The past is a funny thing, because no matter how hard we try to outrun it, our memories remain shackled to our ankle. That ball-and-chain slows us down from moving on, forcing us to drag along a growing lifetime of mistakes and regrets. If life seems to move faster these days, it's because that weight pulls us once we feel like we're on the downward slide, and fighting the force of gravity is more energy than we have left.
The past is also a funny thing, because we can't agree on it. Fans will all believe there were 'glory days' when music was at its best, but we won't agree on when exactly that was. It's age-dependent for many of us, and it can be a bit sad when you realize no one else making music seems to have affection for the same time and sound you do. It makes the past feel more like an impressionist painting, where you wonder if you missed the point the brush strokes were supposed to convey. They were intended to have meaning, right?
For this month's song, VK Lynne dips her toe into the musical waters of the 90s, which is my sweet spot. If you remember the days when Matchbox Twenty and Gin Blossoms were putting out hit after hit, this one will be for you.
With an acoustic guitar hitting with a hint of bounce, VK sings her kiss-off with the jaunt of jangle-pop, and the skill of wrapping medicine in a slice of cheese. Jagged little pills are easier to swallow when they're coated in candy, after all.
VK weaves a metaphor about the fabric of time, and how we are stitched together when we connect. The seams can hold fast, they can slowly fray with friction and time, or sometimes we have to rip them apart to stem the flow of an infection. That is where this song arrives, with VK realizing that cutting the cord is sometimes the best thing we can do for ourselves, them, and the combination thereof.
If "Breakfast At Tiffany's" was a story of two people trying to find the thinnest thread to tie them together, VK is asking us to consider the opposite, wherein we are wearing patches sewn on with the wrong color thread for no reason other than being afraid of seeing what we look like underneath our self-help repair job.
She sings, "I'd like you so much better now if I'd left you back then". It hearkens back to the joke in "Seinfeld" where George Costanza figured out the magic of leaving the room when you've hit your high point. Similarly, some relationships follow the bell curve, and staying with them too long only serves to push our stomachs up into our throats for so long we can taste our own bile. Yes, my anatomy is a bit off, but it's for the sake of metaphor.
After realizing in the bridge that life is too short to put up with people who wear on your patience, VK comes to the conclusion that she would like this person a lot more if she had severed the ties and ripped the seam open long ago. Like a wick slowly burning toward an explosion, the threads that tie us can be warnings of impending destruction. Cutting the path of fuel in the instant before it reaches the powder elicits a sigh of relief, not just for stopping what might feel inevitable, but for leaving us the ends to possibly be tied together once enough tears have doused any chance of the flame reigniting.
Great pop songs are hard things to write, but they're necessary tools to get messages to people who will otherwise not listen. Write the same words for a ballad, and many people will tune out because they can't dance to it, or it sounds too sad. They miss the point, but that's their prerogative. The point is that writing a jaunty little pop song may seem easier to an observer, but it's actually the hardest thing a songwriter can do. Creating a song with mass appeal to teach us lessons we may not want to learn is a trick of subversion, and it's part of why we say music is magic.
Maybe this song will only appeal so strongly to people who still regularly listen to "Yourself Or Someone Like You" and "Cracked Rear View", but that's my frame of reference, so I'm seeing the whole picture. Hopefully, my thread is one that won't unravel as my orbit twists it toward the breaking point.
"Seam Ripper" releases on June 30th. Pre-save it here.
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