An Ode to Glad He's Gone by Tove Lo
The other day I spent a few hours scrolling through my liked songs on Spotify. I strangely (relative to how much time I spend on the app) didn’t use that function frequently until recently. So the majority of the songs there, besides the requisite cringe album saves from high school years, track the various stages and eras of my mid-twenties in 4-7 song groupings. It was an accidental exercise in reflection for me, and I was fortunate enough to have the time and be in a peaceful enough environment that I could really sit and let my imagination take me away.
It’s February 2020, in NYC, weeks before disaster. My best friend is with me in New York, and we’ve hit the Barney’s closing sale and after several glasses of cheap prosecco, film a fake music video in a hotel room. In between laughter and additional sips, though, I’m trying my best but mostly fumbling my way through flirting with a new (and I promise this is my least favorite word in existence) situationship. I’d been really social the last few weeks. A New Year’s trip to New Orleans had been a life-affirming and confidence-boosting start to the year. I was on my shit, really. At the same time, I was doing that icky thing where you start feeling things for someone who is putting, like, zero effort into you. Embarrassing! In retrospect. And for me, is a general indicator of some insecurities that aren’t being addressed. So sitting on a Portuguese beach, I’m suddenly back to trying to get the right selfie angle in a hotel bed to send to a man who uses his beard to fake a jawline. My song saves from this period are ‘Be Honest’ by Jorja Smith, ‘Something to Talk About’ by Bonnie Raitt, ‘3 AM’ by Haim, and ‘Can’t Decide’ by Amine. And that situationship did what situationships must do, and combusted shortly after.
I scroll up a bit more, scanning through that little healing process where I banged my “bad bitch” playlist into the ground. I realize that my impromptu research is missing a crucial component: the EOY stats. My most-listened to song of that year was one that I had started loving prior to lockdown, but as soon as I start playing it I am transported. ‘Glad He’s Gone’ by Tove Lo has been my top 5 spotify songs in two different years, and I realize that it’s been a while since I heard it.
The song follows a girl talking her friend through a breakup, with the helpful but slightly exasperated tone of a friend that has wondered “this guy???” throughout her friend’s lovesick rollercoaster. She reminds her friend that she hid parts of herself to make this guy love her, that she was more fun single, that she’s in deeper than he is. And I couldn’t get enough. It wasn’t too dense, it was just fun and it sounded like my best friend hyping me up. I didn’t have many close friends nearby at the time, and every day blasting it in my car felt like a self-help session. Because, I wasn’t exactly doing well at this time (was I ever??) I worked like a maniac, I alienated people I loved, I let my heart get toyed with. And I miss it sometimes. The darkest, dumbest parts of my brain take me out of the perfectly good life I am living right now and they plop me down at random intersections where I’m rolling the windows down to catch a breeze driving home at 1 am with my non-slip server shoes next to me in the passenger seat.
I know I’m not the only one who does this, but I associate very specific parts of songs with extremely specific locations in which I heard it, and it meant something. And that can feel momentous, heart-wrenching, special when the song is tied to a really significant moment. The song playing out of the car while we raced alongside the country road we visited. In my headphones when you held my hand for the first time at the subway overpass. So why am I happy, in Europe, reminiscing about a time I know was bad for me through the lens of a cutesy little beat and the line dancing all night, get guys’ numbers? Why do I wanna be dashing though Target, sweaty from work, trying to grab a low-calorie ice cream (I said this was not a good time in my life) from the freezers minutes before closing?
On February 2nd, 2022, I saved a song that I had known for a while but wanted to make sure was downloaded into my collection. February 2022 was a reckoning, that if it hadn’t hurt so many people outside of myself I would consider it a valuable lesson, but instead it’s just regret. Because I became the most insecure, volatile, stupid version of myself I have ever been right around then. And I’m soundtracked by Rivers and Roads by the Head and the Heart. And I listen to it again. Been talkin' 'bout the way things change/And my family lives in a different state/If you don't know what to make of this/Then we will not relate. And I…I fall apart again. Because I miss everything, all the time. I miss versions of myself that I should’ve smacked the shit out. I miss versions of myself that I didn’t believe in. I miss versions of myself that didn’t count calories, I miss versions of myself that knew where home was.
I miss being a kid and not knowing what feeling shame for your music taste not being cool enough felt like. I miss thinking cat videos were the peak of comedy (actually, still might be) and the only thing the Internet felt good for. I miss my mom turning the lights off when I fell asleep if I forgot, I miss the streets I once had memorized. I miss Thursdays my senior year of college when my friend would pick me up and take me to class, I miss thinking that this one guy loved me. God, universe, whoever, can I go back? Please, just for a second, I need to turn the music off for a moment. I’m tired, I need to relax. Can I lay down and can my pillow be just supportive of my aching neck enough and can you let me roll the window of my blue Civic down as I rush home from the restaurant one more time? Can you let me bike down across Tempelhofer Feld for the first time again? Can I wake up on a snowy morning and drink my coffee on the couch by the window with both of my dogs on my lap? Can you let me know that I should say a proper goodbye?
Many things in my life the last few years have left without my permission. I am angry and I am bitter and I am sad that there is no complete version of home for me anymore. So much has died. People, animals, ideas, loves, plants. I would like to detach from all my connected memory moments, for just a second. I started this meltdown off just waxing on about a fun trip down Spotify lane I took, and now I can’t do anything but feel like a foolish mess as I ruin my own day.
Okay, I went to bed. I slept it off and took some time and now I have eaten a good breakfast and I have decided to absolutely blast Glad He’s Gone again, because God it’s just fun! I do my skincare routine with the version of the girl who believed a man’s lies, and I wash her clean. I ride my bike down my new street, and alongside me is the girl who realized she could move on. I can sip a whiskey sour with the girl who played Bob Dylan’s Don’t Think Twice, it’s Alright 45 times in one day, and call an Uber home for the one who cried when she saw Kehlani perform Piece of Mind. Living with this many girls is exhausting!!! They have very varied music tastes and it’s hard to find a thematic throughline through the day that way sometimes! Sometimes their emotions give me whiplash, and I’m the only one there to calm myself down and deal with myself.
And I’m tired. I get really tired. I’m tired of grieving. I get tired of not being happy and tired of my sadness not being profound enough to turn into great art. I’m tired of putting in work even though I’ve regretted every time I didn’t. I’m tired of begging for love, from so many including myself. But do you know who has been there for years hyping me up? Tove Lo. And so many of my closest friends, of course. So now, I’ve gotten home from the plane ride I took where I finished going through that Spotify list. And I tried so hard to relax, and to laugh at myself. Because goddamn, subtlety was not a thing there. So I have this little archive, a musical diary of sorts that I now know I can use to trigger a wide variety of unpleasant emotions. Very cool! I am going to treat that as both a weapon and a tool. Once in a while I will let myself slip into the saddest versions of me on purpose. I think that some of our skeletons are in our closets and some get reserved seats at our dinner tables. Well I have a skeleton that’s basically in my pocket at all times, and I need her to fuck off sometimes so I can get some rest.
Since I promised to do this every post and because I discussed music a lot today, here is my 8-track exposing my most recently liked songs on Spotify.
None of My Business - Tinashe
Shoot to kill, kill your darlings - underscores
Live! From the Kitchen Table - McKinley Dixon and Ghais Guevara
Asc. Scorpio - Oracle Sisters
I just Want It - Junglepussy
Big Eyes - Jill Barber
Pearls - Jessie Ware
Bless the Telephone - Labi Siffre
