Brandy Clark’s new album, Your Life is a Record, did not disappoint. I could probably write about every song on it, but I’ve forced myself to choose one, “I’ll Be the Sad Song.” It’s the first track and I was hooked immediately.
I absolutely love what Brandy, Jesse Jo Dillion, and Chase McGill did with this song. The lyrics in this song start by framing life as a record, hence the album title, saying people and places are songs and how when you play them all together, the story will make sense. At the same time, it’s a song about a “good love gone bad,” and who can’t relate to that?
People always talk about life like it’s a book. Turning the page or closing the chapter. Which all makes sense and I’ve definitely used it myself a time or two. If you’re like me and more of a music person, this concept seems to fit so much better.
My favorite line in this song says, “Couldn’t be your happy song, but at least we had a song.” It makes me think of the old phrase, “sad that it’s over, but happy that it happened,” but in a much more clever way. Though it didn’t work out the way that you hoped, at least you had that time together and those memories that were made. Whatever you had must have meant enough to be upset about losing that it became worthy of its own song. I also really just enjoy songs from the perspective of the “bad guy,” accepting the fact that they caused this heartbreak. Can you imagine knowing you are the person who inspired some of the biggest sad songs of all times? I feel like that would cause you to carry a lot of weight and also likely cause you to regret whatever you did to mess that situation up.
I much prefer this idea of molding the moments in our lives to create an album as compared to a writing book. Hopefully throughout our lives, we all have the opportunity to create multiple albums that show the evolution of who we are as people and all the experiences we have.
So which album are you on and what song are you currently writing?
