just. imagine writing an album like fine line. with all of the songs and the lyrics and the art and the messaging. it changes your life. pink and blue forever. and then you have an arena echo it back to you, show you that they see you, that they know how important pink and blue is ho ly shit
Keep Driving is just something else. It’s cracking jokes and holding on, it’s the deep breath before the exam and the laughter after crying. I don’t know how he did it but he wrote a song that admits life is a bit shit but there’s still glimpses of joy so fuck it let’s keep going
we need to take a moment to be thankful for the medicine performance in st. paul. every performance of that song is fantastic, but that one? holy shit
there’s a lot to unpack here. get ur seatbelts on, let’s discuss:
the moment harry stretched his hands & neck we should’ve known we were in for some deep trouble
his shit-eating grin two lines into the song because he knows what he’s about to do
the theatrics, as if we needed any more help understanding what he means lol
right before the first chorus, when he closes his eyes, presses his lips together & grinds on that mic stand with his whole body. k, harry
again with the theatrics, bringing even more attention to these lyrics & making sure everyone understands exactly what he means
don’t even know what to say to this. just gonna leave it here & u can fill in the blanks urself lmao
speaking of blanks, we all know the words that go in the blanks in the pre-choruses, but this? the arms behind his back, acting all nonchalant, then putting his tongue out like the menace he is? this is as close as harry will ever come to admitting, “yeah, it’s damn nasty.”
the lights completely shutting off, only for him to come back like that. k, harry x2. god only knows what he was doing to that stand when the lights were off
yeah, you certainly got urself an appetite, sir, almost swallowing ur microphone like that
then he finishes off with this ridiculous bow, like it was no big deal
(credits: i’ll forever be grateful to youtube user HS Love Live for uploading this gift of a video)
There’s a couple, but mainly ‘You Could Start a Cult’. That’s very obviously a “me” song. I had all these ideas where I was going to have a full female choir and it was going to have all these strings and loads of backing vocals on what’s effectively a folk song. It was the last song [we made], and at that point we’d dressed up so many songs, and my producer John [Ryan] was just like: ‘no, this is where we have the acoustic moment’. The song says a lot but is a really small song, and that was really sweet. I watch a lot of true crime with my girlfriend [laughs]. It’s a lot of that kind of thing, and I just wrote it down one night when we were watching something, because it’s a big thought. I thought it was funny initially: you could literally start a cult, and I’d follow you into the fire. It started as a joke and became this really sweet song, it is funny.
‘You Could Start a Cult’ is a great song title as well. What influenced it lyrically?