Why I like this song, No. 1

I don't know whether this is going to be a regular feature of my blog (let alone whether it will ever be repeated ^_^) but tonight after hearing the recording of Cueshe, "Back to Me", I suddenly stumbled upon the reason I liked this song. (Incidentally, I did post a comment on the video that is an outline of what I am going to say here, but I found that "the margin could not contain the proof", as it were.)

There is a certain feeling I get whenever I listen to it or play it. I cannot think of a single word to describe it, but it's somewhere between loneliness and an almost insane hopefulness and yearning.

Most of the drama between these two emotions is illustrated in the contrast between the song's lyrics and the type of music accompanying it. It begins with a four-note motif that alternates between Esus2 and E, which appears to be setting up the song to be a love song--in effect, a love that is ongoing. This creates tension with the words first sung over it:

        C#m A                 E
Sometimes I feel like I'm all alone
Wondering of what have I done wrong.
      C#m A            F#m     B
Maybe I'm just missing you all along
          F#m           B
When will you be coming home
    N.C.    E
    back to me?

(Chords are solely my interpretation.) Oh, so the love was lost. Well, this is weird, because we have already been cued in to thinking about ongoing, current love by the opening motif.

Also, the verse chords resolve to E major (as can be seen in the fragment above) but are mainly the minor chords (C#m and F#m being the main chords in this section). But when we get to the chorus, this happens:

        E        C#m            F#m   B
Can you feel me, see me falling away?
Did you hear me? I'm calling out your name.
           F#m            B
'Cause I'm barely hanging on
      F#m              B
Baby, you need to come home
    N.C.    [Intro]
    back to me.

We get an explosive E major, coupled with the almost screamed words "Can you FEEL me? See me falling away!" The effect is jarring because we finally realize what kind of a song this is--she isn't coming back, but she still "need[s] to come home / Back to me." Then the intro comes back in, washing it all away with that hopeful strain of E's and Esus2's.

So the story that unfolds for me is this: The speaker here is at the brink of despair of ever seeing his loved one again, having just realized that he does love her after all. But kind of figuring they'll never be together again, his yearning to see her again inexplicably increases. Maybe, as in fiction, the improbable should happen and they will end up together again. But as time passes, that hope not only becomes more distant, but also more fantastic, insisting that the speaker keep dreaming against reality.

I began to really like this song when I realized that the feeling portrayed to me in it is very similar to what it felt like a few weeks after my first breakup.

Is it imo? Yes, because the despair is real but the unreal (and even unrealistic) hope is even stronger.

Thanks for reading. Maybe for these posts I can hold off on "Song in my head". What do you think? ^_^