@ladyblue5004

1 year ago

This song seems very sweet and nostalgic at first, but if you listen closely, you'll notice it's actually quite dark and depressing. For me, this song is about social anxiety and not fitting in. It seems like a cutesy song about a holiday with friends at first glance, but the more you listen, the more the darker, subtler subtext starts to appear. "Thinking about how funny I must look" -- every introvert or socially anxious person has been there, not being able to really relax in social situations, feeling self-conscious, thinking all the time how awkward or ridiculous you must look to others, when in reality no one is even paying attention to you. "Trying to adjust to what's been there all along", it's the deeply uncomfortable situation of being somewhere you don't know anyone, but they all know each other and have inside jokes, and you just have to try to fit in this environment where you're the only one who hasn't been there all along. "They force you to make a wish", like he didn't really want to make a wish in a wishing well or something like that, but he's just doing it for the sake of not upsetting his friends. He wouldn't explicitly say they're "forcing" him if he was comfortable doing it. "And you pretend to fall asleep on your way back", I mean, this one is the most obvious, every introvert has been there lol. He didn't really know how to join the conversation, he didn't even want to be there in the first place, so he just pretended to fall asleep so he didn't have to face the fact he's constantly being left out of the conversation. But for me, the most heartbreaking and sad verse is the chorus, "It ain't a holiday until you go to fetch something from the car". At first it seems innocent, like he just excused himself for a moment because he had to pick up something from the car. But is it though? I think the social anxiety got so bad, and he was feeling so left out of the conversation that he just needed to get out of there, no matter what. So he made up that he had to fetch something from the car, just to have a break from the anxiety and the self consciousness and everything else. Maybe he even went there to cry, or to have a drink. For me, the most heartbreaking part is that from the way he says it, "It ain't a holiday until", suggests that this is something so recurrent for him that he already expects it, as if this is every single holiday. Alex is a genius. He adds these layers and layers of meaning to his songs, creating these beautiful and poetic masterpierces while keeping it so goddamn relatable and human. It's perfection.

49 |