Easier - a lyrics and music video analysis
The lyrics are about a toxic relationship where both are living in some sort of obligatory symbiosis.
Why do we always gotta run away? And we wind up in the same place. It’s like we’re looking for the same thing, same thing, yeah.
They are both trapped in the relationship. No matter where or to whom they turn, they always end up together again, like a drug addict incapable of getting away from the thing that’s killing them.
Yeah, do we really gotta do this now? Right here with all your friends around. In the morning, we can work it out, work it out.
They keep their malfunctioning relationship to themselves by building up and keeping a happy façade in front of their friends which drives them to always postpone the issues they need to work out in order to function as a couple.
I love you so much that I hate you. Right now, it’s so hard to blame you ‘cause you’re so damn beautiful, you’re so damn beautiful.
He feels guilty and knows that she’s guilty too but he’s not capable of working past her beauty to work things out, like he’s being bewitched by it.
Is it easier to stay? Is it easier to go? I don’t wanna know, oh. But I know that I’m never, ever gonna change and you know that you’re always gonna stay the same.
He’s at that stage of the relationship where inaction seems like the only option to keep himself afloat. He knows nothing is going to change and that doing something will only aggravate the situation.
Is it easier to stay? Is it easier to go? I don’t wanna know, oh. But I know that I’m never, ever gonna change and you know you don’t want it any other way
And he also knows that she doesn’t want anything to change because she’s the one with all the power and she’s not willing to give it up.
Every time that you say you’re gonna leave, that’s when you get the very best of me. You know we need it like the air we breathe, air we breathe, yeah.
Threatening to leave the relationship to get what she wants from him is like a second skin of hers, it’s when she’s the most powerful, and she knows he can’t say no when she does so.
The hardest part of all is that we’re only built to fall.
He now realises this relationship was doomed from the start and this only hurts him more, filling him with guilt and regret. Guilt from the inaction and regret from getting in the relationship in the first place.
All the elements of the music video: the water glass box, Luke tied up, the cave, the read, blue, yellow and green lights, the woman, the corridor with the burning photographs, Luke’s dark eyes, the symbols; they all contribute to portray the song.
The water glass box is a symbol of entrapment and suffocation. At the beginning, they all are in it by themselves but then they are in there together and the woman also is there for a moment. This all to say that the friends managed to see through the façade and are drowning in this toxic relationship with him while trying to save him from it. The water box is illuminated by red lights, as if the water is burning their lungs as they go under.
The cave is dark and cold, and therefore blue, and that’s probably how he felt in the relationship. Like being underground, isolated, and not being able to see the sunlight, living off of artificial light from the candles. All the lies, all the fights, all the misunderstanding and all the unsaid things was all he saw, so his friends went underground for him, to help him set himself free from them all. Luke is tied up most of the music video except when he’s is the cave with Ashton, Calum and Michael. He can only be truly himself and free when with his friends, away from the woman. His friends are his safe place, his home.
The woman is portrayed with sexy tight clothes, a seductive and intoxicating stare and their symbols as tattoos on her spine. She’s the one in control. She doesn’t look like she is because she’s lying on the floor almost in a trance but it’s that trance-like state of living and her beauty that are pulling him in, controlling him and trapping him in the relationship.
The corridor with the photographs are all yellow except for Luke. Luke’s corridor is a dark green, like the kind of green you see in toxic settlements. They are all living this relationship with him, walking along his path, not actually knowing how deep the issues go and how toxic the environment between the couple is, but they’re still walking with him through it all. As they walk, they see themselves being set on fire. They see how much this situation is burning themselves and their friend out. Judging by how burnt the photographs are, Luke is the last one to walk on the corridor. He’s left to face the emptiness of the walls and all the ashes of his friends on the floor. He’s left to face the darkness in his eyes and his loneliness.
At the end, we see the guys’ symbols tattooed on the woman’s back and then we see them burn. We see her spell over him and their friendship dissipate in flames, freeing them all.
