Benjamin R. Swanson, best known as BennySwans and currently going by BennySwoons on Genius due to a private joke, is a terrible person and a terrible moderator with terrible music taste.

He loves the Arctic Monkeys, even though they’re terrible. He likes Kanye West, but only the terrible songs. His long-standing love of Kendrick Lamar (rumour has it he heard K. Dot’s first freestyle) and Beach House has even led some commentators to question whether these artists must secretly be terrible.

Benny is a student of film, which makes sense because all films are terrible. He uses this interest to make terrible annotations on terrible scripts like Breaking Bad and the works of Christopher Nolan. He’s also the second-ranked scholar on Fitness Genius, with 30 IQ. We appreciate him terribly.

B-Rock made a rapid progression from editor to community staffer. One of Spinelli’s protégés, he become a mod in late 2013, and then informally took over the operation of Rock Genius alongside Vesuvius and BigBadBonj. He became a regulator in 2014, before being hired by Genius in late 2014. He left his job at Genius due to college commitments in early 2015.

Brock is a major stan of Bon Iver and Chance The Rapper. He is also interested in various SaveMoney artists and Bon Iver side-projects, as well as Childish Gambino, Beach House, alt-J, and The National. Not reflected in his Genius achievements is a strong interest in punk and emo artists such as Modern Baseball, The Front Bottoms, The Hotelier, PUP, and Pinegrove.

Eminem is an actor best known for roles in films like Funny People and The Interview. He won an Oscar for his work on 8 Mile. He has a side-hustle as a rapper but is generally considered a failure.

On Genius, he is the #1 scholar for Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, The Wire, Christopher Nolan, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and OutKast. His 11,800 IQ for Game of Thrones is the highest for any Screen Genius artist.

There’s a lot to unpack here and no definitive answers. It could simply be that this is a surreal lyric designed to create an atmosphere of suspense and wonder.

It could be that Eleanor wears a lot of make-up, as this is sometimes called “putting your face on” and make-up comes in jars. Although nobody ever sees her, she still tries to make herself look nice in case anyone does notice her. Who is it for further develops the idea of loneliness, implying that she has no one to show her face to.

Alternatively, “wearing a face” can be a metaphor for showing a veneer to the world; see “My Brave Face”. Eleanor doesn’t let anyone else see how lonely she really is, and sits smiling out of the window.

This could also go the other way. Eleanor doesn’t have a veneer as she sits alone at home, but there’s one waiting by the door in case she ever needs it. Alas, it’s never used.

These lines were recorded directly off a radio broadcast of King Lear. They are taken from Act 4, Scene 6. Lennon tuned his radio to the BBC Third Program on its final day before becoming Radio 3 and captured these lines quite by chance. They hold no thematic significance but add to the song’s trippy atmosphere.

The opening line is spoken by John Bryning, playing Oswald. The conversation following his death is between Edgar, played by Philip Guard, and Gloucester, played by Mark Dignam.