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#and then combining that with Babylons quest to try to find an identity for himself and like What he is
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It's okay if you can't do sci-fi, start with steampunk and work your way up </3
znsnn you say that like thats not Exactly what i tripped face first into
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Ignore the colors but yeah, i said "im gonna draw a cool space man on a Cool space bike," and then i just drew a real fucked up steampunk fish and a twink in a crop top.
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5sos Lyrical Analysis
A/N: Hi! I just wanted to start this off with a huge thanks to everyone that sent me in lyrics. This project has been two fold: Part one is just looking at certain lyrics, for my found poem series. This just means I want to use and even respond to certain lyrics in my poems. I compiled them into two separate lists:
Find Youngblood here.  
Find CALM here. 
The second part was to take a close look at the overlap in lyrical content between Youngblood and CALM. This is NOT a complete analysis of their lyrics. I wanted to make that clear. I am by no means intending on making a complete analysis of their lyrics. I am not even attempting to make a completely analysis of these two albums, though I’ll touch as many basis as possible. 
Please note: I am using the phrase ‘narrator.’ One, this is an old habit carried on from all the close readings I did on poetry. There’s typically, out of respect, a division between the author of the work and the narrator of the piece presented. These two can, and sometimes do, overlap, especially in forms like poetry. But I feel it’s important to use ‘narrator’ even in this analysis. Old habits die really hard and sometimes never do. But also because it feels more respectful to assume a collective unit and unified front rather than trying to piece apart the personal experience to a specific member since I am looking at just the lyrics, I’m not scoping out Twitter, or IG, or Cocktail Chats. I know those connections are there. The only thing I wanted to focus on was the content of the lyrics as they are presented, solo, nothing else. I recognize and understand that each member is bringing a unique experience to the table and there is plenty more in these songs if those other pieces are added. 
These are gonna be a little disjointed. I’ve been staring at lyrics and notes for two weeks at this point, almost. I’m sorry it’s not necessarily a more cohesive front. So please enjoy! And feel free to send your thoughts!
All that are below are my personal opinions. 
I’m just going to hit the ground running. I’ll be including pictures of the chart and then a paragraph of my thoughts below them. 
CW: Mentions of drugs (recreational and prescribed)! Just in case anyone is sensitive to that.
Enjoy below!
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Youngblood deals with heartache, but there’s an internal struggle on how to heal and move on. So in songs like “Better Man” and “Monster Among Men” that internal struggle is seen via introspection. In CALM, the same sense of struggle is seen in “Red Desert” and “Old Me”. However, an interesting deviation occurs in the lyrics of “Teeth” where now there’s a very specific identification of a person that the narrator sees as causing them turmoil. I’d like to note in both albums there’s a clear you present in both albums, which is a source of heartbreak and pain and even that you is addressed in several songs. However, “Teeth” stands out because of the you just being transformed from just a human that receives and dishes out pain, into the personification of a devil. This you in a way seems to have lost their humanity. And perhaps to the narrator there is a small appeal to that, with the addition of “put your hands on me.” An important thing to note is that while Youngblood and CALM never fully resolve their issues, but there is growth and maturing that’s heavily seen in CALM.
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In some ways, I am about to state the obvious: Fire is destructive and flames takes no prisoners. However, an interesting thing about something that is destroyed is that it leaves in its place the opportunity for something new, and potentially better to be planted. “Valentine” leaves behind a feeling of combination, intertwining with “so deep, your DNA’s being messed with my tough/ Can’t beat us/ So real, fueling the fire until we combust”. And even though it seems to lead to an explosive end, the point here seems to be much more focused on the journey, riding the high no matter what. This is a theme, that I think, heavily seeps through Youngblood. Youngblood seems less focused on the results and much more focused on the journey, the ups and downs, the pleasure and pain. There’s a search in Youngblood, a quest for answers that in some ways CALM answers. One such answer can be see in CALM’s “Old Me” with the line “Ashes on the floor, but I’m walkin’, walkin’, walkin’ out of here alive.” Even though the journey might of ended in flames and destructive, the narrator still remains, they are still able to come out on the other side of everything they have endured. Another answer resides in “Lover of Mine” where the narrator is asking in some ways that their loved one to use fire for rebirth of the relationship with the lines, “All of my regrets and things you can’t forget/ Light them all up, kiss them goodbye.”
On the opposite end of the search and possibly more aligned with yearning, in Youngblood with “Babylon.” The chorus centers around taking the adventure of love to it’s highest point but the aftermath of the crash as well “We both said we’d love higher than we knew we could go” and “Burn to bright, now the fire’s gone, Watch it all fall down.” I will come back with more on Babylon further on.
A lot of Youngblood is a struggle of man vs. himself, an internal struggle to let go, to move on, to figure out one’s identity. In CALM that struggle remains present, but a new conflict is presented, in the form of a relationship. We can see in Teeth the narrator has started to directly reference a “you” where conflict now resides, “Some nights you’re the only thing I know/ Only thing burning when the night grows cold”. I like to conclude that there is a hot and cold aspect to the relationship that the narrator is seeing. In a previous line, “Sometimes when I look at you, I see my wife,” the narrator expresses that there are some redeeming qualities, that there is some good. Whether not this is the exact same relationship as discussed in Teeth is not a question I want to undertake, however, in “Lonely Heart” there’s a reference back to the bad, “Our house on fire, we’re burning/ We dance inside, you’re hurting.” Not all that glitters is good proves itself right once again. 
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I combined the light and dark with the night and day imagery. I did so for space sake. This could easily be double the size it is currently, but also because there is sometimes the passage of time associated with the both light and dark and night and day. They are transitions. The transitions in Youngblood and CALM occur with lyrics like “I saw you looking brand new overnight” from “Lie To Me” “Call me in the morning to apologize/ Every little lie gives me butterflies” from “Teeth” and “I don’t wanna kill my time with anyone else/Dancing in the dark till the sun comes” from “Kill My Time”
I also choose to separate out the light and dark from other color imagery because of the way it echoed and resonated with daylight, moonlight, midnight and creating shadows in the lyrics. There’s a very specific sense of time in some songs. In Lie To Me we get the reference “3:00 AM and the moonlight is testing me” paired up right against “if I make it till dawn it won’t be hard to see/ I ain’t happy.” The passage of time, or rather the supposed passage in Lie To Me, illustrates how things can change, or be shaped and molded. 
A pretty cool thing I noted is that there’s references to time with  “midnight, daylight, 3:00 AM, tonight” and that brings along the brightness of and the absence of the sun and light where as in particular with No Shame the only reference to light if from a camera flashing. This made me wonder more about the appearance of light and perception. There is a face that the narrator knows is only seen captured by photographs and while at events with the bulbs of a camera and the true face of themself that only they would get to experience. 
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I included this section about drugs and alcohol to illustrate a certain aspect of growing up. I’m not attempting to romanticize any use of drugs, alcohol, or nicotine. These are statements, from the narrator, that yes they have used them. But this is about the narrator’s experience. And I, as little old me, ask is that you please be careful out there!
 Back to the lyrics, it’s fascinating to see how the relationship with substances as evolved. If we start towards the end of Youngblood, we get a tale of the narrator and their best hosting a party while parents are out of town, having the cops called on the party, and then riding out in the car, continuing the party, but at a much smaller capacity in “Best Friend” to a very helpless feeling in “Why Don’t You Love Me” with it’s line, “Few drinks deep at a table for one. and then we expanse to “Get you high when I’m high” and “Sugar coated brain, the fluid ain’t to blame, for the sugar coated pain” in “Empty Wallets” to a memory, the reality that even parts of our life journey that weren’t great for us can still be missed with the lyrics in High “And I’ll always miss the memories of the morning we were high.’ The question can continue further to the point: Does the mentality create a challenge for recovering and moving on? And I personally think, sometimes yes it can. In other times, we can still remember those moments but ultimately realize that there is better progress made by moving forward. 
We do get a reference to Xanax. Notably, it is a benzodiazepine which are notoriously hard and dangerous (if not done right and with professional help) to get off once a person starts using them. But they are effective for some. Done with my tangent now, let’s get back to the focus: The lyrics in “No Shame” in which the narrator sees the “you” or significant other dumping their pills and being “so sick” of them is really crucial. I think it touches on how hard trying to get better can be for the person experiencing it. 
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On a much lighter note though, we can move to colors! I personally see a lot of color (or feel like when I’m listening to certain songs I should be wearing a certain color, which I’m sure sounds crazy) when I listen to Youngblood. I was intrigued though to look for the use of color and even images that evoke a certain color. I didn’t find a whole lot of it, including CALM. Which seems pretty consistent. I don’t see a lot of visual components to their lyrics. The soundscape of the albums appears to be the backbone for a lot of the colors, I feel. And the emotional impact seems to the their larger focus when they write. 
Particularly cool lines that have color or color imagery in them, in my finding were “Fragile, always ‘about to fall just like sand/Castles” from “Monster Among Men,” “We’re classic together like Egyptian gold” from “Valentine” “It was more than just a neon weekend” from “Woke Up In Japan” and “Red, red desert/ Heal our blues/ ...Twilight moments with you” from “Red Desert”. The twilight line in Red Desert gives a purple vibe, or at least I see the color purple there and I can only wonder if it’s because I was prepped beforehand with the colors red and blue. However it works, I think it was a brilliant choice to couple twlight after it, to paint a full picture. “Neon weekend” should just be tattooed across my forehead because it gives off such a vibrant and bright life that nestles in very well with the energy of Youngblood’s entire album. 
A slightly related note, I pulled a couple instance of the phrase “heart” for this section. I wasn’t sure if others associated the color red with it. I did however think that the use of “blood on my shirt” “roses” and even “sirens” left me with the impression of colors, specifically blue and a small bit of blue for the sirens. 
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There were two really strong parallels when it came down to the use of “dancing” throughout the albums. In “Ghost of You” we get the lines, “Dancing through our house with the ghost of you/ ...And I’ll chase it down with a shot of truth/That my feet don’t dance like they did with you”. It’s almost direct parallel is in “Lover of Mine” with it’s lines “Dance around the living room/Lose me in the sight of you/I’ve seen the red, I’ve seen the blue/ Take all of me.” I personally wonder if one could spin this, as so that Lover of Mine could take place before Ghost of You. However, that’s the poet and author in me looking for the story and strings. 
A crazy parallel I noticed was between “Empty Wallets” and “Lonely Hear” I promise here I won’t be pulling the red strings. In Empty Wallets there’s the sentiment of hurting and forgiveness, with of course that blood pumping rush of youth with, “Living our lives/ Dancing on empty wallets/ Spend it all on you” and “I always believed in second chances/ I always believed in you”. And it sorts bumps against and shares a space with “We dance inside, you’re hurtin’” and “Can I get a second chance? Can I have another dance? Can I have another life with you” from Lonely Heart, where we see this urge with the narrator to make up for their wrongdoing and recognize the pain caused to the other person in this relationship. 
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I can’t talk about Youngblood and CALM without mentioning the strong growth that’s come from the former to the latter. It would be an utter disservice to the different roles these albums play. Youngblood is so much about loss and growing up and fumbling through life in a way where the counterpart CALM is more about finally get a handle on all those questions and growing from them. 
The strongest parallel I gathered was from the insistences in Better Man and Old Me. I recognize that Better Man overall has this echo of love, and finding someone else that helped them through the growing pains. But I think it’s worth noting that in the context of Old Me there’s an acceptance to the fuck ups, there’s an acceptance shit had to go bad to finally find what was wrong. I think the strongest lyric to this point is in Old Me “Another round, here we go, going in blow for blow/ Look into the mirror, take the punches that I throw” and “Had to fuck it up before I really got to know me/ All of the mistakes I made, I made, I made, I made/ Whatever the price I paid, I paid, I paid, I paid.”
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I added a chart about the phrase “letting go” of which a lot of it is about how it’s hard to let go. Which I mean, is very accurate and relatable. The most explicit example is in “When You Walk Away” with the lines “I’m bad at letting go/ Won’t you let me down easy?/I can’t let you go” this sentiment is paralleled several times in CALM as well, one example in particular is in “Not in the Same Way” with the lines “You say, ‘Go’ I won’t leave” and “Turn right around, throwin’ rocks at your window.” If walking away was easier, I don’t think we’d have the albums that we got from the band. I wanted to include this section with change and growth but it would just be too long and too much. So I broke it up, chart wise. 
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Alas, I’ve returned to Babylon! First though, I want to touch on overall on the way this chart is set up. I tried to explicit lyrics of “fatal love” but I did expand my criteria. So it if it looks a little wonky and long, I do apologize. 
Now, some really cool overlaps I noticed where between “When You Walk Away” and “Not in the Same Way.” It’s the particular phrasing on how gut wrenching love can be sometimes. In “When You Walk Away,” the narrator states with the opening! which is a really crazy but strong way to open “Cut me open, take my heart/ So we’ll never be apart.”  When we look at “Not In The Same Way” we get a very similar wording “Rip my heart out and leave, on the floor, watch me bleed.” The first song, “When You Walk Away” is a bit more a plea to be saved from the heartache and “Not in the Same Way” is more of a statement, it’s more like the narrator saying this is what you’ve done to me. 
Okay, we all know how much I love Babylon. If not, check out this post. But to summarize why Babylon fits into this narrative of fatal love, it’s because of the cyclical nature of this relationship that the narrator is in. A historical reference Babylon alludes to the fact that the narrator knows this relationship wasn’t truly built to last. Babylon was built, destroyed, rebuilt, and then destroyed again. And this relationship seems to keep burning at both ends, almost falling apart and then it’s saved, only for it fall.  
To quote myself from the Babylon post, “ ‘Your short fuse, my half-truths are not amused.” like both y’all are our contributing to the problem, one is EXPLOSIVE, one is reserved and that’s a combination bound to cause friction in a relationship, romantic or other, and there’s no blame in the way it’s said. “I wish we had a clue to start new.” LIKE, clearly this shit isn’t working but neither one of us knows how to really fix it besides to watching the flame burn out and when it burns, she roars, she takes down everything with it, i.e. “We watch it all burn down.”’ Alas, we’ve gone back to that destructive nature fire. And we’re with the narrator where all that is left are the ashes. Love is fatal because it really can destroy everything that we’ve only known. 
The next few charts are just for funsies, I did some more direct comparisons. If you want further thoughts, you can hit me up. But this post is already miles long! Thanks for reading!
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Tagging: @compulsiveidiota @pinkbubbles-and-bigtroubles @5-secondsofcolor​ @calumscalm​
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