Mavis Staples / One True Vine / 2013
Can You Get to That
wry, world-weary, and insistently probing
A testimony about moral accounting dressed up as a breakup song, where the failures of a romantic relationship become evidence for a larger law of consequence: what you put out comes back to you. The repeated call-and-response question functions less as a lyric and more as an altar call, asking the listener to actually face that truth rather than just nod along.
karma and consequence self-deception versus reckoning financial metaphor for emotional debt call-and-response as spiritual challenge disillusionment in hindsight
Who's speaking
A narrator looking back on a failed relationship and, by extension, a failed way of living, addressing a second person (a former partner) but widening out to address the listener directly through the repeated question
What happens
The song opens with a recollection of a life lived passively, almost anonymously, before a found quotation about reaping and sowing reframes everything that follows. The middle verses revisit a relationship that ended in betrayal and bad faith, using the language of debts and bounced checks to describe emotional dishonesty. The chorus interrupts repeatedly, not to advance the story but to press the listener to confirm they understand the lesson being offered.
How it's built
Built on a simple verse-chorus-verse gospel/funk frame inherited from the original recording, with the title question functioning as a refrain that multiplies rather than develops -- it appears more and more insistently as the song goes on, crowding out narrative content until the call-and-response becomes the dominant texture of the back half.
Section by section
Opening verse
“I was one among the many”
The narrator describes a prior existence defined by passivity and interchangeability, setting up a contrast with the clarity she's about to arrive at. The hedge that follows -- admitting she only seemed anonymous -- suggests she's already revising her own past, aware that self-perception can be unreliable.
First chorus
The refrain arrives abruptly, almost as an interruption, functioning like an altar call rather than a pop hook. It doesn't answer anything; it just keeps asking, putting the burden of comprehension onto whoever is listening.
Second verse
“making preparations for the coming separation”
The memory of the relationship curdles here: affection is recast as foresight on the partner's part, implying premeditation rather than mere drifting apart. This is where the song's accusation sharpens from vague disappointment into something closer to betrayal.
Bridge/credit verse
“signed "insufficient funds"”
The financial conceit reaches its full, almost comic bluntness. The image of a love letter bouncing like a bad check collapses sentiment and commerce into one image, suggesting that false promises are a kind of fraud with real consequences.
Closing repetitions
The song ends by abandoning narrative entirely and letting the refrain multiply, call after call, answer after answer. The effect is less a resolution than an insistence -- the question is less about one relationship than about whether anyone is willing to actually reckon with cause and effect.
Craft
- extended financial metaphor
- Love is recast as a system of credit, checks, and debts, so emotional betrayal becomes a bounced payment -- a way of making abstract moral failure feel concrete and almost legally binding.
- call-and-response
- The repeated question and answering ad-libs borrow directly from gospel tradition, turning a pop/funk lyric into something closer to a sermon that demands audience participation rather than passive listening.
- aphorism
- The early reference to a quotation read in a book functions as a thesis statement the rest of the song exists to illustrate, giving the personal grievance the weight of proverb.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the breakup as a parable: the real subject is moral accountability, with the failed relationship serving as a case study in how people avoid consequence until it arrives anyway. A secondary reading, equally supportable, hears this as straightforward soul/gospel address to the listener -- the song asking whether its audience, not just the absent lover, is capable of honesty and reckoning. Given Staples' background in gospel and civil-rights-era music, the refrain plausibly carries a communal, even moral-instruction register beyond the romantic frame.
Context
"Can You Get to That" was originally written and recorded by Funkadelic for 1971's Maggot Brain, where it appeared as a comparatively conventional, gospel-tinged track amid that album's heavier material. Staples' version on One True Vine (2013), produced by Jeff Tweedy, strips the arrangement down and leans into her gospel phrasing, which foregrounds the call-and-response structure and gives the song's question more of a devotional than a funk-group feel. I'm not certain of the specific arrangement choices on this recording beyond general knowledge of the album's stripped-down, Tweedy-produced sound.
Listen for
- How the chorus question keeps returning with more insistence as the song progresses, as if demanding a different kind of attention
- The shift in tone between the reflective verses and the almost confrontational directness of the refrain
- Staples' phrasing on the financial imagery -- listen for how she inflects words like debts and funds with gospel cadence
- The way ad-libbed responses layer underneath the lead vocal, turning the song into a conversation rather than a monologue
About Mavis Staples
Mavis Staples is an American rhythm and blues and gospel singer and civil rights activist. Named one of the "Greatest Singers of all Time" by Rolling Stone, she rose to fame as a member of her family's band the Staple Singers, of which she is the last surviving member.
b. 1939 / United States
Full biography and catalogue