Day #19: A song that makes you think about life
Oh Jeremiah, Even If It Kills Me (2018)
Ah well. I’ve been lowkey dreading this day. I want to surround myself with positivity or at the least some comfort during these times, and this song has brought me to some very emotional places before. But my old self would tell me to confront my sadness and to not suppress it. So here I am. Deep breaths.
This is a very poignant song. Like what most of us are in right now or were at some point, Oh Jeremiah is singing about watching the people we know live better lives while we continue to do nothing about ours:
All of my pretty friends moved to Los Angeles....
They get their picture taken while I’m on the couch thinking
I like watching them more than I like watching me
All of my singing friends moved down to Nashville....
So they’re chasing Johnny’s ghost while I thumb through the radio
I don’t know. I found this song at a point in my life where I see people around me with careers taking off, finishing school, getting married or having children. I know, I know: Never compare your insides with other people’s outsides. But at some point we see others around us that can get us thinking, “What am I doing with my life?” I see people out and about and I feel sad and I think, “I want that for myself.” At this point I’m really not sure if where I am is really where I wanna be for the rest of my life or I just became comfortable with all the inertia. I am sure about finishing grad school, though, which is probably the few things that I can be sure of now (See Day 9).
What the song does though that takes itself out of a place of self-pity is in its chorus. I’m gonna find some kind of heaven / Even if it kills me. The arrangement and the vocals are perfect, making a song about millennial sorrow but with hopeful determination. This song deserves more than 6000 views on YouTube, to be honest.
The video is a masterpiece, and not because it starts with UFOs lol. It shows a man finding that one thing all his life that it becomes the star to which his everything revolves around but, in the process, he discovers something that he needs. That’s some kind of heaven.
Listen/watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJLbOwtsLmo
Favorite Lyric:
“And they’re so pretty they just float up into space”
