Invisible...For Good or Bad?

Skylar Grey is a very talented yet little-known artist, and I just love her. (She's the one that sings the chorus in Coming Home, by Diddy-Dirty Money.) I've been addicted to her song, Invisible, for the past few weeks and I really wanted to look a little deeper into it. Boy, was I surprised what I found. I thought I liked this song because it had a nice tune and she had such a nice voice, but now I like it for so much more.

People probably hear this song the first time, and think, wow, this girl is seriously depressed. (I'm not going to lie, that's what I thought as well the first time I heard it.) If they took the time to really unpack the lyrics, they would see that it's so much more than that. The first few lines are, "I take these pills, to make me thin. / I die my hair, I cut my skin. / I try everything, to make them see me, / But all they see, is someone who's not me." Okay, I see she has some issues here...but are they really her issues? I think she is characterizing the common image of beautiful with her words, and it's just about someone who's failed to conform. All the stereotypes of modern beauty make tons of girls and women feel self-conscious and just not pretty in general. It's true, what's she's saying. People who don't fit the exact criteria for beautiful often do things like taking pills, and cutting their skin, to make themselves feel better, or relieve the stress.

It's sad that beauty is so unrealistic and unachievable. In the chorus, she says, "Even when I'm walking on the wire, / Even when I set myself on fire, / Why do I always feel invisible, invisible. / Everyday I try to look my best, / Even though inside I'm such a mess, / Why do I always feel invisible, invisible." I don't think she's literally walking on a wire or setting herself on fire here, it's definitely more of a metaphor. Perhaps "walking on the wire" actually means when things matter, or when she's atop the world. Setting herself on fire probably means making a big show of herself. It hurts, when people try so hard to get noticed, and yet nothing happens. Beauty should be subjective, yet modern media and modern publicity have made it nearly unattainable. People have developed a definite opinion of what beauty should be, and that's the absolutely wrong thing to do. A skinny girl wearing lots of make-up should have the same beauty-value, shall we say, as an overweight girl au-natural. Skylar Grey demonstrates this with her lyrics. She's saying even when she does conform to the modern stereotypes and standards of beauty, (everyday I try to look my best), she STILL isn't getting recognized. That's the bitter truth. Girls gunk themselves up to look "pretty," and wear the latest styles to be, "cool," but all they are doing is supporting the messed up world we live in. And they STILL aren't there yet. They are the ones that feed the ever-growing monster of a concept we call, "beauty."

To wrap up, basically, this song has a lot more than it appears to on the surface, just like in people. What she is implying about beauty is spot on, and I've come to believe it. Maybe that makes me a cynic, or maybe it just makes me truthful. You decide. This song is what happens to people who have lost hope in all that is good, and realize the truth about life. This is one of those examples of what not to do (if you take it literally) when you become "invisible" in your own way. Everyone is invisible to something or someone, but if we dig deep enough, we can all find that thing that makes us stand out.

This is the song if you want to give it a listen...just remember she took some artistic liberties in the music video, specifically when she shows the lyrics literally.