easier to love you
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Coming from the energy-dense front of Porter Robinson's SMILE! :D leads to a tonal whiplash from the seventh track Easier to Love You. As the album title and aesthetic, so to speak, initially suggests a more energetic and less sentimental, which couldn't be further from the truth. It's a slow, bittersweet lyrics are a great reminder of self-love and acceptance. It talks about how we shouldn't beat ourselves up for not being where we could've been but to be content and love ourselves for where we are. Seeing it live during the Toronto show was a true emotional rollercoaster. Easier to Love You being as it is was very much needed and is one of the most important songs in my life.
"There you were, you're gonna make a scene
Comparin' yourself to the person you were at age seventeen
I put my suit on and I tied my tie
I look like someone I don't recognize"
These lines show that amidst growing up, we lose track of time and how much we've grown. It's this sort of rite of passage that everyone seems to go through, where the only thing we think about is growing up. Only when it seems like it's too late do we turn around and regret how quickly it's all going. I've also found that the 2020 pandemic left the passing of time so volatile and how it continued to move as everyone remained still. It's hard to not at least reminisce on the time lost, and the feeling that I had coming out of it as an unrecognizable self.
"And it would be so much easier to love you
If you could only see yourself like me
And wouldn't it hurt much less when you were lonely
If you could only see yourself like me?"
I really love these lines for a countless reasons. One is the way that it plays like a cliche from similarly cliche songs, initially feeling like a more superfluous lyric. However, the surrounding context eventually keys you into its true meaning. It's about you, more specifically your younger self. Embedded into these lines is how many times we are too harsh and critical of ourselves at a given moment, and how in the present we reflect back and see the reality of that time. The present self seems to almost beg the past to be more hopeful for what's ahead.
Something that's also worth mentioning is how the high-pitched vocals from his previous album Nurture (which I will write about very soon) become more prominent in harmonizing alongside the original vocals. It's been said before that the, for lack of a better term, the "nurture vocals" represents the inner voice-like, contemplative side of you. It's used here to express the sentiment that we introspectively want to understand who we were in the past, and how that changes who we are in the future. I think another way to look at this contrast is to contrast between the past voice and the present voice, being a vocally harmonized version of something like A Million Dreams. From the perspective of the the older, or current perspective, we wish to our past selves that we were less harsh and critical of ourselves back then. We wish that wouldn't dwell on our failures as much as we did, now knowing that it isn't the end of the world as it had felt back then.
Alternatively, it also works from the perspective of the younger self, dreaming of the future self we'd be. It's telling us that the almost naive optimistic outlook we have on ourselves is something worth fighting and working for. This double-entendre-esque back and forth between the past and present voices makes for such a meaningful message.
"I found a letter, "Dear future me
I promise I'll take care of the person we'll both be eventually
I'll pick up painting, oh, oh, and I'll join the gym"
I can't shake the feeling that I'll be happy by the time I'm him"
I feel that this is some of the most simple yet impactful lines in the entire album. The aforementioned "nurture vocals" also works here as a mechanism to represent how the past come parallel with the present in reading the same thoughts and hoping in the letter, both from a different point in life. This time, it feels like a bittersweet reflection of the past, where we feel like we haven't been able to live up to the naive expectations we've placed on ourselves. The childlike optimism that we had for our future has now caught up, and yet we're not the person that we wanted to be. This form of imposter syndrome is heartbreaking, where we are a shell of our expectations and how it becomes so easy to beat yourself up for it, yet:
"Please be disappointed in me / Isn't it obvious I wasn't who you think?"
By this point musically, the drums and background vocals - including the nurture vocals - have disappeared. The latter suggesting that this is solely the sentiments of the present self to the past. It both musically and lyrically is so perfect and melancholy, where we feel like despite our failures and inability to meet our expectations, we still continue to love ourselves. I think this is the crux of this song, and why it means so much to me.
No matter how often we fail to be someone that we wanted to, where we break our habits, lose the people close to us, and feel that we've dug a hole to deep to climb out of, we can still love ourselves. Self-love and acceptance can help us to console with our losses and bring forward a new self that we can be proud of.
"that shit makes me cry so, for that reason, this song goes out to peter griffin from family guy"