u/quail_ren

As someone who very rarely hyperfixates on things, and a boy fresh out of AP Lit, I find myself analyzing a lot of Chase Atlantic songs for comfort.
I mentioned in a comment thread about a month back that one of my essays on the AP Exam was about AMY, and the contrast between old vs new. I took it from a direction of it being a continuous decline, the new being even worse than the old was. I haven’t gotten my copy of my answers back (when I do I’ll upload them here lol for anyone who wants to read it; mind you, I wrote the essay off the dome in 35 minutes and rewrote it twice, so lower expectations. I also am not sure of legality, but I’ll check that too), but I do remember the essay quite well.
I have a strange relationship with music, theirs specifically. On one hand it ruins me on a regular, and sometimes makes me feel like I’ve just been beaten into the ground with a sledgehammer. On the other, they’re the reason I’m alive. Last night was one of the former nights - and I had a small breakdown over a specific lyrical relation. I don’t think it’s intentional, but if it is then the entire storyline of their albums between the two points just becomes genuinely tragic.
Paradise: On my first listen, this was a strange song to me. It did immediately grab me, though, by how it sounded. This song is a perfect tonal and emotional representation of what people think fame is; loose, bright, dreamy, all faded sounds and relaxed chords. The lyrics open with the same idea: “it feels like heaven on the inside. She’s calling my name, you know it sounds nice. The way that you’re dancing in the moonlight, I think I’m falling in love with all these big signs.”
The song opens with sex, with a hookup - either after a show or a first-time with someone who was just there to get fucked - and the realization of how amazing that side of life can be.
But the next line?
“She said ‘how you feeling are you lost again?’”
And I can’t help but connect it to I THINK I’M LOST AGAIN
If this is a callback, it’s a heartbreaking one. Because that spans - god, what is it, five years? I think it’s six - years worth of music. Throughout all of which you can quite literally hear Mitchel’s drug use, not just lyrically but vocally. It raises a lot of emotion for the listener too, because it could be seen as simple reminiscing, or it could be seen as something closer to desperation. Maybe that person was someone important, maybe it was an old friend, maybe it was someone he never intended to lose. Maybe I THINK IM LOST AGAIN is as much as a cry for help as it is finally grieving that time when things were lighter. When the world really did feel like a rockstar’s dream and the lights hadn’t gone dull yet. The album BID is really where Mitchel kind of has the ‘oh shit, I’m fucked up’ realization - but it’s still only in the back of his head for the most part and doesn’t truly come out until LIH.
But the callback, the pain it carries, the several different meanings it could have depending on how you read the lyrics, it’s all incredible. It makes me wanna rip my heart out and carve it to pieces until it’s pretty again.
Sorry for the yapping lmao, I just didn’t have my notebook with me and needed a place to record this <3
this has been:
the ramblings of a young madman