Mental Health Themes in Music: Hitman

Welcome to the next installation in the exploratory series of Mental Health Themes in Music!Today, we’re looking at a song from the 2014 album, “Heart Murmurs,” by Minneapolis based indie pop artist, Jeremy Messersmith. Let’s take a look at the beautiful and dynamic sentiments from “Hitman.”

“I need a hitman for my heart

Someone to bump it off a balcony

Nonchalantly leave the scene

I need a hitman for my heart

It doesn't care who might get hurt

Never thinks, only loves recklessly

Slow, but sure, it's killing me”

Setting the overall tone for the song, these lines begin an exploration of a common trope, head vs heart, and concisely personifies both the heart and our desired response to the heart’s inconvenient yearnings. Messersmith elaborates on this theme by describing the consequences of seemingly reckless investment in anything unrequited or unattainable and how painful the experience can be.

“I need a hitman for my heart

Someone to gently strangle it at night

Lovingly, by candlelight”

The thing that strikes me most about these lines is how tender the tone is, which provides immense insight into the function of wanting to hire a hitman. Messersmith expertly captures a sentiment of humane euthanasia vs an act of violence in his description, leading the listener to understanding that the narrator simply wants peace.

“And I don't know how to stop

Tired of crying, holding on

My heart wants to love you

And I just want it gone”

White the bridge provides insight into a context of unrequited love for the narrator, I encourage you to expand this to any other emotionally difficult or taxing situation. High emotional intensity is exhausting at best AND accepting reality can be equally effortful, despite acceptance being one of the most crucial steps in finding relief.

“I need a hitman for my heart

Someone professional

Who's fast and clean

So I won't feel anything

I need a hitman for my heart”

After a drastic ramp up in instrumentation, these are the lines that Messersmith howls over layers of distorted guitar and powerful drumming. The narrator so effectively communicates that his goal isn’t to inflict additional pain; his goal is relief from suffering. He just doesn't know how to attain this another way.

The moral of the story is that everything, even the things that appear maladaptive, have some sort of understandable reason for being there. My hope is that this aids any relevant exploration and, ultimately, makes empathy more easily accessible. After all, and most importantly, we’re all human.

PS: Fancy a musical palette cleanser? Queue up, “Everybody Gets A Kitten,” from Jeremy Messersmith’s 2017 album, “11 Obscenely Optimistic Songs for Ukulele: A Micro Folk Record for the 21st Century and Beyond.”

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Kim Johnson, LMHC, MT-BC, is a licensed mental health counselor (LMHC) and board certified music therapist (MT-BC) who graduated with her master’s from Lesley University in 2017. She has experience with adults and adolescents in group private practice and community mental health settings. The levels of care she has worked in are outpatient, with both individual and group therapy and in partial hospital programs for mental health and substance use disorders. Additionally, she has had intensive training in dialectical behavioral therapy and cognitive processing therapy for PTSD.

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