songs on lucy dacus’ ‘Forever Is A Feeling’ ranked by how single they make me feel
this is bliss, this is hell
I am single, and (mostly) happily so. I have been for a while now, and I don’t really think about my relationship status much day to day. Some things will make me very aware of it though, like being the third wheel when I’m out with friends somewhere, seeing two girls holding hands in the botanical gardens, or listening to particularly tender love songs. I’m feeling quite single after listening to Lucy Dacus’ new album, which is full of such songs. If you’re also single, stream Forever Is A Feeling at your own risk.
13. Calliope Prelude
Forever Is A Feeling opens with this short, instrumental track — a first for her — where strings swirl and swell before fading into the next song. It’s a pretty prelude that introduces the orchestral backing that accompanies many of the songs, and it sets the stage for an album about ~love~. The title refers to the muse of epic poetry and eloquence. (She recently confirmed who her muse is for these eloquent songs.) There aren’t any lyrics in this track, so for the first minute of the album I wasn’t thinking about how I’m currently girlfriend-less. That, however, quickly changed.
12. Modigliani
Phoebe sings background vocals here in a song Lucy wrote about her. Phoebe’s vocal part stands out to me because it’s a refreshing break from the same major third harmony interval that’s used without much variation throughout the album. “Modigliani” starts with the mention of a plaque inscription that imprints on Lucy’s back: “Loving father, friend, and son.” Her lyrics have trended toward more specificity across her career, and on this album especially, there are places where this feels unnecessarily specific, or like there’s too much straightforward narration. “Why does it feel significant?” is what she asks of telling Phoebe about the plaque inscription, and it’s a question I have about many of the other details she writes into these songs. The reference of the titular Italian painter, along with the framed painting album cover and the work of art she plays in the “Ankles” music video, serve to connect Forever Is A Feeling to the long tradition of representing love in art. This song just makes me think about my long-distance besties and music theory (and Bo Burnham unfortunately), not about my dating life.
11. Limerence
I first learned about the concept of limerence from one of my exes. It feels very relevant to some of my past dating experiences. In this song, Lucy hears about it and thinks about her partner, whom she’s considering ending things with: “I’m thinking about breaking your heart someday soon / and if I do, I’ll be breaking mine too.” She wants to stay busy in the hopes of forgetting how she feels. Emotions have a way of resurfacing, though, even if you shove them way down; she acknowledges this in “Big Deal”: “Everything comes up to the surface in the end / even the things we’d rather leave unspoken.” The line, “Why do I feel alive when I’m behaving my worst?” really resonates for me. I’ve been a little too good lately, and being on one’s best behavior can be pretty boring honestly. But because I’m not thinking about breaking anyone’s heart anytime soon, what I relate to most about this song is that currently, like her, I’m shoveling kettle corn into my mouth.
10. Talk
The stereotype of how much talking there is in queer women’s relationships is on full display on this album. In “Ankles,” it’s “What if we don’t touch? / What if we only talk / about what we want and cannot have?” In “Come Out,” there’s “an elderly couple with nothing to say / I used to think that’d be the worst / to grow old and run out of words.” In this song, it’s “Why don’t we talk anymore? / We used to talk for hours.” (Oh, I’m sure.) It was notable that Lucy gendered the subjects of her songs on Forever, but us gay girls would’ve known even if she hadn’t. I like the lines, “Why was our best sex in hotels / and our worst fights in their stairwells?” She has all these questions she doesn’t feel she can ask, in this relationship that might already be over. “Do I make you nervous or bored?” she wonders as well. I don’t know how her partner felt, but I’m sorry to say that what some of the rest of this album makes me feel isn’t nervous.
9. Big Deal
Lucy took a different approach to starting an album with Forever Is A Feeling. Instead of a song like “I Don’t Wanna Be Funny Anymore,” “Night Shift,” or “Hot & Heavy,” she eases us into it with an instrumental prelude then this mid-tempo ballad. These opening tracks don’t grab you and pull you in like those of her previous albums; it’s a different listening experience, one I think I like less. Over this song’s lush instrumentation, she sings about the complexity there can be in developing feelings for someone who’s in a relationship, and about how even if those feelings are reciprocated, there’s still the chance “that it would never work.” I really like the melody of the lines, “I’m surprised that you’re the one who said it first / If you had waited a few years, I would’ve burst.” The vocal reverb and the repetition of “you’re a big deal” give an emotional weight to this song. But the extent to which it makes me think about not having a girlfriend is only really that I can’t see myself saying “you’re a big deal” to someone I’m interested in. I don’t know if that would have much of an effect — it certainly wouldn’t do much for me.
8. Bullseye
It was a risky move bringing Hozier into the studio because this man is passionate! He’s a belter! Sure enough, he puts the appropriate amount of oomph into this song, and he upstages Lucy in doing so. Here, she considers herself lucky to have been with the people she’s dated, referring to the “dumb luck” of it, and she mentions chance and making bets elsewhere on the album as well. I feel lucky, too, to have dated the people I have, and even luckier that many are still in my life (and reading this newsletter). In reflecting on her past relationship in “Bullseye,” she recognizes the importance her ex-partner had for her and thinks warmly of them: “I wanted to be there the day you figured it all out / Whoever is, I hope they’re proud.” I obviously haven’t figured it all out yet, but I hope at least some of my exes are proud of me regardless.
7. For Keeps
I am all too familiar with “we were not something / we were not nothing / we were in between things that made sense.” (Was it limerence??) A romantic part of me wishes, like Lucy in this brief song, that I had been playing for keeps with some people in my past. Forever is causing me to reflect on how I’ve been keeping things casual for a while now. Do I want that to change? Casual or not, if they want it and I want it, that might be the only thing that matters in the end.
6. Come Out
Forever Is A Feeling raises the question: can an album be too sapphic? Surely not, and as a girl who does identify with that label — not all lesbians do — I should just appreciate how clearly gay many of these songs are. So what about it feels too much: the longing, the softness, the sentimentality, or all of this together? Is my heart colder than I realized? “Come Out” is a sweet song about a lover who is seemingly afraid to do so. Lucy misses her and wants to be near her, believing that “there is no distance that wouldn’t be too far.” She’s enamored, feeling like “even on opposite sides of the room / I am orbiting you.” Has anyone sung lines about screaming — “I wanna scream from the bottom of my lungs / I wanna scream my throat raw” — this gently before? I doubt it. But I don’t doubt that hearing “I miss you / I miss you / I miss you in my arms” is part of why I’ve been feeling a bit lonely this past week.
5. Forever Is A Feeling
The boys are back in town — Phoebe and Julien join Lucy on this track to provide background vocals. There’s a similar scene in a song off of the record too: in “Leonard Cohen,” one of the trio drives the wrong way on the interstate, inconveniently adding an hour to the drive; but “it gave us more time to embarrass ourselves, telling stories we wouldn’t tell anyone else.” Here, Lucy doesn’t speak up on a drive even though she knows a shortcut, instead letting Julien take the scenic route. She sings, “isn’t that what love’s about? / Doing whatever to draw it out.” I believe in this idea of love, too, with friends and with partners. As someone who easily develops crushes on friends, this album is kind of dangerous to listen to. And regarding partners, this song makes me think about how being single is a feeling, and I know it well.
4. Ankles
Yeah, sapphics are never beating the yearner allegations. The lead single from this album is probably my favorite song from it — I like the resonance of the cello, the twinkling of the celesta, the catchy chorus melody, and yes, the yearning. It’s about “wanting something you can’t have, particularly someone you can’t have,” a theme it has in common with “Big Deal.” This song is a bit sexy: “So bite me on the shoulder / pull my hair / and let me touch you where I want to.” Get it, Lucy! “Ankles” is the song that first made me think about how single I am. “I want you to show me what you mean / and help me with the crossword in the mornings / You are gonna make me tea / gonna ask me how did I sleep” - how would it not? I hear this and imagine how nice it would be for someone to make me tea and ask me how I slept (I didn’t sleep so great last night because I had a weird dream 😕). For now, I’ll just fantasize along with her about someone pulling me by the ankles to the edge of the bed.
3. Most Wanted Man
After listening to this album, I think I’m starting to fall for Julien, the “most wanted man in West Tennessee.” This is a standout track for me. I especially like the guitar part in it and the southern rock sound it has. I want(ed) more music like this from her! The second verse describes a tender, summertime scene of the pair, where Lucy is “counting bug bites on your thighs” and “kissing salt out of your eyes.” It’s a strength of her writing that I feel like I’m intruding on their intimate moments listening to this song. It’s a strength, too, the fact that hearing it has me thinking it would be nice to have someone sitting on my kitchen counter this summer. She makes the saccharine declaration that she wants to spend a lifetime trying to make Julien happy, that way she’ll “have time to write the book on you.” Since I’m not laying in bed in a room at the Ritz with a girl I’m dating, I have time to write an album review.
2. Best Guess
I think we’ve all heard enough discourse around the music video’s masc representation, so I won’t add to it here. “Best Guess” is an easygoing song about betting on love, taking a gamble against the uncertainty of the future. Possibly to its own detriment, this album is concerned with how love doesn’t always last. Being this realistic about romance takes away from the romance of it, I say, as if I had a romance to speak of. “If this doesn’t work out / I would lose my mind / and after a while / I will be fine” - this brings to mind these lines from “Night Shift”: “In five years, I hope the songs feel like covers / dedicated to new lovers.” They seemingly do feel like covers now, seven years later, and I prefer her songs on Historian, in part because the lyrics are more impactful. Regardless, “but you are my girl / you are my pack a day / you are my favorite place / you were my best friend before you were / my best guess at the future” is incredibly sweet, and this makes me want to dedicate the song to a new lover.
1. Lost Time
As if listening to the first twelve songs hadn’t already made me achingly aware that romance is currently absent from my life, she had to go and close out the album with this one. “I love you, and every day / that I knew and didn’t say / is lost time;” “Nothing lasts forever but let’s see how far we get / so when it comes my time to lose you / I’ll have made the most of it.” Like, damn. Do I want someone to be unable to help noticing everything about me, in the way she describes? I might, and that wasn’t on my mind before this album came out. Thanks so much! Forever ends stronger than it begins, with this song that builds until it becomes an emotional banger. Lucy’s heart is on her sleeve in this song especially, and she’s trying to make up for lost time now that the relationship has begun. In “Big Deal” at the beginning of the album, she asks, regarding her and Julien professing their mutual desire, “so what changes, if anything? / Maybe everything can stay the same.” But love — falling into it, falling out of it — has a way of changing things between people and within yourself, whether you want it to or not. Lucy spends the rest of Forever Is A Feeling detailing the joy and heartache — the bliss and hell, as in the title track — of this. The result is a moving album that, despite some lackluster songs, altogether paints a rich portrait of love — between friends, between lovers, and between friends who become lovers.
I hear songs like these and part of me feels like I might be alone forever. Maybe Lucy is right about what forever is though; maybe, for better or worse, for me and for her, it will pass like other feelings do. And maybe I want to change my Hinge dating intentions to “short term relationship, open to long.”
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