There’s a certain vulnerability to songwriting that is remarkably similar to love. In a way, both are acts of creation built from a series of deliberate choices. You begin with something small (a feeling) then you shape it. Along the process, you may find yourself with something entirely different from what you initially intended.
That tension immediately presents itself in the title, NOT A LOVE SONG. There’s a sort of anarchism in calling a song that explores such intense emotional depth anything but a love song, but maybe that’s the point. A stylistic contradiction that reflects the reality of relationships—that explicitly defined details doesn’t always reveal the real picture underneath. The contradiction, then, feels more like an acknowledgement of that ambiguity than a complete denial.
The rhythmic beat of the guitar and the upbeat pick-up of the drum create a dynamic foundation to the paradoxical imagery the song paints. An interesting counterpoint!
More so, rather than relying on a conventional romantic narrative, M & J creates a space for retrospection while still retaining the confessional character songwriting allows.
In the end, M & J was able to create a record that comfortably sits somewhere in the spaces between our innate humanistic desire to feel something so intense and the instinct to make sense of it afterward.
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