i actually have to wax lyrical about fourth of july for a minute because it might legitimately be one of my favorite fall out boy songs ever written primarily because it’s not a song i think could have been written prior to the hiatus. it feels a bit like a logical extension to “miss missing you” in how it’s a song that discusses what it is to live without someone more than anything else.
say you loved someone. could be a friend, a family member, a significant other, whatever. say you loved them. say that relationship split apart for some reason or another. say it’s been years since you thought about them and you realize you can’t picture them so easily anymore. the little details that once shown so clearly in the walkways of your memory have begun to fade, and in a strange solemn kind of way you feel like you have to mourn that, the entropy hemorrhaging away your recollections of them. you have a weakness for nostalgia. you obsess over old scars. you obsess even more over the way that they dont ache the way they used to unless you pry them open of your own accord.
here is a song that presents an old, fractured relationship. here is a song that says that maybe it was for the best that it fell apart. it is not spiteful or angry or resentful of the other party. it’s almost apologetic. it acknowledges that you’re so far out of each other’s lives at this point that it doesn’t really matter, whether or not you miss them, or whether or not they miss you. sometimes things simply don’t carry out to completion. and that’s okay. the torture of small talk with someone you used to love.
it’s the refrain that sticks with me, more than anything. it’s a lyric i carry so close to my heart to this day:
may the bridges i have burned light my way back home.
this part of your life ended. the bridge was burned, it collapsed beneath its own weight, it is nothing but cinder and fucking ash underfoot. this person in your past is not who they once were to you, and they never will be again. you used to love them. you don’t anymore. maybe sometimes you miss them, but they’ll never get to know that now. you burned that bridge and you found hope in it - you found such hope and earnest joy and relief in that part of your life being sent for the burning. you watched that relationship fall apart and you were better for it, you turned its embers into a beacon, you saw your way out of it and maybe sometimes it still hurts, maybe sometimes you still feel lonely, sometimes you miss this specific persons company, but thats okay.
its a song about grief, more than anything. you mourn the people you used to be. and you live without them anyway. you live without the version of you who loved this person. you live without the person you once loved. past tense. and it burns a little venom out of your veins when you think of them, but you feel better and you breathe a little easier afterwards.
it’s a song that has all the affectations of a love song but is anything but. it’s a farewell song. it’s a song that acknowledges that maybe once you loved someone, but you don’t anymore. and that while maybe you were better off for having loved them, you are better still for having walked away in the end. for all its upbeat nature, the son lux sampling that picks up the whole tempo and transforms the chorus into a soaring, almost triumphant anthem, “fourth of july” is about what it means to walk away from a relationship and realize that you are better for having done so.
like i said. it’s not a song they could have written pre-hiatus. it’s utterly devoid of the spite and agitation that permeated so many of their early songs. it’s about acceptance and the way some things end, and that’s okay. they were meant to. and you’re better for it. and if anyone turns this post into about a ship i will be coming to your house and peeling off all your skin like a fucking orange.
titsay
gummygunk
2087
prguitarman
