First Loves Fall Hard

Good day to you, readers! This Tuesday is not one filled with miserable laments of how horrible every weekday between Monday and Thursday is. In fact, today feels like quite a good day to me! After a nice, quiet weekend down in Little Rock, Arkansas, I feel refreshed and able to participate in the around-the-clock motion of Eastern seaboard lifestyle once more.

                Arkansas… Arkansas? Why Arkansas?

I’ll tell you why – because every once in a while, you just have to pack a bag, hop on a plane, and see new people and places. At least, this is the rationale my good friend Rachel (not to be confused with “Lettuce-Rachel”) proposed to me when she insisted I head South to check out Hendrix College. After a nice long weekend filled with Southern cuisine, muddy corn mazes, Razorback jerseys and kittens hidden in dorm rooms (it’s a long story), it’s strange yet refreshing to be back on the east coast.

As an honorary Southerner (and Razorbacks fan), I feel particularly inclined to share with you a song by a wildly popular band from Tennessee. Despite front man Caleb Followill’s dramatic verbal assault against European fans back in 2009 (if you don’t know about it, you can read Caleb’s explanation for the rant here) Kings of Leon has always been a band that I’ve felt a particular connection to. For me their sound is deep, soulful, and manages to dig down to the rawest of emotions. Backed by Caleb’s heavily accented singing voice (ironically enough, his accent isn't all that prevalent in his speaking tone), Kings of Leon truly makes you believe their tunes were written for your ears only.

Maybe this is why I still find myself tearing up every time I hear Revelry. Revelry is a song that has touched me for a long time. Kings of Leon crashed into the pop scene the same year I fell in love for the first time. We were both good kids when we met, having come together through a mutual infatuation with music. We stayed away from drugs and alcohol, opting to spend our time watching movies, cooking, passing high school, and planning out our future. Even when the loss of a parent and financial crisis struck, we dominated these life struggles together.  Overall, we were a strong and content couple. I thought, as most foolish teenage girls do, that our relationship would stay pure and preserved, immune to the effects of temptation in the outside world.

We all have that one person in our lives that ends up falling from grace. For me, it was my first love. After meeting a “new group of friends”, the innocent boy I had dated for two years grew into a drinking, smoking, selfish and arrogant adult. It seemed as if I was witnessing a rapid transformation from human to monster right before my eyes. I struggled to remain unaware of the changes for a while, but one April Fool’s Day a mutual acquaintance approached me with the news that he’d been caught with another girl. Brokenhearted but not completely surprised, I decided to do what was right for me. As quickly as he had appeared in my life, my first love was exiled from it.  

As I sought comfort through music, as many of us do, Revelry seemed to illustrate the breakup from my ex’s point of view. Caleb laments,

"I get lost in the light, so high I don’t wanna come down 

To face the loss of the good thing that I have found"

Like Caleb, my ex seemed to delve deeper into the party scene as a way to distance himself from the realization that our relationship was ended. The lines, 

 “So I drink and I smoke and I ask you if you’re ever around 

Even though it was me who drove us right in the ground”

conjure memories of his insisting we meet up "just to talk" after the breakup. The suggestion of beer and cigarettes mirrors the image of my ex, cigarette dangling from his lips and empty bottles in the back seat of his car.

There is one line in particular that has always reminded me most of my fallen relationship. My mother, a wise and compassionate woman, constantly warned me that she believed my ex had a predisposition to go the “wrong way” if he wasn't careful. When it turned out this was so, she comforted me with the truth that sometimes a person cannot change their nature no matter much a couple may love each other. Caleb seems to know this truth all too well as he discloses to his own lost love:

"Just know it was you all along who had a hold of my heart

But the demon in me, we was best of friends from the start."

Perhaps the most painful truth in this song is that the lyrics do not suggest that a destroyed relationship deems the love illegitimate. In fact, he reminds us that, even from the heartbreaker’s point of view:

"So the time we shared it was precious to me

All the while I was dreaming of revelry."

In sum, Kings of Leon describes breakups as the inability to control one’s own selfish desires for the sake of another person’s happiness, no matter how much you may love that person.

Uplifting concept, isn’t it?

On that note, feel free to curl up on the couch, turn on Revelry, and sob about your own long lost high school romance – no matter how long ago it may have been. I find it particularly satisfying to sob at the end of the song, when Caleb extends the last syllable of “revelry” in that solemn country wail. Try it for yourself!

Until next week, readers! Hope you had your Kleenex closeby!

- Jenna "The Turnip"