Life imitates art. Or is that the other way around? Regardless, whichever way it works out just hope that, unlike Bright Eyes, your art doesn’t inadvertently make it seem like you could have serial murdered 49 women in rural Washington.
Test your knowledge with the following quiz of Bright Eyes lyric or court transcript from Gary Ridgeway’s conviction.
Q: This is the first day of my life. Swear I was born right in the doorway.
A: Bright Eyes lyric!
That was an easy one to start off. We know it’s a maudlin song but we doubt that the Green River Killer was ever that optimistic about anything.
Q: When everything is lonely I can be my own best friend. I get a coffee and the paper, have my own conversations.
A: Also Bright Eyes! Correct!
Getting warmer. Still not quite homicidal enough to go kill crazy all over the Pacific northwest but we’re beginning to see the challenge of all of this.
Q: Well, the animals laugh from the dark of the wilderness. A baby cries hard in an apartment complex as I pass in a car buried under the influence.
A: That’s right! Still Bright Eyes!
While we admit we can see the sort of dark, unhinged lunacy necessary to build your own graveyard over decades, this is of course still Bright Eyes.
Q: I wanna be the surgeon that cuts you open.
A: This one could have gone either way. But just for consistency we’re gonna give it to Bright Eyes.
Yeah this was kind of a weird one. We didn’t really wanna give it to Bright Eyes but, well, here you go. Hopefully we can end this on something a little cheerier from the other side of this quiz for once already.
Q: There’s bodies decomposing in containers tonight
In an abandoned building.
A: Holy shit, Bright Eyes!
We might need to call the FBI and tell them they have the wrong man. And Conor Oberst better have really good alibis for where he was at any point in the past four decades because right now this doesn’t look good for him.