“Wear Black” is about the trappings of youth, but it’s also about what you keep forever.

Track: “Wear Black”
Album: Goths (2017)

There are other songs on Goths about the difference between the look and the feel, but “Wear Black” is a direct confrontation with that idea. This song finds a young John Darnielle insistent that he will wear black, literally, but also figuratively, as the way he engages with the world. You see this in lines like “check me out, I can’t blend in,” which might seem like a concern, but at the moment it’s more likely to be a badge of honor.

Before a live show in 2017 in California, Darnielle introduced “Wear Black” by saying that he was sentimental about singing it in front of people who knew him back in the day. So many songs that are clearly about John Darnielle’s youth are specific to his experience, but this one is one you can probably feel even if you weren’t goth. It even gets more complex than that, as we must consider the urge to call things a “phase.” Maybe you age out of the eyeliner and the attitude, but you are who you are. What “works” on you as a young person works because of the person you stay when you grow up.

The key moment is in the final verse. The narrator, John Darnielle or someone much like him, says “wear black to the intervention,” which tells us that people around them are trying to help. But you need the next line, said with some humor if not outright spite, “wear black back to the car.” Maybe you’ll get past some of this, but some of it is something you can’t take off.