The vampire is siphoning off love and care from True and giving her nothing in return, leaving her empty.
"Vampire in the corner, am I scaring you off? Oh, I wanna dance, I wanna learn how to love Someone call the coroner cause you're breaking my heart My god, I think I might have loved you too much"
There is some comedy in the fact that a monster, the vampire, is the one getting scared. I see this as a representation of the misplacement and inappropriateness of Blue True’s love, that the target of her affections is not the ideal recipient of her desires, but that she is pushing through this incompatibility to reach the ideal.
"I, I wanna make you mine Told you a thousand times I'm your valentine Oh, I, I wanna show you around Don't wanna let you down You're my valentine" 2x
The song closes with a repetition of the chorus, reiterating what I see as a superficial declaration of love.
MEDIA RELATIVE: I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up Supper’s Ready by Genesis. Genesis is a prog rock band who has many times been cited as early inspirations and influences for Matt and Mica; and Supper’s Ready is a 23-minute-long song with seven distinct sections. I think the prog rock influences really come through in the second half of Imaginal Disk. During performances of Supper’s Ready, Peter Gabriel puts on different costumes for the different portions of the song. In the fifth portion, “Willow Farm,” he dons a yellow flower around his head.
Clearly, the costume Mica wears is a tribute to Genesis and Peter Gabriel. However, I would also like to mention some similarities between Imaginal Disk and Supper’s Ready.
Supper’s Ready is a heavily narrative song, describing the journey of two lovers into a cult headed by the “Guaranteed Eternal Sanctuary Man,” who directs the members to wage war. In the fourth section, “How Dare I Be So Beautiful?”, in the aftermath of a battle, the lovers come across Narcissus, a man from Greek myth who falls in love with his own reflection in a pond and eventually transmutes to become a patch of flowers, unable to pull himself away from his empty love. The lovers meet this same fate, themselves pulled into the pool during “How Dare I Be So Beautiful?” This section aligns well with my interpretation of Vampire in the Corner, where Blue True falls for an empty lack of a person, convinced that it is real love, when really, she is in pursuit of the superficial performance of love.
During “Willow Farm,” the lovers climb out of the pond and are surrounded by free-flowing nature in all forms. This is when Peter Gabriel adorns himself with the yellow flower, showing the connection to the natural, simple world at Willow Farm. I see a lot of similarities to Imaginal Disk, in this section we have lyrics saying, “we’re changing everyone,” referencing the changing of the followers into seeds in the soil. Aesthetically, there is a lot of overlap in the songs’ lyrics regarding nature. Supper’s Ready follows a charlatan cult leader, who brings his followers to war and leads to the transmutation the lovers undergo, much like The Doctor in Imaginal Disk influencing people to get a procedure to change themselves.
Lastly, the chorus of Supper’s Ready is a refrain between the lovers, saying
"And it's, 'Hey, babe
With your guardian eyes so blue
Hey, my baby
Don't you know our love is true?'"The use of the words “blue” and “true” immediately makes me think of Imaginal Disk and it’s protagonist, Blue True.
Do you agree with my interpretation? Anything you think I missed? Let me know! Next up is Watching T.V.
I hope you finish all the lyric's analysis as well as i hope they release the whole visual concept album 🤗