OK @taylortruther reblogging her post made me go back and watch the whole BBC Live Lounge performance and her introduction to Can't Stop Loving You is SO revealing in retrospect regarding so many of the themes we've been talking about lately in her later albums.
"The type of love that this song sings about is unconditional love. People say that term all the time and they kinda think that they know what unconditional love is, but I think true unconditional love is, like, do you love someone so much that you would even love them if they didn't love you anymore? That is unconditional love."
Um, "hoax" has entered the chat. π³
I feel like that goes a long way to explaining why she may have believed "hoax" was romantic, and why "grey skies everyday, would you still stay" was the ultimate expression of love. "Your faithless love's the only hoax I believe in" makes a lot more sense in this context, holding onto someone who's drifting away or showing that they may not love you in the way you need or in the way you'd once been. It's kind of heartbreaking because she's so earnest and so emphatic about it, but it's actually so sad in the context of ~everything~.
Help me hold onto you. That's the kind of heartbreak time could never mend. And I can't talk to you when you're like this, staring out the window like I'm not your favorite town. Your faithless love's the only hoax I believe in. Don't want know other shade of blue but you. I'll be getting over you my whole life. Like waiting for a bus that never shows you just start walkin' on. Pulled him in tighter each time he was drifting away. I left all I knew, you left me at the house by the Heath.
(My personal opinion is that unconditional love isn't loving someone even if they leave you; it's loving someone for who they are, including their challenges, and not seeing it as a transaction but an action. ANYWAY. Semantics I guess. I find the way she explains it really devastating tbh.)
(video timestamped @ 19:27)
Unrelated: I need an entire show done acoustically like this please and thank you because the entire performance is π€
















