Break-Up Part 2: Arctic Monkeys AM
Maybe I just wanna be yours
The Arctic Monkeys
I’m So Obsessed with Him But He Avoids Me Like the Plague
Last week was all about a break-up from the perspective of the one who leaves. This week, the one who is left behind.
I want to explore what happens to love after a relationship ends. I don’t think it goes away, but changes forms. In Bad Bunny’s song BAILE INoLVIDABLE, love turns to gratitude. He lets go and moves on.
But what if the break-up wasn’t your choice?
The Arctic Monkey’s 2012 album AM is about just that. Instead of letting go and moving on…we’re getting dumped and still hooked. Clocking in at just over 40 minutes, the album hits hard. The guy is painstakingly in love with his ex-girlfriend and she wants nothing to do with him.
Where does love go in that case?
“Why’d you only call me when you’re high?”
Crawling Back to You
The album opens with a strong drumbeat, ripping guitar, and cryptic questions: “Do you have color in your cheeks? Do you ever get that fear that you can’t shift the type that sticks around like summat in your teeth? Are there some aces up your sleeve?”
These questions bring us into the singer’s perspective. His girlfriend is leaving and he wants to fight against that flow of energy. He’s resisting. Holding his ground like spinach in someone’s teeth.
His heartbreak is gut-wrenching: “Don’t get that sinking feeling, don’t fall apart” (One for the Road). The shock comes in waves: “In my heart there’s that hotel suite and you lived there so long. It’s kinda strange now your gone” (Fireside). Everything in his life, even the inter-workings of his heart, has to adjust to his ex-girlfriend’s absence.
He tries a rebound girl, “When the winter’s in full swing and your dreams just aren’t coming true, ain’t it funny what you’ll do?” (Knee Socks). He tries partying and “drunken monologues,” and “never knowing full well when to stop” (No. 1 Party Anthem). None of it alleviates his heartache.
All this longing and madness culminates in a visceral admission.
The album closes with a hollow beat, like rain falling on tin, and an eerie, western guitar riff. It’s stripped down. The singer’s desire is all that’s left: “I just wanna be yours.” He repeats it 22 times in the song.
Finally, he sits with the reality of his situation: “Secrets I have held in my heart are harder to hide than I thought. Maybe I just wanna be yours.” He wants something that he’s not going to get. We fade into an angel-like chorus and the album ends.
What now????
“I wanna be your Ford Cortina. I will never rust.” - I Wanna Be Yours
I Keep Recalling Things We Never Did
If we’re starving, it’s hard to think about anything other than eating. Our minds become consumed with the need to find food.
I think affection is similar. When we don’t have it, our minds can obsess. In the case of AM, the singer’s mind latches onto his ex-girlfriend as the way to fill this need for affection.
Is that love?
I would say no. I don’t think that’s love (though I do think he loves her). I think in this break-up, love turns to limerence.
Limerence is a state of acute romantic infatuation for someone who does not want us back. Like unrequited love, but more delusional and intense. We scan every interaction with the person for signs of reciprocation. Our mood spikes and plummets. We have constant daydreams about being with the person.
Limerence is borne of absence. We are lacking either affection, care, love, kindness, sex—whatever it might be. We create a fantasy of how to fulfill that need, and paste the fantasy on top of another person. We believe that if we get that person, we get the fantasy. But the two aren’t congruent.
Love is built on shared experiences. Limerence is completely one sided. As someone who’s experienced limerence many times, I can say…it’s a selfish state of being. You don’t consider the other person. Instead, you are wholly consumed by the drive to get that person. And how you will feel once it happens.
“Decided that once again I was just dreaming of bumping into you” - Why’d You Only Call Me When You’re High?
In the case of AM, the singer is lonely: “satisfaction feels like a distant memory” (R U Mine?) and his ex-girlfriend is not interested: “We could be together if you wanted to” (Do I Wanna Know?). In fact, she’s moved on: “sounds like you fell in love” (Snap Out of It).
In response, he has vivid and constant daydreams about reuniting with her: “Decided that once again I was just dreaming of bumping into you” (Why’d You Only) and “I just cannot manage to make it through the day without thinking of you lately” (Fireside). He’s desperate for a sign she likes him back: “Do I wanna know if this feeling flows both ways?” (Do I Wanna Know?). The generative fuel behind these never-ending fantasies is uncertainty: “Has it gone for good or is it coming back around?” (Fireside). Hope—or more accurately, delusion—has him hooked.
His limerent fantasies aren’t harmless. They prevent him from being present: “lost track of time and space” and “here isn’t where I wanna be” (R U Mine?). He “keeps imagining meeting” her so often, he’s “wished away entire lifetimes” (R U Mine?). This goes on for a long time: “Suddenly it hits me. It’s a year ago” (I Want It All).
Limerence drives him to madness: “run, but you cannot hide” (Mad Sounds), “mind games, mistakes” (I Want It All), “incapable of making alright decisions and having bad ideas,” (Why’d You Only), and “under a spell you’re hypnotized” (Snap Out of It). He loses control.
If limerence is this all-consuming, what exactly are we trying to avoid?
“Her lips are like the galaxy’s edge” - Arabella
You’re on Your Own, Kid
Taylor Swift wrote a song about limerence called Guilty As Sin: “these fatal fantasies, giving way to labored breaths, taking all of me, we’ve already done it in my head.” In her case, limerence functions as a distraction: “my boredom’s bone deep.”
I think below that boredom is lonliness.
If we took all these fantasies away, what would be left? Just us, sitting in the present moment, alone.
That’s what we want to avoid. And so, the only way out of limerence is through that painful truth. We are all, on some level, alone.
Uhhhh…..How are we supposed to handle that????
The AM album cover, which is an AM radio sound wave.
When I Find Myself in Times of Trouble
If I could distill the difference between the love stories in BAILE INoLVIDABLE and AM, I would say it’s acceptance. Both artists are in pain after their break-ups. But one accepts the pain, while the other combats it.
So much of navigating relationships is accepting new realities. People change. Sometimes we can work through those changes, but sometimes we can’t. The tide shifting around you, and being helpless to control it, might be the essence of a break-up.
The beauty of it (or horrible truth), is that the wave is crashing no matter how we respond. The past version of the relationship is gone. We can pick up a surfboard and ride the wave like Benito, or we can get dragged into a rip current like the singer of AM.
For our own sakes, I think it’s better to go with the flow of energy. To let go. It’s a conscious choice and it’s not easy. Benito is still heartbroken and hooked on his ex, to a point: “At night I can’t sleep, all I do is dream of you.” But his heartbreak has forward momentum: “Let me teach you a new step.” The singer of AM clings and begs, “I’m trying to change your mind…it’s harder and harder to get you to listen” (Why’d You Only). He’s drowning from fighting the wave. If he could get his head above water and breathe, I think he would find a lot of love in his life. But he has to choose to see it.
AM ends with the singer admitting he just wants his ex-girlfriend. We don’t find out if he lets go. But I think the album existing at all is a sign that he does. He turns his heartache into beauty and releases it. He doesn’t drown.
He learns to ride the sound waves.
