| Passenger – Let Her Go Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| I heard this song on the radio for the first time today. I like to think of the backstory like this - it's about a guy who breaks up with his lover because he doesn't have the ability to recognize that he has something special with her, and he doesn't have the courage to stay in the relationship when she starts asking for a commitment from him. So he lets her go, because he feels incapable of giving himself over to what has actually become real love. The line, "Maybe one day you'll understand why everything you touch, surely dies" speaks to this guy's chronic inability to return love and form a deep bond with someone else. It may be that his ideals of love are actually unrealistic ("Hoping one day you'll make a dream last"), and he keeps choosing to let love go because he doesn't understand that love can be a messy and difficult thing worth fighting for. But ultimately, this song is about the regret of only realising after breaking things off that he truly loved her. And of course, by the time he realises this, it will have been too late to get her back - she will have moved on to someone who can reciprocate her love. This kind of stuff is pure tragedy. | |
| The Script – Before The Worst Lyrics | 11 years ago |
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This is about a guy one week after a break-up, trying to cope with the loss of a girl (his fiancée). He is replaying in his head the moments in their relationship when it seemed that they were destined to be together, at a time when it was unforeseeable that they could "end up like this", and he is trying to find out where it went wrong, and wishing that could go back to that point with her and take back all the things that eventually lead them down the path to the end of their relationship. He is talking to her in his head and trying to come up with answers - "are you hearing me?" And toward the end of the song, he seems to be imploring her to give it another chance by taking back the things that they did to hurt each other. This is a guy who is desperately holding on to hope that he can repair things: "if the clouds don't clear then we'll rise above it", which is to me a form of bargaining (one of the stages of grief). Throughout the song he is trying to remind her of all of the sweet moment in their relationship when their future was full of promise, in the hopes that he can draw her back in to give it another try. It is basically a song about regret and loss, and someone who is trying to come to terms with those things. His method of coping is to grasp at the hope of changing the past rather than looking forward to the future. And he is allowing himself to wallow in what are now bittersweet memories of past happiness. I feel like there should be a sequel to this song, about two months into the break-up, when he has moved on, regained his equilibrium, and sees that they probably made the right choice by moving on. Obviously this has happened to me... |
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