Christina Perri. I'm looking for a word, and it isn't mantra, but it's like that. I want to have the word for (insistent) repetition to prove something to myself, as if by saying it I can make it true (if even for that one moment), so I'll extend that time again and again and again and again and . . .
That's how I feel Be My Forever takes care of this relationship. The phrase "be my forever" appears 16 times in the text. Maybe if the singer gives the command enough times, it has to have some effect (hopefully permanent). This, however, is a terrible plan.
Let me expostulate, using my own experience as a basic premise. I dated L for almost no time at all, in the grand scheme of things, but I was fully convinced we were perfect for each other. Our long-distance relationship was super spice and we never ran out of things to say or talk about or be interested in. Hindsight: I was a fool if I thought it would last forever. She had issues she wasn't ready or willing to abandon, and I wasn't able to honor that. I had and have a lot of growing left to do, but I still said stupid things and I wrote her name on my skin with permanent marker and we promised each other a multitude of ignorant long-term things.
This singer says "can I call you mine" because she's not even dating this guy (and I guess ownership is sexy). So just because of the euphoric high of first-blush relationship, she demands eternity.
And oh we got love, yeah/Darling just swear you'll stand right by my sideI guess he stands in abeyance, because he says forever right back. Again, I'll open up my past to (hopefully) expose this buffoonery. When I was in high school (Lord save us), I liked M. A lot. We were in the same grade, and every once in a while, we would work together on projects or sit together at lunch. But math--we sat in a pod together, in facing desks. Our knees might brush under the desk. That briefest touch was more than enough to match anything I have ever felt since. It was desire so pure and without direction that I felt ready to actually seize and die, my heart pounding an arrhythmic song of percussion only. I was not in love. I was not ready to say or even think the word "forever." I was not right for her. I would have destroyed the uncertain dinghy of my confidence on the rocks of her past long before I made my way past the breakers. But that is exactly what this song is advocating.
[I flip my hair back over my shoulder and when I do, I see him there in the desk up and up in the top row of the auditorium. He's not looking at me today. Crap. Well, I can't change, now. I'm on time and in sweats. Sandra tells me that he'll look if he wants to, whatever I wear, but I would feel a lot better about myself if I just wore something better. Okay, so I just want to be invisible today. That's my strategy for getting noticed.]
[Get out of your head, Nadia. I pull the long hair back over my ear and walk straight through the rows up and up in the top of the class and throw my books down next to him. He smiles. Oh, God.]
I didn't get much written because this isn't Stairway to Heaven, so it's fairly short. I don't think it needs to be longer, though. It's the right length to make me want to listen to it again soon.
This made me feel: satisfied? I have to be honest, surrounded by knockouts like Come with me Now and Elastic Heart, this song didn't stand out in my original listen-through of the top40. It's just too wonderful and not enough gut shot. And yet I love it. If I went back in time, I would play it at my wedding.
A word to regulars: the measure of whether I would buy a thing is tempered by a few things. First: I only buy albums, not songs. To stretch out and buy a single song means it is great or wonderful. Examples of this include Mika's Origin of Love and Toto's Africa, which I bought one day when I just needed to listen to it. Second: I haven't bought any music in a really long time, not even the latest OkGO album, which I already know to be incredible and right up my alley, because I guess I am a failure and a fool? But it's possible that I already consume so much media (that's what I'm listening to a lot lately?) that music just isn't so gut-wrenchingly important.
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