The Meaning Behind Closer To Fine By The Indigo Girls

The Indigo Girls began writing and performing together at high school in 1985,and though their debut album, 1985's "Strange Fire," did little initially to find them an audience, the duo's dedication to songcraft left them in a good position for when a major label eventually came knocking.

The Indigo Girls began writing and performing together at high school in 1985, and though their debut album, 1985's "Strange Fire," did little initially to find them an audience, the duo's dedication to songcraft left them in a good position for when a major label eventually came knocking.

"Closer to Fine" writer Emily Saliers was also well primed for penning the philosophical and reflective songs that would become the Indigo Girls' signature thanks to her upbringing and her close relationship with her father, Don, a theologian and professor at Emory College, where the Indigo Girls also studied. Don is also a musician in his own right and a composer of devotion music which profoundly affected the young Emily as she developed as a songwriter in the 1980s.

However, the song also reflects its writer's doubts that the answers to life can be found in universities. Emily revealed in an interview with Behind the Vinyl (via YouTube) that she wrote "Closer to Fine" on the porch of a cabin in Vermont, where her family would often take their vacations. "It was pretty idyllic," she recalled, noting that the cabin had no electricity. "At the time I had graduated from college and I was thinking a lot about ... the insular world of academia, and how the one thing I learned in school is that you can't believe everything you read or hear."

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