For These Lovely Bones or Whoever

For+These+Lovely+Bones+or+Whoever

Rosa Pyo

“Ribs‰” is from Lorde’s debut album, Pure Heroine, and is often overshadowed by the more popular “Royals.‰” Of course, when a such a song receives a Grammy, it‰’s hard to ignore. Nonetheless, it is a song I find deeply underappreciated because it is a rava avis, a rare bird in an industry obsessed with romantic love songs.

You‰’d think at the age of seventeen, what does a young woman know about nostalgia and furthermore how can she, she is in the time others feel nostalgic for. The thing about being neither child nor adult is you don‰’t know where to be and this manifests itself into a sentimentality. “Ribs‰” is drenched in nostalgia, a longing for a younger time.

When I first listened to the song makes me think of an advertising pitch from the television show Mad Men:

“Nostalgia – it’s delicate but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, “nostalgia” literally means “the pain from an old wound.” It’s a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backward, and forwards… it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels – around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know are loved.‰” – Don Draper, Mad Men

So the question I‰’m wondering is, how does she make us feel nostalgic? The answer isn‰’t exact, but rather the droning at the beginning that adds to each other, caressing into what is the human voice. If I could describe the sound it would be of a chorus singing in church but less forgiving and more of like Judas betrayal. Eventually, her voice becomes more frantic and tired almost as if she is trying to keep up with the song‰’s hypnotic beat. It‰’s a sound of eventual defeat just above the horizon where insanity is to come.

However, the outro is where the song‰’s meaning becomes different.

You’re the only friend I need (you’re the only friend I need)

Sharing beds like little kids (sharing beds like little kids)

And laughing ’til our ribs get tough (laughing ’til our ribs get tough)

But that will never be enough (but that will never be enough)

You’re the only friend I need (you’re the only friend I need)

Sharing beds like little kids (sharing beds like little kids)

And laughing ’til our ribs get tough (laughing ’til our ribs get tough)

But that will never be enough (but that will never be enough)‰Û

Because maybe this isn’t a cynical song of growing up, but rather finding people that replicate those feelings of pleasant pain, much like your ribs burning after heavy laughter. Even though we can’t exactly feel how we did when we were five or six or seven, we can try, and with a good friend or person, it’s all going to be fine.

At a place of adulthood and “the best years of my life,‰” I recognize that I‰’m not exactly happy. Compared to the child I was and what little of her I still have and try to protect, I‰’m ashamed. I am ashamed I‰’m so damn self-conscious, I am ashamed that I am sad, and I am ashamed that I am not that girl anymore. The girl who was fat with happiness and joy, absolutely radiant with a busted knee and hands filled with worms. She was wonderfully weird, a rambunctious soul and I‰’m not that girl anymore. It hurts.

So when a song acknowledges these growing pains and the breadth of the struggle to reclaim back a piece of childhood, it means the world to me. I play it on repeat. I listen to it on the way to protests and rallies and poetry slams. I listen to it on the metro and wherever my humbled feet will take me. I share it with the world so they too can find solstice because God knows I‰’m trying.