A logical analysis of KATSEYE’s “Gnarly”

Gnarly begins with a premise: “They could describe everything with one single word”, the word being “gnarly”. The song continues describing various people, places and things as gnarly.

This is all well and good, until the third verse, when the narrator states: “You’re gnarly, I’m not”. This defies the original premise, so we need to rethink the logic the song is based on. Maybe gnarly is a negative term. and the narrator is so superior to everyone and everything around her that she can describe everything as gnarly pejoratively.

However, the very next line: “Jealous of my mansion? Yeah, the view is fucking gnarly” seems to run counter to that interpretation as well. The narrator wouldn’t describe her own mansion negatively; in fact, the mansion seems to be part of what makes her so superior to others.

So, clearly gnarly is not a negative descriptor, and can be used in both positive and negative ways as we assumed under the initial premise. The question, then, is who or what is the narrator of this song? That gnarly, whether positive or negative, cannot be applied to the narrator herself, but can be applied to seemingly anything else in the known universe? Is the narrator some sort of quantum being? Schrödinger’s gnarly? Is the narrator God?