A mark of self-grandeur or insecure self-consciousness? Narcissism or objectivity? An illeist is someone who talks about themselves in the third person. But how does that manifest in song?
Many famous people have practised illeism in public life. Politicians are have been regulars, from Julius Caesar to Charles De Gaulle, from Bob Dole to Donald Trump, seeming to put themselves on a pedestal to admire. Others have used it to hype their profile. Actor and former wrestling The Rock would announce to his opponents: ""Can you smell what The Rock is cooking?" The surrealist artist Salvador Dali constantly talk or write about himself, almost as a thing to behold, from ""Look! Salvador Dali is born." "Dali is immortal and will not die."
And the great footballer Pele, born as Edson Arantes do Nascimento, perhaps as a coping mechanism for his sheer level and pressure of fame, and virtually regarded his footballing profile as a different person. "When I met Pele, I was seven or eight. Pele doesn't have a nation, race, religion or colour. People all over the world love Pele. Edson is a man like other men." He has even said "Pele is a gift from god." Diego Maradona and Zlatan Ibrahimović have used similar self-deifying language. Then there is of course the "royal we", strictly speaking the second-person plural, is really a form of remote illeism, as used by Queen Elizabeth II and all those before her. And in some religions, notably Hinduism or Buddhism, it is sometimes conventional to self-refer in the third person, not for self-elevation, but cleansed objectivity.
But can illeism also be evidence of some form of mental health problem? Possibly. In fictional characters this seems implied, from Gollum, the twisted creature who craves the ring, and exhibits a form of schizophrenia in The Hobbit and in Lord of the Rings, to the figure of The Hulk of Marvel Comics ("Hulk smash!”). Or it is used for comic or dramatic effect, such as in expressions by character of sleuth Hercule Poirot, or in another style, Elmo the Sesame Street puppet who mimics the speech of young children. There the physically big, but shy character Bomber, the Midlands builder in the TV series, Auf Wiedersehen Pet. Or Jaqen H'ghar, the assassin of the Faceless Men in George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, made into the Game of Thrones series, who in a quasi-religious way refers to himself as "a man" or when talking to Arya Stark as "a girl" as a way to remove conventional identity and ego.
‘A man’. Jaqen H'ghar Game of Thrones
And so then to some song examples. Let's kicks of with Brazilian Girls and Talk To The Bomb, which addresses some of the problems of illeism:
Son of an honorable woman
What are you doing with that silly thing?
With holes in your soles and in your pockets
You have one choice:
Surrendering
You address yourself in the third person
And say "Hey, you, leave 'em alone"
You address yourself in the third person
And say "Hey, you, leave 'em alone"
Talk to the bomb, to the bomb in its shell
Talk to the bomb, will we go to hell?
Talk to the bomb, it has never been easy
Talk to the bomb, to the bomb
Hip-hop is a genre in which there is a huge amount of braggadocio illeism, and among the most common third-person self-referrers are Kanye West with his various personas (Jeezus etc), and among these artists their most used words are often also their own: Nas, Biggie (Smalls), Snoop Dogg, Dr Dre, Eminem (Shady). But instead of listening to more of that, let's have a sharper, more double-edged insight on this practice by Czarface and Ghostface Killah, with Powers and Stuff from 2019's Czarface Meets Ghostface album, and an intro by Esoteric:
Your best shit ain't better than
His worst verse, and
Czarface a triple threat,
He rhyme in third person
And he's a cannibal,
About to eat his third person
You as genuine as "Pony, "
The karaoke version
Logic meanwhile wrote a A Third Person Story, guess what, in the third person:
Lupe Fiasco's Adoration of the Maji featuring Crystal Torres from Tetsuo & Youth in 2015 presents a sharply self-parodying form of wordplay on third-person behaviour:
You're so smart
You're like, a contemporary museum of art
That farts, that's harsh
Narcissism, on narcotics
On sharp objects in large pockets
Can't be eyes closed when you side scroll
You not the first person
The first person from your first cursin'
To your first cursive
And your curse words is in the curve version
It occurs virgin is the word version
That refers perfect to the first person
In the third verse, who's really me
In the third person but prefers the first one, that's me
And to finish, let's move into another style by singer-songwriter Andrew Bird, who wrestles with his "third-person" disguise over a troubled relationship:
Used to have just one foot out the door
Yeah, I always wanted more
Yeah, I always wanted moreI always was the one
You thought would never marry
Used to be so wilfully obtuse, or is the word abstruse?
Semantics like a noose, get out your dictionaries
I'm gonna cut to the quick
This is all non-fiction
Words you beat with a stick
These are my true convictions
So tell me, are you serious?
Are you serious?
Cause every night of your life
You'll fight for it
So mysterious
How imperious!
But are you serious
When it really comes down to it?
I see that you're down there and I'm up here
Your boyfriend's gone to get a beer
Leaving us crystal clear lines of communications
Promise me you won't avert your eyes
I'll drop my third-person disguise
You know it's time to do or die
No useless explanations
So then, could it be time to refer, illeistically to your own music collections or other forms of cultural reference? Please feel free to share any further examples in songs, instrumentals, on albums, film, art or other contexts in comments below.
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