30 Day Song Challenge #15: A Song That Describes You

[Day 15: A Song That Describes You]

Los Campesinos! – We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed

What a stupid prompt. There’s no song that ‘describes me’, instead there are songs that I can relate to more than others, and songs that resonate particularly strongly with me.

And Los Campesinos!’s We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed is one of those songs. Not because I think of myself as beautiful nor doomed, but because of the lyrics of the one and only Gareth. Los Campesinos! have a way of writing songs that resonate with the youth of today more strongly than any other band in the world, and this is perfectly exemplified by this track from the album of the same name.

To me it’s a song that juxtaposes the bigger problems of the world with the personal problems of a teenager. The words  “They think the future’s bright as halogen, we know it’s pretty bleak” simply have to affect you in some way, and I feel that it’s a reflection of my own rather pessimistic view of the future of this world.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder
Fondness makes the absence longer
Length loses my interest, I’m a realist, I’m insatiable
Swapped counting days until I fly, with hours before your reply

These lines are pretty much universal I think, speaking to the games of cat and mouse that we play with people we really like. The line “I taught myself the only way to vaguely get along in love is to like the other slightly less than you get in return. I keep feeling like I’m being undercut” probably best sum up my own approach towards not just love but life, for better or worse. When I first heard this song I almost couldn’t believe that someone else not only felt the same way as me, but was also able to articulate it so clearly.

You feel terrified at the thought of being left behind
Of losing everybody, the necessity of dying
Oh, WE KID OURSELVES THERE’S FUTURE IN THE FUCKING,
BUT THERE IS NO FUCKING FUTURE

Damn that’s good songwriting. I suppose that everyone is somewhat scared of being left behind and the necessity of dying, but this song conveys it on a very personal and powerful level, climaxing with the impassioned scream of “I HOPE MY HEART GOES FIRST”. It really is a song of genius. Raw genius, passionate genius, and brutally honest genius. The genius of youth.

Maybe the songwriting of Los Campesinos! is so strong that it speaks to a generation almost universally, or maybe I can just relate to it particularly strongly because of who I am. Either way, this song probably comes closer to describing me than anything else I’ve heard.

I’m not entirely sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.