sundrenched world.

This is my favorite song on Joshua Radin's album We Were Here. The entire album is amazing, but this one is my favorite. Not only because I thoroughly enjoy listening to boys who play guitar and sing. (A little too much, if you ask me.) Not only because I love the combination of an acoustic guitar and strings. Not only because I love a 9-8 suspension in a minor chord. But because, as a songwriter, I know every song has a deeper meaning. And I believe the best songwriters use elements of their songs to contribute to the message they are trying to send. Much like poets. Because true songwriters are poets, not just people paid to compose. And this song draws upon the literary element of consonance to make a point. This is also the only song on the album that contains a curse word. Consequently, the curse word that I find the harshest, the "f" word. I only listened to the word once, on accident, now it's almost brandished into my brain. Now I turn off the volume when I get to that point in the bridge, because the word is almost painful to listen to, much like the pain the singer feels remembering the past and the way it has cut a jagged hole into his own world, while the girl who left him to be safe in hers while never completely letting go of him. The pain he feels knowing that what happened is just a repeat of history, an endless circle of this girl closing herself up to him and any guy before and after him. Not only is his heart breaking because she won't completely love him, but hers is as well. He's angry, he spits this word out. But everything else is sung almost as a whisper... Though it's not explicitly stated in the song, he knows she's tender. Even through all the pain she causes him, he doesn't want to lose her, he doesn't want her to lose him. She sings along with him on the chorus: "I'm talking to you, but you're not listening. I don't know what to do; my heart is (hands are) blistering" He sings alone: "Writing this song, tell me I'm not wrong (I belong)." Neither of them can make the other understand, though they are both saying the same thing to each other. Both of them are alone in being together. It really is an endless cycle. "Tell me I belong." But neither one can say that to the other while flailing in this loneliness. They love each other, but they're too weak to hold onto one another. "Tell me I belong." But neither one of them ever can.