#spillways

like seriously. The amount of emotion in this song. It crescendos through the pre chorus and builds to a peak in the chorus, but the catharsis needed to release it all is never quite expressed. Instead you hear an anguished, strained voice reaching for those high notes like a desperate hand trying to claw their way out of a deep pit. Not a strain as in the singing sounds bad (quite the opposite), but a strain as in you can hear the emotional pain in this voice, yearning, begging to let the pain out somehow. I imagine this release as just the most insanely tormented scream added in somewhere around the instrumental break of the song. (Like Mitski-screaming-in-drunk-walk-home-live-at-palisades levels of torment. Iykyk)

Obviously the scream would not be necessary bc that’s not what the song is about. It’s about feeling emotions so agonizingly deep in your soul that you can never find a relief from it. It’s very similar to Satanized (imo) in the way that one might be repressing all these feelings because of a guilt or shame for even having them in the first place (religious trauma rearing its ugly head yet again). In turn, the guilt and shame is added to the pile of repressed emotions, and it gets worse and worse. the narrator is desperately trying to burn all these wrong feelings out of their head but they. Just. Can’t. It’s like having an awful discomfort rooted deep in their body where they can’t reach but no matter how hard they try to shake or claw or scream it out, it remains. and then yk combine the lyrics that would make Shakespeare quake in his boots with ear melting stacked vocals and a catchy piano tune (that was recorded on the same piano as ABBA’s Money! Money! Money!) and you’ve got yourself one hell of a banger.