How The Light Hits Their Eyes

!!! “Even When the Water’s Cold”

This is a song about someone else’s self-destructive impulses, and looking on as she gets involved with some horrible guy that everyone warns her against seeing at all. There’s no real judgment on her, which is nice. If anything, it’s a song about observing this sort of thing, and realizing that few of us ever have the self-awareness to really know when we’re throwing ourselves into some dumb situation. It’s always super obvious from a distance, though, and it’s part of how other people’s idea of us can be wildly different from our self-image, in good and bad ways. But the tone of the song isn’t so cheerful – it’s more dark, more seedy, more resigned to the bitter realities of lonely people trying to connect in some sort of way. At the end, he just lays it out: If you’re really looking for love, you gotta put up with the worst things along the way.

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