Scar (2004) – Missy Higgins

Scar immediately grabbed the attention of listeners and critics alike becoming a huge hit in Australia entering the Australian ARIA Singles Chart at number one and going platinum. The song was released as the debut single from Missy Higgins’ first studio album, The Sound of White. It was refreshing to hear this wildly successful Melbourne pop artist sing in a heavy Australian accent which many of her peer music artists were reluctant to do for fear of alienating international audiences and jeopardising wider commercial success.

Appearances can be deceiving since Scar seems just a sprightly ‘indie’ sounding pop song on the surface but there is a lot going on beneath where its waves overlap. It is a thought provoking song about influences and particularly about two people attempting to influence and shape the narrator (we’ll assume its ‘Missy’) to their own selfish end. Missy finds she has been manipulated almost beyond her past self, and that she was ‘not herself’ all this time. She fixes this, but is still changed by the Scars that are now part of her as she learns from past experiences.

Higgins wrote Scar during a tumultuous period in her life after returning to Australia after a year in Europe, where she was grappling with feelings of dislocation, identity, and heartbreak. The song has been rumoured to give a hint to Higgins’s bisexuality, although she has not openly commented on the song’s meaning.

[Verse 1]
He left a card, a bar of soap
And a scrubbing brush next to a note
That said, “Use these down to your bones”
And before I knew I had shiny skin
And it felt easy being clean like him
I thought “This one knows better than I do”

[Pre-Chorus]
A triangle
Tryna squeeze through a circle
He tried to cut me so I’d fit

[Chorus]
And doesn’t that sound familiar?
Doesn’t that hit too close to home?
Doesn’t that make you shiver;
The way things coulda gone?
And doesn’t it feel peculiar
When everyone wants a little more?
And so that I do remember
To never go that far
Could you leave me with a scar?

[Verse 2]
So the next one came with a bag of treats
She smelled like sugar and spoke like the sea
And she told me, “Don’t trust them, trust me”
Then she pulled at my stitches one by one
Looked at my insides, clicking her tongue
And said, “This will all have to come undone”

[Pre-Chorus]
A triangle
Tryna squeeze through a circle
She tried to blunt me so I’d fit

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
I think I realised just in time
Although my old self was hard to find
You can bathe me in your finest wine
But I’ll never give you mine
‘Cause I’m a little bit tired of fearing that I’ll be
The bad fruit nobody buys
Tell me, did you think we’d all dream the same?

[Chorus]

[Post-Chorus]

Melissa Morrison Higgins was born in Melbourne on 19 August 1983. Higgins learned to play classical piano from age six, following in the footsteps of Christopher and her older David, but realised she wanted to be a singer at about 12, when she appeared in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.  Introverted by nature, Higgins found that piano practice helped her cope with living at boarding school. In 2001, Missy’s sister Nicola entered “All for Believing” on her behalf in Unearthed, radio station Triple J’s competition for unsigned artists. The song won the competition and was added to the station’s play list. Two record companies showed an interest in her.

References:
1. Scar (song) – Wikipedia