@vnrjn8

2 years ago

Sometimes the songs that hurt the most are not the tragic tearjerkers, the ones about some glorious windswept love affair. No, sometimes the ones that hurt the most are the simplest ones--the naked declarations of love, the unfiltered confessions, the straightforward lyric laid over a happy sounding melody. You listen to this song when young and you find it sappy and corny, and feel superior to it inside your caul of sophistication. Twenty years later you hear it again, and the song brings a smile to your lips, maybe because of the familiarity of the tune, or because you recall the clothes you used to wear back when you first heard it, the unselfconsciousness of your first girlfriend, and how she'd want to cuddle up when songs like this came on the radio. You don't find it sappy anymore, just naively sweet, and you turn the dial, feeling somehow simultaneously smug and nostalgic. Twenty years after that you hear the song once again, and you find your eyes unexpectedly welling up with tears, because the very sweetness of the song, the openhearted declaration of love, is something that no one has ever shared with you. And that sweet, simple song hangs heavy on your mind, and you wish you could go back in time, to the moment you first heard it, and just feel it, not think about the lyrics or disparage the melody, but just feel the emotion of it, the straightforward joy in being alive and feeling in love, and taking the time to stick your foot in the door jamb of your heart, to create space for what might come. You wonder if things would have turned out different if you had been less guarded in your youth. Be careful how you listen to songs from the past.

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