For my Substack today, apologies for being a day late but got a little busy, I want to do what it says in the title: talk about two songs, one I hate I don't.
Let's start with one that has become very catchy and popular today, even my kids want to listen to it even though they don't understand it, but I find it triggering.
“Beautiful Things” by Benson Boone
Now, looking into this song let me share some of the following information that I found about it:
“Beautiful Things” is the lead single off of Benson Boone’s debut album, Fireworks & Rollerblades. It was released on January 18, 2024. Boone began teasing the song on TikTok and Instagram on December 3, 2023, which gained millions of views and boosted his popularity. The song charted No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200.
In the song, Boone explores his fears for loosing the people he cares about. In a Genius Verified interview he discusses the themes and meaning behind the song.
The themes of the song is just begging someone to stay. It’s needing something so badly that you’re just terrified to lose it.
Let me start right here with those final two sentences of the above quote.
“The themes of the song is just begging someone to stay. It’s needing something so badly that you’re just terrified to lose it.”
Right off the bat, this is a problem for me. My main problem is though I understand the sentiment the entire tone of this song feels contradictory to the theme. A lot of the time I'm thinking about the fact that people who are terrified of losing something are the kinds of people who end up doing stupid things that actually caused them to lose people.
So let's look at some of the verses from the song.
[Verse 1]
For a while there, it was rough
But lately, I've been doin' better
Than the last four cold Decembers I recall
And I see my family every month
I found a girl my parents love
She'll come and stay the night, and I think I might have it all
And I thank God every day
For the girl He sent my way
But I know the things He gives me, He can take away
And I hold you every night
And that's a feeling I wanna get used to
But there's no man as terrified as the man who stands to lose you
So here we lean in with this real happy, life is good vibe. But then quite quickly we dive, all while Boone is trying to do his best impression of Freddie Mercury from Queen, into this downward spiral of what almost seems like an obsession that everything's going to go wrong.
This of course leads us to the chorus:
[Pre-Chorus]
Oh, I hope I don't losе you
Mm, please stay
I want you, I need you, oh God
Don't take
Thеse beautiful things that I've got
[Chorus]
Please stay
I want you, I need you, oh God
Don't take
These beautiful things that I've got
Again, the way this song amplifies and presents itself cuts very much against the grain of the theme or themes that's trying to present.
Now I know there might be some method to the madness of this but it doesn't work for me.
There is actually only one more verse in this song, but I don't really need to look at it or talk about it because it's just like the first verse: my life's going good but I'm terrified of it going bad.
As someone who struggles with his own mental health and managing his own depression, this feels like a song written by someone whose posing as someone with the mental illness. That’s just me, maybe it's just my reaction, but all I can think about when I listen to this song is what someone like my ex-wife would be thinking as she's done terrible things praying that I don't leave her.
Spoiler, I did leave her like 15 years ago and I'm now much happier married to my second wife and having three beautiful children. But when I listen to this song all I can think about is the things I learned about her when she was struggling with her alcoholism and her borderline personality disorder.
That's what I meant by “triggering.”
I understand that this is a well-crafted pop song, rock song or whatever it is but for me it's just a misguided dime a dozen with a performer going over the top to imitate a past performer while churning out a song that I honestly don't like the message of.
Love the people who are in your life now, don't obsess about losing them. Live a positive life. That's all I have to say in response to that song.
“After Life” by Arcade Fire
Now let's talk about this song I do like, in fact I have listened to it over and over and over again and I have always found it engaging, mysterious, and contemplative.
I like almost everything that Arcade Fire puts out. I find their music to be far more my speed and because of the deeper artistic and contemplative nature of their songs far more appealing than most.
“Afterlife” had its debut on Saturday Night Live.
An official lyric video was released before the release of the Reflektor album, featuring clips from Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus), a film made in Brazil by French director Marcel Camus.
This film is an adaptation of the myth of Orpheus, further linking the album to the myth.
Let's take a look at verse one and the chorus:
[Verse 1]
Afterlife, oh my God, what an awful word
After all the breath, and the dirt, and the fires are burnt
And after all this time, and after all the ambulances go
And after all the hangers-on are done hanging on to the dead light
Of the afterglow
I've gotta know[Chorus]
Can we work it out?
We scream and shout ‘til we work it out
Can we just work it out?
Scream and shout ‘til we work it out?
‘Til we work it out, ‘til we work it out
‘Til we work it out, ‘til we work it out
Similar to Boones’ “Beautiful Things,” but also in contrast, this song is actually about loss. Not singing about if I lose something and being afraid but actually feeling out what it is to lose someone, what it is to experience grief.
In the first verse we introduced the term afterlife, we call it “an awful word.” We then turn to some pleading, after the fact, of a desire to try and get back what we have now lost.
In the five stages of grief this would be bargaining.
Let’s move on to verse 2, chorus repeats, and then we add the bridge:
[Verse 2]
Afterlife, I think I saw what happens next
Oh, it was just a glimpse of you, like looking through a window
Or a shallow sea
Could you see me?
And after all this time
It's like nothing else we used to know
And after all the hangers-on are done hanging on to the dead light
Of the afterglow
I've gotta know[Chorus]
Can we work it out?
We scream and shout ‘til we work it out
Can we just work it out?
We scream and shout ‘til we work it out?
[Bridge]
But you say, oh
“When love is gone
Where does it go?”
And you say, oh
“When love is gone
Where does it go?
And where do we go?
Where do we go?
Where do we go?
Where do we go?
Where do we go?
Where do we go?
Where do we go?
Where do we go?”
In our second verse it gets much more explicit that whoever is the narrator of this song is trying to find somebody. Somebody that they've lost, someone they've lost sight.
As noted above this is where I think some of the inspiration from the story of Orpheus comes into play.
Short version of the story:
“The myth of Orpheus tells the story of a legendary musician who travels to the Underworld to retrieve his beloved wife, Eurydice. Orpheus's exceptional music can charm all living things and even stones, but he ultimately loses Eurydice due to a broken promise.”
If you want a longer version, there is a wonderful version HERE.
Now Ovid gives us a longer version of this story, but this is the basic version of it, it's about loss, about losing your loved one and the means and ways in which you strive to get them back. But just like most Greek mythology, it typically doesn't really have a happy conclusion, at least not in the mortal world.
Now there is a third verse, but I really would like to focus more on the bridge.
For me this is the real point of contemplation that I appreciate. You might say this is the deep philosophical questioning that's going on here.
What is the Afterlife?
For me, not only does it spark the question that it's presenting about what happens after love when it's gone? I don't think this is an uncommon question or an idea to be thought about when we lose someone close to us.
Personally, I've come to believe that the love never really dies. In many ways love is like a form of energy in the universe, it can change, it can fade, but it can never truly be destroyed. We may think it leaves us or goes away but it never really does.
Then there is simply the term afterlife. In a colloquial sense we use it to describe the idea that when our mortal bodies die our soul and spirit transfer somewhere else. Just like energy.
Different cultures have different conceptions of this. Myself, being raised in Protestant Christianity was taught to believe that when we die we go to heaven. But of course us being humans and having our own kind of self-hatred for ourselves we also believe that if you're wicked you go to hell.
I don't particularly believe in either place myself personally but I do feel that in some ways we are and do, as a form of energy, live on and change forms or return to whatever it is a state of nothingness.
But remember the term itself is simply afterlife. The question being asked in the song is what happens after we die? What happens afterlife.
It is deep and an almost universal question. That is also why this song for me has always served as a kind of meditation on that idea. It is why I constantly return to this song over and over again.
And though you would think it would depress me, in fact the opposite is true. It actually, strangely soothes me. Because it makes me realize I am not alone. That's the comfort.
I take this Comfort from the outro in particular:
Is this the afterlife?
It's just an afterlife with you
It's just an afterlife (Just an afterlife)
It's just an afterlife with you
(It’s just an afterlife)
It’s just an afterlife.
Conclusion
I'm the kind of person who doesn't buy cheap tricks or songs that are designed to make me think deeply but from the wrong kind of angle. Benson Boone’ “Beautiful Things” feels cheap and plastic. I mean it's got a good beat and an interesting sound but the words and the actual song itself don't match up and it doesn't work for me.
Arcade Fire’s “Afterlife” feels deep, feels like it's trying to actually explore an idea and the song itself matches well with the actual lyrics.
Strangely enough both songs are talking about grief and loss. The former is obsessed with a vanity of losing something and things that have not even come to pass yet. It's counterproductive. The latter is actually trying to be deeper and is expressing what happens when loss actually happens.
That's my real problem. I don't need a power ballad trying to sell me the idea that “I have it good but ohh no I could lose it all.” I'd much rather have a well-crafted song trying to explore the deeper meaning of love and what comes after life.