This song is filled with so many hooks listening to it is tantamount to going into a butcher’s shop at night and coming out with all of your clothes ripped up. Right from the get-go, we hear Carly whispering, Son of a gun, in a way that I understand as, I’m getting ready to exact vengeance – I’m coming for you! Whether it be someone in specific or something  it doesn’t matter. 

          Along with her voice we’re ushered in by a spacy-like bassline that whirs like a machine about to set off. As we step inside, looking for our seats, we’re welcomed by a slow and quiet strumming on an acoustic guitar and a subtle sparse piano, all combined with the purpose of getting us there where she wants us, in the last stop of her – revenge? 

         We take off. Carly comes on – subdued at first but then quickly rising! She pitches her voice down in the first part of every line only to pitch it up at the end. I raise and I fall with her, I feel bold but I also yearn and hesitate.

       It’s as if by the end of every line the conviction with which she started gave way to a looming melancholic feeling brought about by both the utterance and thus the remembrance of things past, and so throughout our journey I hear her attempt and fail at what I first imagined could be a well-executed vendetta, but that ultimately culminates in a love song.

        Ah, but what a banger! No sooner she’s uttering the first words than I’m on my feet dancing and prancing. And just like her I’m full of conviction, and every time the drums come in I feel like I soar to clear skies and I want to tell the world a thing or two. But then I also feel happily woeful, or woefully happy, and suddenly I’m confused as to what and how to feel, I become an oxymoron with a pulse.

             As I get comfortable, however, my fervor dwindles and instead I begin feeling a calm warmth… Now in my heart and in my body there’s a positive (albeit still somewhat sorrowful) flow of energy circulating, percolating, that keeps me flying regardless. And not only do I continue dancing and singing along but I let myself be possessed by the sensations that this vessel called music and her voice elicit in me. I feel elated, light, unburdened, air-bound, bird-like, somehow weightless yet very human at the same time. But not man, nor male, nor citizen of any one nation – just human. And certainly not vain at all.