Most have a hard time understanding this song. It has many metaphors of moving on and seeing ourselves with other people after we’ve left something that was what we knew. I saw some theories about this ‘outing’ Joe or Matty with their sexuality, but I don’t think that’s actually the narrative of the song. The narrative is definitely changing who you are, everything you stand for, everything you needed to be for someone you love- for them to perhaps say you didn’t need to, or to say that none of it was what they wanted in the first place. Watching them leave and watching them be with someone else – whoever that may be.
Lyrical Breakdown
Your hologram stumbled into my apartment
Hands in the hair of somebody in darkness named Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus
After you breakup with someone – you wonder what they are doing, who they are with. I think this relates a lot to the song I look into people’s windows. You imagine them being with someone else. Now through a gay lens I could see this being her imagining her ex partner being with any of these ‘people’ representing man or woman, but I also may think it may be a song written from both perspectives. I see you with someone in the darkness named Chloe or Sophia while you imagine me with Sam or Marcus. Both perspectives could be real, but I don’t think she’d be so mean to put out any information that wasn’t out there. Matty has kissed other boys on stage, so that possibly could be that reference, too.
And I just watched it happen
As the decade would play us for fools
And you saw my bones out with somebody new
Who seemed like he would’ve bullied you in school
And you just watched it happen
This verse is actually very painful – I just watched you drift away, I watched you kiss someone else.
But the decade of on and off in our relationship would continuously show us dating others while still clearly having feelings for one another. You saw me with other people [too], who looked like complete opposites of you, like they would have made fun of you, and you just watched me do it without voicing your feelings to me.
This is the verse where I think the Sam, Sophia, Marcus and Chloe is the most evident. It portrays the idea that this is a back and forth situation — she is comparing him watching her date others, to her watching him date others, throughout this decade of on and off relationship between one another.
If you want to break my cold, cold heart
Just say, ‘I loved you the way that you were’
If you want to tear my world apart
Just say you’ve always wondered
Her cold cold heart is broken, lifeless, if you want to hurt her more, tell her you loved her through it all, and the way she was – that she didn’t have to ever change. And if you want her hurt her more, tell her you wondered what they would be like together. I can’t decide if this song was made before they actually tried the relationship or after. I could see this song being written during the era of high infidelity and her desiring him through this time they couldn’t be together. Especially if she is in a lot of pain with her current relationship – wondering if things could have turned out differently.
You said some things that I can’t unabsorb
You turned me into an idea of sorts
You needed me but you needed drugs more
And I couldn’t watch it happen
These four lines answer all of my questions above. You said cruel things I cannot forget, you turned me into an idea in your mind rather than actually me. So from this line we learn that the above lines just say I loved you the way that you were, is referencing that he did in fact want her to be different than she was… and that hurt her more. You claimed you needed me, but you needed heroin [but this time with an e 😉 ] more.
And she couldn’t watch it happen. It was painful. You tried to buy drugs from a friend of friends of mine. The following lines, again, have us question the timeline of this song.
I changed into goddesses, villains and fools
Changed plans and lovers and outfits and rules
All to outrun my desertion of you
And you just watched it
In these lines she is discussing her reinventions of herself throughout eras. She changed her aesthetic, clothing, roles in her plot, plans for her life, and who she was dating throughout this decade to escape how she felt when he walked away from her. All try to escape how she feels about him. And he never spoke up and how he felt about her. So the question is, we know he deserted her in 2023, but did he also do that in prior times that could lead us to believe this song was written from a retrospective lens of now looking back at that decade of longing.
If the glint in my eye traced the depths of your sigh
Down that passage in time
Back to the moment I crashed into you
Like so many wrecks do
Too impaired by my youth
To know what to do
The more this song carries on the more the story unfolds of time. down the passage in time. If I never stopped holding your gaze, and you began to regret not being with me, why didn’t you say anything? The moment we ran back into each other, LIKE SO MANY WRECKS DO, I didn’t know what to do because I was too focused on the past and how I felt about you. Should have let it stay buried.
She is really acknowledging in this line that she and him were toxic and not meant to be, not in the past, and clearly not now. But she was wearing rose colored glasses from the past. Thinking that if she had been with him this whole time it would have saved her the agony, but the present has proved that not be true.
So if I sell my apartment
And you have some kids with an internet starlet
Will that make your memory fade from this scarlet maroon
The second time she references MAROON on this album in reference to Matty. The forbidden love that was called off. The love that became un-sexy once it was allowed, Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, which she references these ideas in Illicit Affairs, as well.
like it never happened
Could it be enough to just float in your orbit
If she sells the places that reminds her of him, would it be enough for her just to be someone who he hears about instead of being with.
Can we watch our phantoms like watching wild horses
Phantoms, the ghosts in our past, and the holograms we imagine of each other –
Cooler in theory but not if you force it
To be, it just didn’t happen
We sound GREAT in theory, because he’s ‘her twin’ but we can’t force this to happen – none of this could actually end up well – but because he ran from her – the way to hurt her more is by telling her he’ll always love her, and that he’ll always wonder what they could have been. I think this relates a lot to her fame too. Like if she wasn’t this famous and living this life, who would she have ended up with? Could she be with certain people she wanted to be with if she didn’t have this layer of fame to her?
So if you want to break my cold, cold heart
Say you loved me
And if you want to tear my world apart
Say you’ll always wonder
Cause I wonder
Will I always
Will I always wonder?
This whole song she asks him if he wonders about them, and thinking about the pain that inflicts on her because there isn’t anything she wants more than to be with him. But at the end, she is wondering.. and she is hoping she doesn’t always wonder.. but what if she does?
Visual Representation
I changed into goddesses, villains and fools
Changed plans and lovers and outfits and rules
All to outrun my desertion of you
And you just watched it