Mavis Staples / We Get By
We Get By
warm, steady reassurance verging on gentle exhortation
A late-career Mavis Staples song built almost entirely on a single reassuring refrain, offering communal survival as its own kind of gospel. It trades plot for repetition, using the mantra of endurance to comfort a specific friend and, by extension, anyone listening.
resilience solidarity/kinship faith without dogma friendship and caretaking endurance over time
Who's speaking
A first-person narrator speaking directly to a struggling friend, but the address widens to include the listener; the voice is unwaveringly supportive and reads as trustworthy rather than conflicted
What happens
The song opens with a general statement of communal philosophy, then narrows briefly to a specific anecdote about a friend in emotional turmoil, before pulling back out into repeated vows of steadfastness. There's little forward motion in plot; instead the song deepens its commitment through accumulation, ending in near-wordless affirmation.
How it's built
Loose verse-refrain form where the refrain dominates and mutates slightly each time (small word swaps like 'no matter what' becoming 'no matter how long' or 'no matter how it happens'), while the verses shrink as the song progresses, eventually dissolving into fragments and ad-libs. This structural erosion mirrors the message: eventually all that's left is the promise itself.
Section by section
Opening refrain
The song front-loads its thesis before any narrative context, listing the resources people lean on—love, faith, kinship, humor—as parallel, interchangeable supports. This levels the sacred and the everyday, treating a smile as no less sustaining than faith itself.
Verse: the friend's story
“going through changes / Once again”
The only concrete narrative detail in the song is deliberately vague, naming a recurring emotional or relational struggle without specifics. That vagueness lets the anecdote function as a mirror for the listener's own troubles rather than a fixed story about someone else.
Refrain shift to direct address
The chorus turns from general philosophy to a personal vow, promising steady presence regardless of outcome. The change from open-ended 'whatever happens' to time-based 'no matter how long' subtly acknowledges that endurance itself takes patience, not just goodwill.
Bridge: sharing burden
“If you don't have yours / you sure got mine”
This is the clearest articulation of mutual aid in the song—an offer to lend one's own strength when another's runs out. It reframes 'getting by' as a collective act rather than individual grit.
Closing fragments
As the song winds down, full lines break into repeated phrases and wordless vocalizing. The breakdown of syntax enacts the song's message physically: commitment outlasts the need for complete sentences, becoming pure sound and presence.
Craft
- anaphora
- The repeated 'we get by' opening lines and phrases functions as an incantation, building assurance through sheer repetition rather than argument.
- synecdoche
- A single friend's crisis stands in for hardship generally, letting a specific anecdote gesture toward universal struggle without over-explaining it.
- variation within refrain
- Slight lexical shifts each time the chorus returns keep the repetition from feeling static, subtly expanding the promise's scope.
- dissolution into ad-lib
- The final section breaks the refrain into scattered phrases and non-lexical sounds, dramatizing devotion overflowing beyond structured language.
Reading it
Read straightforwardly, this is a song of communal endurance—rooted in Staples' gospel and civil-rights lineage—that treats survival as something achieved through relationship rather than isolated willpower. A secondary reading treats it as a quietly spiritual song stripped of doctrinal language: the 'faith' invoked early is left undefined, allowing it to mean religious belief, faith in other people, or simply faith that things continue. Both readings coexist without tension, since the song's power lies in its refusal to specify exactly what people are getting by on.
Context
Mavis Staples has spent decades moving between gospel, soul, and civil-rights-inflected protest music, often functioning as a voice of collective comfort and resilience for Black communities. This track, from an album carrying the same title, continues that role in a stripped-down, contemporary soul setting; based on the text alone, it reads as consistent with her long-standing persona as an elder offering steadiness rather than spectacle. I don't have reliable specifics on the album's production or writing credits, so this contextual reading stays general.
Listen for
- how the refrain's wording quietly shifts each repetition, expanding the promise from unconditional to enduring over time
- the way the second verse's details stay deliberately unspecific, inviting listener projection
- the moment the lyric breaks down into fragments and non-verbal sound near the end
- Staples' vocal delivery likely carrying warmth and lived authority that the plain lyric structure leaves room for
About Mavis Staples
Mavis Staples is an American rhythm and blues and gospel singer and civil rights activist. 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