The thing about being a songwriter that makes it so strange is that it's one of the only things you can do in life where you can get up on a stage or on a screen and shout really personal things at people without being considered a freak. In fact, sometimes you get applauded for it. Crazy, right?
So artists (if songwriters can call ourselves artists at all) try to shroud these personal shoutings in ambiguous, poetic language, so that everyone interprets it differently. And although that's part of the beauty of it all, it also means that things get lost along the way. So, my favourite thing to do as a songwriter is to act like you (as in you, the audience) are really stupid and will get everything wrong, so I have to explain it to you. That's (probably) not true, but I do it anyway. Sorry about that.
So, if you're a person who is alive (which you probably are), there are certain things you value, there are things that you do, and there are things that happen to you basically, you have a life of some kind. But in that life certain things inevitably don't agree with each other, certain things conflict, and then you have to do that thing called "making big life choices". If you've been a person who is alive long enough you've no doubt realized (a) this sucks, and (b) you're probably really bad at it, because I think everybody is really bad at it.
The thing is, when you make those big life choices, when you measure up the things that matter to you against each other, you find that often the things that you will shout out in poetic ambiguity while on stage, the things that matter to you in those moments, aren't the same things that win out in those decisions. I don't really know why this is, and I don't know if it's just inevitable, if it's just the rational solution to emotional overvaluing of stupid things, or if it's something totally assbackwards that needs to be changed. I don't know. But this song is basically trying to ask that question, only in much shorter words, and with a catchier tune than the voice in your head that read this description (I'm assuming. If you managed to turn this description into a song, then that's some serious talent. Go grab an instrument and record that shit.)
Lyrics:
I tried to call you on the phone
Nervous thought you'd be at home
But it wasn't your number anymore
Worried that we'd wait too long
I tried to listen to that song
I didn't understand the words just yet
Don't think that I don't know
Do not think it doesn't show
We're not so good at hiding what we know when we sing
La da da da da da
La da da da da da
There are things in life that we can change
'Cause our words are made of letters
Letters to be rearranged
You can choose where you live and what you do, what you create
But you can't choose who you love, so which one will you try to change?
If those reasons work in the movies, if those words work in rhyme
Why do they never work in the things we call our lives
So when you talk and you get close
Not like your friends, closer than most
But life, and time, and other loves
Get in the way, it's all too much
So then you leave, leave to begin
But you're still like gold stretched paper thin
Like two compass needle feet
Spread apart, but still they meet
I borrow words of poets old
To say the things that I've been told
About life and love
And all the things we're singing of
Oh, oh oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh, oh
There are things in life that we can change
'Cause our words are made of letters
Letters to be rearranged
You can choose where you live and what you do, what you create
But you can't choose who you love, so which one will you try to change?
If those reasons work in the movies, if those words work in rhyme
Why do they never work in the things we call our lives
I tried to listen to that song
Couldn't help but wonder if it got it all wrong
Are we really running, are we really scared,
What is it that we really care
About that makes it so
Hard to do what we want to
Is it our plans that cannot change
Were they set in stone when they were made?
Oh, oh oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh, oh
There are things in life that you can change
'Cause your words are made of letters
Letters to be rearranged
You can choose where you live and what you do, what you create
But you can't choose who you love, so which one will you try to change?
If those reasons work for the movies, if those words work for the rhymes
Why do they never work in the things we call our lives
Oh, oh oh oh oh oh
Oh oh oh oh oh, oh