Dirt Room

"Dirt Room" was the first single from alternative rock band Blue October's fifth studio album, Approaching Normal. The song was released to digital outlet stores on December 23, 2008 and to radio on January 13, 2009. An acoustic version of the song was included on the band's album Ugly Side: An Acoustic Evening With Blue October.

Music video

The music video premiered on Yahoo! Music on January 27, 2009^[1] and was directed by Kevin Kerslake. It is centered around a robber (played by frontman Justin Furstenfeld) who is captured by his attempted victim. He is tied up and the captor threatens him with premature burial. At the end of the video he is placed in an open grave and viewed by a great deal of people, including two police officers. These scenes are intercut with footage of the band playing the song in the living room of the captor's house. The music video shows Justin burning a dollar bill with the initials, "M.R." clearly displayed to the camera before the flames erupt. Justin has admittied that this song was inspired by an ex-friend and band-manager, Michael Rand, who matches those same initials. Rand alleged that he had written or co-written "Hate Me" and other songs on the same album, and thus created a lawsuit to ask for financial compensation. This lawsuit was eventually settled, with no compensation granted to Rand. Justin still contends that those songs were written by him and were only influenced by his fellow-band mates. His initial discussions of this lawsuit were very vague due to the legal requirements during an ongoing lawsuit.

Meaning dicussed

During the hushed period, Furstenfeld told Music Interviews Now: "That song is about not being a passive idiot anymore and not letting people take advantage of you anymore just because of who you are. I wouldn't say that we're famous… we are just normal people that get put on TV and stuff. That is just who we are… so if that makes us famous like the E! Entertainment crap, that's not us. People want to see you in that part and think you are rich, and they start to come out of the wood work…and they start asking for things over and over again, and that song's about just taking it too far. There was an incident that happened, I can't even talk about it… but I took care of it, wrote the song, and that's my revenge. I use my words as weapons. No one will take advantage of my family again. I usually do all the writing and on this new album everyone did some writing and it was really special to me."

In a later interview ^[2], Justin was able to be more candid about the song's true meaning. He explained quite bluntly; "That song is basically about when I got sued by my former manager that I had when I was maybe 17-or-18-years-old who claimed that I had written ‘Hate Me’ during that time and he wanted a piece of that pie." He went on to explain that, "the lawsuit went through and he lied during the whole thing, so it all came to light. But that song really brought out this more confidence side of me and not the, ‘Oh hate me because I am bad’ side – I don’t do drugs anymore and I don’t f*ck with that stuff, I have a daughter now so if anybody wants to take food off of her plate then they are going to have to come straight through me whether it be verbally, and I hope not physically because I try to teach self-expression instead of physical violence! You know?"

Chart positions

References