How “Ribs” by Lorde Became the Soundtrack to Our Coming Age Drama
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7pE8AG1jjE&list=OLAK5uy_nPamPQG3Yr23yUuXbMsvyHeIB6nnUjxak&index=4
It’s the middle of the summer before your senior year. You just got done hanging out with your friends and slowly trudged up the stairs to your room. Drunk off the sickly sweet feeling of sore ribs and sunburnt cheeks from laughing and swimming all day. You collapse on your bed and stare up at the ceiling while “Ribs” plays in the background. A perfect summer day summarized into one song.
Much of my teenage years have been spent chasing a moment. A moment that truthfully, I can not fully describe. It’s something rich with nostalgia but also something I have never experienced. It’s the movie montages of teens driving down the highway at 3 am while “Heroes” by David Bowie plays. It’s the moments that fade into dreams as the disappointment of your teenage years slowly comes into perspective. As it turns out, coming of age movies aren’t like real life, and many of us will never be able to experience these moments in flesh and blood.
So we do what any teen would do in an attempt to experience these moments. We turn on the song that will transport us to a different dimension. A dimension where we matter. Where we are alive. And where we can dissociate ourselves from the numbing reality that has become our daily lives. And it all starts with a glistening drone.
Nostalgia is a feeling that is hard to describe. But, Lorde does it perfectly. The numbing drones that open “Ribs”, transport us into a coming of age movie. Something that we’ve all seen on the big screen but most have never fully experienced in life. We are drawn into a party atmosphere with the first verse:
“The Drink you spilt all over me
“Lover’s Spit” left on repeat
My mum and dad let me stay home
It feels so scary getting old”
Then right away a juxtaposition is thrown at us. The Broken Social Scenes 2002 release, “Lover’s Spit”, while short on lyrics, is full of the notion that it’s time to grow up:
“You know it’s time
That we grow old and do some shit”
Which is directly followed by youthful lyrics that speak on the fears of growing up and losing your childhood. A fear that is echoed in almost all of our lives, especially as we are closing the chapter on high school and diving headfirst into the unknown that is adulthood. We then fade even further into this altered reality:
“We can talk it so good
We can make it so divine
We can talk it good, how you wish it would be all the time”
Where it appears that even Lorde herself, the artist behind this perfect painting of teenage nostalgia, isn’t immune to creating a new reality. A reality where she’s allowed to be brought back into her childhood youth and isn’t constantly chasing these fleeting moments of her teenage years.
“This Dream isn’t feeling sweet
We’re reeling through the midnight streets
And I’ve never felt more alone
Feels so scary getting old”
But even these manufactured moments can’t fill the empty voids of nostalgia that we’re all aching to fulfill. When it seems we’ve finally found these moments we can’t help but come back to the reality that we’ve so recently escaped. And just as soon as those moments are created, they’ve faded from our consciousness just as quickly as they appeared.
As those glistening drones return and the final lyrics slowly fade into the melodic drone of nothingness, we’re left with four final words:
“That will never be enough”
And in all honesty, she’s right, it will never be enough. This alternate universe that we’ve created will never compare to real life. It will never compare to the coming of age movie montages that fade into black as the credits began to roll. Life isn’t like the movies, and most certainly not the coming of age ones. We all strive to find these hidden moments that are said to define our teenage years. But while searching for these, we become blind to the true moments that we’ll remember. Laughing with your coworker about some idiotic customer who is somehow completely incapable of wearing a mask right. Or driving down the highway at 2 am on your birthday, blasting “Rocketman”, while completely overlooking the fact that you have to be awake in 4 hours. Those are the montages that matter.
