Album Review: Lucy Dacus - Forever Is A Feeling

What if we don’t touch—what if we only talk about what we want, and cannot have.

“It has been said that pop music desires a body.” And I am always thinking of this. Since the first time I read that sentence. “A single, focused human form as an object of interest.” And since the first time I read it, years ago, it is something that has shaped how I approach my listening, and ultimately my analysis of, contemporary popular music—the writing, in particular. The narrative. Whatever story is being conveyed, and how it is depicted.

There’s a difference between a “love song” and songs that are about love. There are, of course, many different types of love, and those can, and often do, intersect. There is an intersection, then, too, or a convergence, between a song that is about love—and all that could and probably does mean, and a “love song.” 

I am always thinking about that, too. 

Pop music desires a body. A single, focused human form as an object of interest. 

It’s from an essay by Hanif Abdurraqib—originally published online in 2016 when he was working for MTV, “Carly Rae Jepsen and The Kingdom of Desire” was included in the fifth-anniversary edition of his breakthrough collection of pop culture analysis and criticism, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us. In part a review of Jepsen performing in Toronto, backed by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, roughly a year after the release her critically acclaimed album Emotion, the essay, more than that, is about the idea of desire, or a want, and the role those play in Jepsen’s songwriting, and why that may have contributed to the album’s, at the time of its release, lack of commercial success, or at least, its inability to match the success of its predecessor. 

“Emotion fails at this, I suppose,” he continues, in the next line. “Because its primary characters are desire and distance. Want may be a machine that lurches us toward a newer, more eager want, but the idea alone, pointing at nothing specific, doesn’t sell records.”

“That Jepsen’s music is not the kind of pop music that relentlessly desires a body means that desire itself is the body,” Abdurraqib explains, a few paragraphs later. “Desire is the living thing at the end of the tunnel, waiting with open arms, and to some, I imagine, that isn’t a happy ending. Wanting leading to more wanting isn’t exactly a neatly tied ribbon, but it is a certainty…once you’ve got that which you desire, the story is less interesting. She gives us, instead, a never-ending chase where the only thing to fall in love with is the idea of falling in love.”

There is a difference between a “love song” and songs that are about love. 

A “love song” is, I think, similar to how Jepsen writes, or at least was writing in the material for Emotion, about all of the moments leading up to something else, if that makes sense. Often sweet, or tender, when I think of a love song, what I think of is affectionate, and it often is about the very idea of falling in love with someone.

A moment leading up to something else. 

A song about love can be that, too, of course. But it often is about more than that. It can be about when love has ended—it can be about heartbreak. It can be about the frustrations, or the anxieties, or insecurities, that come from not just being “in love” with another person but genuinely loving them. Because love is not always easy. It is often difficult, or complicated, regardless of what kind of love it is—romantic, or otherwise. 

I used to think that there was a substantial difference between the idea, or the feeling, of loving somebody, and being “in love.” And I think that I initially felt this way after I had started reflecting on mistakes I had made within a short-lived, tumultuous relationship I was in when I was much, much younger, because the past is always beating inside me like a second heart. 

I thought that I loved this person—but what I did understand, with time, was that I was “in love,” perhaps more with an idea of her. A kind of impassioned infatuation. And what I was not in a place to really comprehend is that a real love comes with a patience, or a compassion.

And that it isn’t always perfect. 

There will be moments of frustration. And with that patience and compassion, you do, hopefully, appreciate and respect that person for who they are, and how they may grow, and if you are fortunate, how you may grow along with them. 

I used to think there was a difference between loving, and being “in love,” and I still do I suppose. But I think the space where those two things converge is becoming a perfect circle. 

It has been said that pop music desires a body.

What if we don’t touch, though. 

What if we only talk about what we want, and cannot have.

*

Forever Is A Feeling, the fourth full-length album from singer and songwriter Lucy Dacus is objectively an album about love. I perhaps overuse, when writing analytically about music, the descriptors “concept album” or “song cycle,” but it is a tightly knit collection of songs that are connected through a recurring theme, or idea. 

It is an album about love, and it is an album of “love songs.” 

It is an album where many of the songs are written from the perspective of falling in love. 

It is an album where many of the songs are written from the perspective of loving someone—for who they are, and not who you wish for them to be, or perhaps mistake them for. 

There is a difference between those two things. I still think that. Loving someone, and falling in love, or being “in love,” if that makes sense. I realize that, as I often do, am perhaps getting caught up in potential minutiae. But Forever Is A Feeling is an album that ultimately exists in the space where those two things converge and overlap. 

It has been said that pop music desires a body. 

It is a tender album—often operating from a place of quiet, or restraint, just in terms of the tone that Dacus sustains from beginning to end. And in that quiet, and restraint, and tenderness, it is often complex, and even ornate, in how it is arranged. Forever Is A Feeling regularly, as it delicately unfolds, dazzles with a kind of iridescent grace, and in how it is engineered and layered, offers a number of welcomed and compelling surprises from beginning to end. 

It is a tender album, which means that in the reserve it is often working from within, it is comparatively not as “big” in its sound as its predecessor—Home Video, released four years ago; nor is is it as ramshackle and raucous as Dacus’ breakthrough sophomore album, 2018’s Historian. 

This is, of course, not to say that she has outgrown something that leans more into crunchy guitars, like the cathartic howling in the second half of Historian’s opening track, “Night Shift.” 

She has not outgrown—however, Dacus continues to grow, or mature, in what she wishes to embrace sonically—for as enthusiastic as moments on Home Video could be, like briskly paced “Brando” or “Hot and Heavy,” it was also an album that already saw her evolving as an artist and expanding her palate to incorporate more textural elements—like the warm synth arrays on “Thumbs,” or the icy slow jam, “Partner in Crime.” 

Forever Is A Feeling is a tender, contemplative album, and even though it may not be as objectively “big,” it is still enormous and bold, wildly ambitious, unabashedly earnest, and impressive.

The enormity Forever Is A Feeling has, in its scope, does have a lot to do with the production value and arranging—it also has, I think, even more, to do with the confidence Dacus has grown into as a singer and songwriter, both with the material she has released under her own name, as well as her continued work as a member of the “supergroup” Boygenius.

This could be said, as well, about Dacus’ peers and bandmates in Boygenius—Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers. Both of whom have certainly grown in ambition, and scope, within their more recently released solo outings, like Bridgers’ dense, moody, and masterful 2020 effort, Punisher, and Little Oblivions, Baker’s third full-length released at the beginning of 2021, which was her first time working with the additional elements of a full band, rather than simply piano, guitar, and subtle atmospherics. 

The Record, the debut full-length from the trio’s work together as Boygenius, released two years ago, was also a rather bold, enormous, and ascendent statement—for the three of them as a group, certainly, but I think for each of them individually, too, just in terms of where they wish to go, or push themselves, as artists. 

Because even in the places where the pacing slowed down a little, or maybe felt a little uneven, The Record was, and still remains, a fascinating and thoughtful collection of songs, that both plays to everyone’s strengths, but is still not afraid of venturing out into the places unexpected.

That balance, I think, of a very apparent accessibility but also the willingness to take some risks, and certainly the sheer voluminous and meticulous nature of how The Record sounded, was more than likely aided by its release through a major label. All three artists, at that time, were still linked to independent outlets as individuals—Baker and Dacus to the well-regarded and long-running Matador and Bridges to the Secretly Canadian imprint Dead Oceans. 

I am both hesitant and not to say that Forever Is A Feeling uses The Record as a blueprint or a map of some kind—I am hesitant simply because I don’t wish for this to sound like a bad thing, or that Forever is the kind of album incapable of standing on its own. Because it is. Like that is very apparent from the moment it begins. 

I do only mention this because while Baker is still connected with Matador and Bridgers is seemingly pleased with her relationship to Dead Oceans (she has her own vanity imprint through them, Saddest Factory, that launched in 2021) Dacus is the first of the three to make the jump to the major leagues, with Forever Is A Feeling being issued through Geffen Records. 

The backing of a larger label does offer this album what the backing of Interscope Records could do for Boygenius and The Record, which is more literal accessibility in terms of where the record is physically available. It also, presumably, offered Dacus the financial means to record in specific studio spaces, at a pace she perhaps wished, and with specific producers. 

Outside of re-teaming with longtime collaborators Jake Finch and Collin Pastore, indie production auteur Blake Mills was heavily involved in the production as well as instrumental contributions for Forever Is A Feeling. It is, of course, like The Record, extraordinarily robust in sound, but it never runs the risk of using its major label financing to sound slick or overworked—if anything, it has given Dacus what she needed to tell this specific story, and gives it the rich depth for it to sound the way she wished for it to. 

It is said that pop music desires a body. And like The Record before it, even from the place of reserve, Dacus is working from here—reserve because of the hushed intimate nature of what it is ultimately about, Forever Is A Feeling is accessible sonically, with places that I would go so far as to say are jubilant. And in the tender and contemplative way, it walks through the idea of love and being “in love,” the enormity, ambition, and earnestness also allow it the space to take surprising risks that result in even more surprising results. 

*

With a dozen songs, and one instrumental, introductory track, so much of Forever Is A Feeling demands your attention, both musically and lyrically, and asks to be discussed and analyzed. It is an album that does clearly have a story to share, though, over the course of its runtime, it is very deliberate in how it shares that story—what details to divulge, what to be vague or ambiguous about, and in what order to shuffle the narrative. Forever Is A Feeling is an album about falling in love, and about love, itself, and everything that does and can mean, but it positions itself, and these fragments, nonlinearly, moving forward through moments of want, and desire, and longing, then walking itself back into vignettes from a not so distant past.

Forever Is A Feeling does spend the most time exploring the present, though, or at least the desire, and want, and the longing, that brought Dacus to where she is now. Or, at least, where she when she was reflecting the experiences that are depicted here. But that doesn’t mean glimpses of the past are not amongst the songs that are compelling or fascinating.

Placed near the end of the album’s first side, the moody, distended “Talk,” which was released as the third advance single from Forever, is noisy and brooding enough to both call to mind the more raucous or noisier sound Dacus favored in 2018, on Historian, as well as the larger moments from Home Video, like the vivid, autobiographical “V.B.S,” or the stunning closing track, “Triple Dog Dare.” 

Opening with an eerie whistling sound, “Talk” gathers momentum with both electric and acoustic guitars strumming slowly, with a sense of foreboding, as Dacus’ voice, at least in the opening verse, comes from a much lower register, which adds to the overall unease of the song. 

I don’t often associate Lucy Dacus with a sound like this, but there is, leading up to the arresting, impactful, wordless pre-chorus, a creeping feeling to “Talk.” In the lyrics, yes, but certainly when the punchy, clattering percussion kicks in, rattling underneath the crunch of the guitars, with a chopped up, jittery, “Ooooooooooooh” sending chills she guides it to the explosive and bombastic chorus, complete with huge, dramatic pauses for emphasis. 

With the sharper edge, and darkness, that surges and writhes through the arranging of “Talk,” Dacus’ writing, and narrative, explore the slow and uncomfortable dissolution of a relationship that has run its course but neither party is willing to admit the place they’ve arrived at. 

And that is the thing, of course, about songs that are about love—while they can be sweet, or thoughtful, or tender, or lusty, even, they can also track the more painful or less flattering moments of what happens within a romantic partnership. 

“Talk” blends the depiction of this disconnection between people with the imagery, within the first verse, of driving up the side of a mountain, which Dacus describes as “risky after sundown.”

“When the roads turn serpentine, we run out of conversation,” she observes, her voice low. “Day runs out of light. Silent, watching high beams interrupt the night.”

The real core of “Talk” comes within the short, but punctuated chorus, and within the second verse, where the imagery of night driving up a mountain is replaced with something much more sensual. 

Writing about sex, or sexuality, or sensuality, in pop music, and doing it in a tasteful way, isn’t easy. There are artists who are bold enough or empowered enough to take a more provocative or ribald approach, and there are artists who are more coy, playful, or suggestive. Writing about physical intimacy isn’t new to Dacus—it is referenced in a winking entendre on the brisk “First Time,” on Home Video. 

But because Forever Is A Feeling is about what it is ultimately about, sex and, sexuality and sensuality play a role throughout.

“Your body looming like a specter—hungry as a scythe,” Dacus recalls in the second verse. “If you come reaping, I’ll come running—I still know what you like. But just like they say that you can never go home,” she continues, before hitting one of the more devastating, and in this case, rather cutting lines on the album. “I could not love you the same way two days in a row.”

“Why was our best sex in hotels and our worst fights in stairwells,” she asks, in a heavily distorted voice, in the bridge—this is, of course, asking the other unanswered questions in the song, in the chorus. “Why can’t we talk anymore? We used to talk for hours. Do I make you nervous, or bored?,” she continues before suggestively adding, “Or did I drink you to the last drop.”

Against the backdrop of rippling dissonance and thudding, crashing percussion, as “Talk” does find its way to its sudden, though perfectly fitting conclusion, Dacus reflects on all of the unanswered questions from the song, and in doing so, reveals that she was aware this relationship was beyond its shelf life before she was willing to admit it.

“I didn’t mean to start talking in the past tense,” she explains. “I guess I don’t know what I think ’til I start talking.”

*

It has been said that pop music desires a body.

And, perhaps, much like the risk that I run in music analysis, of overusing expressions like “concept album” or “song cycle” in describing an album, I do certainly return to describing, as a whole, albums as “damn near perfect.”

And it is hard, or just presents much more of a challenge, to encourage the experience of listening to an album, at least once, from beginning to end. Not every listener is album-oriented. And you can speculate all you want to about why that might be. I don’t think it is really my place to do so. But I tell you all of that to tell you this—Forever Is A Feeling, regardless of whether you are simply attracted to the singles issued ahead of its arrival in full, or if there are certain songs found within its sequencing that you are more drawn to than others, is an album that you should experience at least once all the way through, uninterrupted. As a means of appreciating the complexities and meticulous nature of how it sounds, but to understand the narrative Dacus has crafted. 

Pop music desires a body. 

I am, of course, drawn to specific moments in Forever Is A Feeling—it is a record that can and should be enjoyed and experienced as a whole, but it is the album’s most romantic, earnest moments that I am compelled towards, and feel more of a personal connection to, in how Dacus describes the convergence between being “in love” and loving someone, and the longing that occurs within the overlap.

The album though, as “Talk” demonstrates, is not entirely about longing, or infatuation, or being “in love.” In writing songs about love, writing about the end, or about regret, or about moments from the past, fall under that descriptor, and the results here are worth mentioning for myriad reasons.

It has been alluded to in the chatter about Forever Is A Feeling in the wake of its release that some of the songs are about a musician that Dacus was romantically involved with in the past, who was not “out” yet—Dacus, herself, has identified as queer and has been relatively open about that. Or as open as one wishes to be when discussing one's sexual preferences and orientation. And placed within the second half of the album, “Come Out” details this relationship—the longing Dacus felt when they were apart, and in a play on the expression, the alluded to closeted nature of her partner and the possible frustrations or difficulties that may have created.

“Come Out,” like the observational, wandering piano-lead track “Limerence” from the first half of the record, showcases Dacus’ startling ability to take seemingly observational lyrics and then find a way to bend the delivery of them into a clear melody that floats along. It’s impressive—and it feels so natural the way she details her disassociation during a Boygenius meeting with a major label—“I missed your call beau’s I was in a board room full of old men guessing what the kids are getting into,” she recalls. “I don’t belong here—nobody does,” she muses, later. “Except maybe those old men collecting dust.”

And while a song like “Talk” does explore the frustration and disappointment that does come when you understand that something is over, but are unable to say it out loud and continue to beleaguer it, “Come Out” is surprisingly tender, even though it is about a former romantic partner. There is a wistfulness to it, and a sweetness, or a sentimentality that does really resonate even with the apparent double meaning of the titular phrase. “Why am I not wherever you are,” Dacus asks in the first verse. “There is no distance that wouldn’t be too far. Even on opposite sides of the room, I am orbiting you.”

The instrumentation of “Come Out” is delicate—a strummed acoustic guitar that finds itself in a little bit of a gentle, brisk shuffle. And this soft approach, and the very breezy, conversational way Dacus delivers the lyrics, does provide a juxtaposition with how intense things become.

“I wanna scream from the bottom of my lungs,” she declares. “I wanna scream my throat raw, and if that means I never sing again, at least I’ll know I went out with a bang—screaming my favorite things about you. Screaming your name.”

“Bullseye,” then, which features a guest turn from the Irish singer Andrew John Hozier-Byrne—known professionally as Hozier, splits the difference in the emotions it portrays between the affectionate nature of “Come Out,” and the bitterness of “Talk.”

Musically, “Bullseye” does take a similarly gentle approach—strummed acoustic guitars, and a gentle percussive shuffle, but there is less of a swooning, seemingly hopeful nature to it. Instead, it, from the moment it begins, operates from underneath the shadow of melancholy. It’s beautiful and incredibly graceful in how it sways—pensive, honestly haunting in a way, and full of sorrow, with just enough moments where it swells slightly for theatricality. Hozier-Byrne’s breathy, earnest lilt also creates a sense of drama.

“Heard you got a job as a mailman,” Dacus begins, reflecting on her old flame. “I heard you’re playing around in a couple of bands. Wish I could come to the show, but I understand—can’t just walk in like any other fan,” she continues. 

As “Bullseye” continues, into its second verse, Dacus creates vivid imagery of lover’s bridges in Europe—where couples will put a lock on the rails of the bridge before tossing the keys into the body of water below. “We were two such suckers,” she confesses. “The metal weighs down the bearing and the city has to cut the bolts. If our spell wore off,” she wonders. “Maybe it’s all their fault.”

Hozier-Byrne arrives with the third verse, which, like Dacus’ before it, treads this kind of line of wishing your former partner well, and maybe wishing things had turned out differently, or perhaps just a little better—an understanding of why it ended, but still not exactly at peace with it.

“I’ll miss borrowing your books to read your notes in the margin—the closest I came to reading your mind,” he admits. “The answers to the questions only made more questions—I hope you’re never fully satisfied. But I wanted to be there the day you figured it out. Whoever is,” he sings together with Dacus, “I hope they’re proud.”

Both Dacus and Hozier-Byrne continue to walk that line between wishing well, and wishing things could have been different, in the chorus, as well as the final, introspective verse where both in trading off lines as well as sharing them, reveal the deepest levels of hurt and sorrow, or regret, still at the core.

As Dacus finds she accidentally packed a box of her former partner’s things when she moved out, she reflects as the song is coming to a conclusion. “Probably wrong to think of them as your gifts to me—more like victims of my sentimentality,” she explains, before she is joined by Hozier-Byrne. “Letting the best-laid plans become empty threats,” they sing together. “But I meant every word I said, when I said it.”

Recurring imagery, or ideas, in songwriting, is not a new idea. But something that is more recent, or at least more recently tracked as lyrics have scoured the internet, are artists who, whether intentionally or perhaps not entirely, refer back to themselves within the songs written for a specific album. 

There are, of course, moments throughout Forever Is A Feeling that do, again perhaps intentionally, mirror or recall Dacus’ own writing in the past, or that of her Boygenius bandmates at times, but there is something about the last line of that verse in “Bullseye” that cuts surprisingly deep, and does remind me of both the last line in “Talk,” and also of the way one can oscillate between this kind of well-wishing, or fondness, and a hurt—and what comes out of that hurt. Like the things we say, but do not mean, because they come from a moment of anger. Or of a kind of erasure of what the relationship was.

“I meant every word I said, when I said it,” does imply, if you do think about it, that these words were, at one time, true, but they no longer are. That the love that was there is now gone. And it reminds me of what Dacus grumbles as “Talk” comes to an end.

“I didn’t mean to start talking in the past tense. I guess I don’t know what I think ’til I start talking.”

*

Why does it feel significant? Why do I have to tell you about it?

Something that I have not written about in awhile, really, but something, for a number of years, I was often giving consideration to, or was at least informing how I was writing about love, and how it is depicted, within pop music, was the idea of platonic love. 

The idea of loving your friends—like genuinely, with an intensity, and perhaps even regularly telling them so, is not unpopular by any means. But I think there is still something that, even if you feel that strongly about your connection to someone that you are not romantically involved with, may prevent you, or that person, from vocalizing it.

Maybe it never feels like the right time. Maybe you’re worried that they are not going to reciprocate—or that it is “weird.” Or, like, “too much.” Maybe it is something that, perhaps, just goes unspoken, but you hope they understand. Maybe they hope you understand, as well.

Maybe it’s in the rapport you have with your closest friend. Maybe it is in the way you both look at one another with admiration. 

Maybe it’s in the conversation that started a number of years ago and has never really ended—about the minutiae of your day. Or about what has hurt your feelings. And everything in between.

What does it feel significant. Why do I have to tell you about it?

“Platonic love is vital, essential, and perhaps the only thing left in this wretched world that could save us all for a little bit longer than we deserve,” writes Hanif Abdurraqib in the same essay, about Carly Rae Jepsen and The Kingdom of Desire—ruminating, specifically, on the conceit of her song “Your Type.”

Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker, and Phoebe Bridgers were all circling each other’s orbit as young, female singer-songwriters for a few years before they officially announced their “band” Boygenius. And in knowing one another, and working so closely together in different capacities for nearly a decade, it is very apparent how comfortable they are with one another, and how close they have become. 

Comfortable and close enough to write songs for and about one another.

Placed within the first half of the record is “Modigliani,”  a song written about Dacus’ admiration, and friendship to Phoebe Bridgers.

Musically, it isn’t out-of-character exactly for Dacus, or Forever Is A Feeling, but in the way it is based around pinging sounds and a rhythm that skitters and glitches itself forward, it is one of the most fascinating and compelling just in how it all comes together, and in coming together, how rich it sounds. 

Dacus, again here, delivers her lyrics in natural way—kind of a stream of conscious feeling as they flow out of her, and she takes a lot of effort to control the speed with which they fall, and where they land, in the music underneath her—ensuring that it does not feel like they are being shoehorned into a melody that forsakes the words that she does wish to use.

“Modigliani” is sparse as it begins, before more elements come tumbling in. It opens with a low, bouncing sound, giving way to the bending pitch of higher notes on a synthesizer—it moves quickly, to keep up with Dacus’ rapid thoughts, as notes on the piano arrive, followed by the clattering percussion, and the strums of a slightly distended electric guitar. It all comes together very gradually, or measured, giving the song the continued momentum it needs to build itself up to this place that is both beautiful and glistening, and then continues shifting in tone slightly as it shuffles towards its conclusion.

The way Dacus writes about her dynamic with Bridgers in the song is unabashedly tender—personal, observational, and affectionate. Observational and affectionate, too, in a way that only a good friend could write about you—gently roasting you, as Dacus does in the song’s second verse, when she refers to how Bridgers acts when she’s in a new relationship.

But the real heart, affection, and admiration come within the song’s opening and near the end, in its captivating bridge.

The song itself begins with Dacus describing the dedication on a bench she sat on, that ended up temporarily pressed into the skin of her shoulder. “Loving father, friend, and son,” she begins. “Printed backward on my shoulder blade from leaning back on a plaque on a bench—I carry David’s name until it fades.”

“Why does it feel significant?,” she asks, in the line that she returns to as the the song continues. “Why do I have to tell you about it?”

Dacus has explained in the press cycle for Forever that she started writing “Modigliani” after testing positive for Covid, and in feeling deflated, wanted to talk with Bridgers, who was on tour and, as the song details, in Singapore at the time. It is a very personal moment—not private, exactly, with how Dacus is describing her experience, but it is unflinching in its earnestness and sentimentality. “Trying to fall asleep—back flat on the floor while you were eating continental breakfast in Singapore,” she states, before arriving at the song’s most impressive phrase turn.

“You make me homesick for places I’ve never been—how’d you do that? How’s tomorrow so far?”

She returns to that expression at the end of the song as she laments about her current state, but quickly finds comfort in her connection to Bridgers, even though she is halfway around the world.

“I should know my neighbor’s names. I should not stay up so late,” she admits. “Modigliani melancholy got me long in the face. But I feel better when you call, just to tell me how you are. How’d you do that? How’s tomorrow so far?”

And there is, at least for me, a subtle double meaning, or intention, on that line—“How’s tomorrow so far?” It is, of course, a reference to the time difference between Dacus, presumably in the United States, and Bridgers, who was ahead by many hours. 

But in thinking about the of friendship, or an intense closeness, or platonic love, I think about my own excitement, and anticipation, when I am going to see my best friend, and how difficult the wait for that time to arrive may feeling. 

How is tomorrow so far?

*

I crossed the line—and you followed close behind

Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker, and Phoebe Bridgers have all been circling each other’s orbit as young female singer-songwriters for a few years before they announced their work together as Boygenius. You become close, you see, and in knowing one another, and working so closely in different capacities, you become comfortable enough to write songs for and about one another.

Forever Is A Feeling is an album both full of love songs, and songs about love—it is about, in the end, loving someone for who they are, but also the falling in love or being in love that slowly revealed itself. 

Pop music desires a body. A single, focused human form as an object of interest.

I am always thinking about that. And the spaces that form when things converge. Love songs and songs about love. About being in love, and loving someone. There are differences of course but the more time you spend in the center of that convergence, the more you see the similarities, or the things they respectively share.

In his essay about Carly Rae Jepsen, and The Kingdom of Desire, Hanif Abdurraqib, in talking about her song “Your Type,” writes about the idea of platonic love, saying that it is “vital, essential, and perhaps the only thing left in this wretched world the could save us all for a little bit longer than we deserve.”

Abdurraqib has come to refer to it as “Tell A Friend You’re In Love With Them Day”—he was asked, two years after the release of Carly Rae Jepsen’s Emotion, to participate in a literary event where writers were asked to put together pieces based on a song from the album. He had wished to write about the song “Warm Blood,” but by the time he responded to the request, it had already been selected.

So he picked “Your Type,” and famously stood in front of a single slide projected onto a screen behind him that read, in enormous letters, “Tell A Friend You’re In Love With Them,” and read a piece about desire, and as he puts it, when he was reflecting on this experience in 2024, “the thin, wavering curtain between liking someone, and LIKING someone…the dance between a hunger for certainty, and the beauty of uncertainty.”

Every July, he does give consideration to this moment, and the impact it has had—Abudurraqib is often stopped by people, or receives messages, from his readers, or people who at least are aware of his online presence, and tell him that they took his advice. That they told a friend they were in love, and he explains the results of doing so are often mixed. “People…have found new friendships, or ended old ones, or run through the tunnel of uncertainty which…opens itself up to a city of certainty.”

In considering the moment last summer, upon its seventh anniversary, he continues. “I say every year, and lean on most importantly, this was about treating platonic love with the same rigor and generosity and BRAVERY(!) as romantic love, because in emotional practice, to me, they are indistinguishable.”

In the past, Abdurraqib said he has re-shared the photo taken in 2017 and talked about leaping into the unknown with a sense of wonder but last year, his reflection was different. “I feel, more and more, like I have been pushed into the unknown and am constantly descending at a pace I did not choose,” he writes. “Risk, in its traditional definitions, is less useful on unstable ground. No one is coming to save any of us, except the people who have already been saving you the entire time you’ve loved them, and they’ve loved you…Thank you for saving me in the past, thank you for saving me in all the futures I can’t even imagine, until there are no futures left.”

“I love you so much that I’ll watch this version of the world’s ending alongside you,” he concludes. “And I won’t be as afraid as I might be if you weren’t here.”

Pop music desires a body.

I crossed the line. And you followed close behind.

It is well known, at this point, through the press cycle surrounding the release of Forever Is A Feeling, but a bulk of the album is about Dacus’ romantic partnership with Julien Baker.  Some of the best songs, or at least the most thoughtful, poignant, and lovely, are about the space where what kind of love you are experiencing blurs into something new and beautiful. 

And even some of the songs that I do not feel the most connected to, or find to be the absolute finest moments on the album, are still thoughtful and poignant in how they unpack the different parts of this story.

The album’s glistening, swooning titular track begins its second half, gradually fading in with a quiet, twinkling ripple, followed by a piano progression that gives the song a bit of a faster pace in terms of its rhythm, with a programmed bass drum beat coming in to guide it along, with Dacus, once again, coyly playing with double meaning, in the opening verse. 

“I crossed a line, and you followed close behind,” she confesses, somewhat ambiguously, as the next few lines do go into detail, driving somewhere presumably remote or a little removed. “You knew the scenic route,” she continues. “I knew the shortcut and shut my mouth. Isn’t that what love’s about?,” she asks, in one of the most impressive and human lines on the album. “Doing whatever to draw it out?”

The song’s glitchy, almost jaunty arranging picks up then, or at least swirls around with a little more intention, as Dacus continues in the second verse. “I’m no good at faces or names, places or days, zip does and timezones,” she explains. “But I remember everywhere we’ve ever been, and when. I remember thinking you were pretty when we met.”

Forever Is A Feeling is, of course, an album about love—love songs, and songs about being in love; about being in love with someone, and loving them. It’s about the spaces that form in the center when things begin to intersect, or in a number of cases, when lines blur and form something perhaps unexpected. 

It is an album that is, as one may anticipate, full of hope. There is a genuine warmth and tenderness. And the depiction of love, or affection, is well-intended. But there are, throughout, places where Dacus does remain aware of reality. Things are finite, and all things change, and most are out of our control, which is where she oscillates from in the chorus and where the song’s titular phrase comes from. A duality of sorts. “This is bliss. This is Hell,” she explains. “Forever is a feeling, and I know it well.”

It is the feeling that we wish to hang onto, or moments we wish to continue living in—isn’t that what love is, though? Doing whatever to draw it out? It’s these moments, and the understanding that we don’t know what comes next when the moment passes.

Pop music desires a body.

*

You could absolutely break my heart—that’s how I know we’re in love

As one may anticipate, for myriad reasons, Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers appear in a handful of places throughout Forever Is A Feeling—together, they appear with Dacus on the title track, when the tone shifts into something a little slower and more ethereal, as the three of them repeat the titular phrase like a mantra, or a prayer. Bridgers, fittingly, contributes additional vocals to “Modigliani.” And there are a number of songs that are directly about Dacus’ relationship with Baker, but she appears on the rollicking, ramshackle penultimate track, “Most Wanted Man,” which is unabashedly honest and vivid in how it depicts moments of their relationship.

Dacus, in preparation for the release of Forever Is A Feeling, was the subject of a number of profiles and interviews. In conversation with People Magazine, the “rumors” about her potential romance with Julien Baker comes up, and in saying that the rumors are true, the next question is how long have the two of them been involved. “I mean,” she begins. “We’ve been friends for over nine years. Obviously, we haven’t been dating the whole time. But kind of through Boygenius, that was percolating.”

Forever Is A Feeling, because of what it is inherently about, is certainly a revealing album, but Dacus also doesn’t owe us, as listeners, more than she is truly willing to divulge. And I say this because of the way that “Most Wanted Man” begins, or rather, what Dacus depicts, before the song opens up, both musically and lyrically.

“I never thought I’d see you looking at me this way—almost vulgar and out of place,” Dacus begins after the song opens with a long, dexterous, and distended-sounding groove. Musically, aside from the places where there is a punctuative crunch, here or there, “Most Wanted Man” is one of the “louder” songs on the record, propelled forward by the electric guitar and the crashing of the percussion underneath Dacus’ voice. “Like seeing the moon in the day, I find it hard not to look away,” she continues.

And as someone who is an analytical listener—perhaps, at times, entirely too analytical, I am often looking for more meaning in places where there may not be. And much to the dismay of my best friend, who regularly sighs exasperatedly and rolls her eyes at me when I mention it, but I do find myself referencing the annotation of lyrics on Genius. 

“Hard to believe it’s the same face I saw twisted in anger,” Dacus continues. “I thought you’d hate me forever.”

The internet, or at least the users of the site Genius, believe this is in reference to one of two things—the first, and this is something that is referenced elsewhere on Forever Is A Feeling, is an intervention due to Julien Baker’s relapse and return to sobriety—Baker’s most recent solo album, Little Oblivions, is primarily about that. “I used to think of myself like I was a talented liar—turns out all my friends were trying to do me a favor,” Baker sings in the song “Favor.” 

There is also speculation, and I suppose that either makes sense, really, or can be stretched to fit here in “Most Wanted Man,” given the vividness, but ambiguity Dacus writes with, that it is in reference to a tumultuous moment during the making of Boygenius’ The Record, specifically the Dacus-lead ballad, “We’re In Love.” 

“You could absolutely break my heart,” the song begins. “That’s how I know we’re in love.”

In the press materials regarding the record, “We’re In Love” apparently caused Baker to leave the studio for six hours. “Julien thought the song was too…long. In retrospect (she hadn’t been ready to engage. When the truth sank in, the truth of a love song, she went away for six hours.”

The blurb about the song then interjects a charming quote from Baker—“It’s still a learning process to know the difference between being scrutinized and being seen.”

“Then she came back. She was ready,” 

The first seven lines of “Most Wanted Man” serve as an intro, giving the song space to then take off into a place that is joyous, jubilant, and probably one of the more loose or organic sounding songs on Forever Is A Feeling, as Dacus guides the song through an expansive, whirlwind first verse, using a kind of comforting, or assuring melody to do so, which floats just above the jangly, distorted guitars beneath her.

“Now I feel your hand under the table at the fancy restaurant,” she begins, the delivery of the words quickening. “Gripping on my inner thigh, like if you don’t, I’m gonna run. But I’m not going anywhere, at least not anywhere you’re not. Got me wrapped around your finger, tied in a double knot.”

“Just like our legs all double knotted,” she continues, cleverly pulling one image from the song quickly into another. “In the morning, at The Ritz—$700 room, still drinking coffee from the Keurig,” she observes, before breaking the fourth wall, slightly, and referencing the success Boygenius saw in 2023. “We’re soaking up the luxuries on someone else’s dime. Living the dream before we fully pass our prime.”

And there is, of course, a tenderness that can be found in nearly every song on Forever Is A Feeling. Some are more tender than others, or depict certain facets or moments of a relationship or romantic partnership, or simply just love, through more earnest and evocative means. “Most Wanted Man” is, of course, a love song, and it is at its most tender, and earnest, when it arrives at the chorus, finding Dacus oscillating between the understanding of both uncertainty but potential in the idea of “forever” when she sings, “When we do, I’ll have time to write the book on you.”

*

It has been said that pop music desires a body.

Forever Is A Feeling, in being an album about love, and about being in love, and the space where those things do ultimately converge, in how it depicts that, and all that it must depict, or wishes to, there, of course, moments that are sensual, and perhaps in terms of becoming a more revealing songwriter, they are bold, surprising, and welcome strides for Dacus. 

The two songs that are the most inherently sensual in nature—and were two of the four advance singles issued ahead of Forever Is A Feeling in full—approach the idea, or the feeling, from different places. 

Something that I am often thinking about is the idea of a hushed kind of intimacy.

And this does not always have to be physical intimacy. Though it often can be. Or can involve a kind of closeness. If anything, when I think about this, what I am thinking of are small, quiet moments that occur, sometimes unnoticed, between two people. Like the way the sunlight comes through a window on a summer afternoon, and what the world sounds like outside.

“Best Guess,” placed near the end of Forever Is A Feeling, does approach the idea of intimacy, or at least intimate, private moments, through a seemingly fragile kind of quiet. It is earnest, or sentimental, rather, especially in its chorus, and the dazzling, impactful bridge. And in the quiet way it approaches these small moments between two people, it does portray them remarkably, and honestly.

Musically, “Best Guess,” like other places on Forever Is A Feeling, works from a place of restraint, and in doing so, creates the slightest bit of tension that does fine release near the end of the song. It moves at a much slower pace, with a steady, measured, and crisp-sounding rhythm and a kind of meandering, wonky-sounding guitar melody that gently guides it through Dacus’ evocative, fragmented writing that does really capture the briefest, tenderest moments between two people in love.

“Clasping your necklace—zipping your dress,” she begins. “Hands on your waist. Kissing your neck. I love your body. I love your mind,” she continues. “They will change. So will mine.”

“Tracing your tan lines—making you mine,” Dacus sings quietly in the second verse. “If this doesn’t work out, I would lose my mind. And after a while, I would be fine. But I don’t wanna be fine,” she begins exclaiming. “I want you.”

As she does elsewhere on the album, in terms of song structure, Dacus sharply pulls the final word or two from the verse and connects it to the start of the chorus, which, at least for the four lines it lasts, does find her moving closer towards that optimism, or hope, and desire, and away from the acknowledgment of uncertainty. “You are my best guess at the future,” she confesses. “You are my best guess. If I were a gambling man—and I am—you’d be my best bet.”

The slight release from the tension within the song comes from the bridge, where Dacus does loosen her grip on it just enough to let it soar, before quickly bringing it back down. It is effective, though, allowing the song just enough breathing room in this moment to let the sentimentality of her reflections—moving away from the kind of quiet intimacy into something more personal—resonate. There is a small nod to Baker’s relapse (“I watched you fall from grace—you were graceful”) before she arrives at the more striking and heartfelt phrase turn. “After all, it’s a small world,” she observes. “You may not be an angel, but you are my girl. You are my pack a day. You are my favorite place,” Dacus continues. “You were my best friend before you were my best guess at the future.”

There is a thin, wavering curtain between liking someone, and LIKING someone. A fine line between a certainty and the risk that comes with taking the step, or in some cases, a leap, into uncertainty. It’s precarious. And certainly difficult to articulate, or document with sincerity. Dacus does that well across Forever Is A Feeling, and certainly does it well in the specific instance of “Best Guess,” finding the right balance between the quiet and the bold in terms of how much to reveal, and how to best reveal that. 

*

What if we don’t touch.

What if we only talk about what we want, and cannot have.

It has been said that pop music desires a body. I keep returning to that because it is something that I think of often, and certainly, something that I thought about w/r/t the way Lucy Dacus writes about love and desire, or want, throughout Forever Is A Feeling. 

With “Best Guess” approaching the idea of physical intimacy from a more subtle, or suggestive place, at least in some of the imagery used, the album’s first single, “Ankles,” is much more forward—or, at least as forward as Dacus wishes to be while still remaining modest, or keeping some things to herself. 

And there is an ornate nature to a lot of the instrumentation and arranging across Forever Is A Feeling, which is one of the elements that makes it such a bold album. But I would argue that “Ankles” is the most intricate, or regal sounding, simply because it is primarily based around a sweeping melody written for the cello and violin, which then gives way to some clattering percussive elements keeping a jaunty rhythm, glistening acoustic guitar strums, and an antiquated sounding keyboard tone. The arranging itself is also structured to recede, build, and then swoon with just the slightest dramatic flair at all the right moments, punctuating the natural kind of give and take that occurs within what Dacus is depicting in her writing.

There is, of course, no shortage of longing within the lyrics found on Forever Is A Feeling. And something that I am often thinking about, is the idea of surrender—whatever that looks like. Which is where Dacus is writing from on “Ankles.” The moment when the longing, and the restraint, that you have tried to practice becomes too great, and you give in to something much larger than yourself, and let it completely envelop you. 

Beginning with just the strings only, sweeping back and forth theatrically, Dacus begins her delivery slowly, and opens with a question. “What if we don’t touch,” she inquires. “What if we only talk about what we want, and cannot have,” she continues before punctuating with an aside. “And I’ll throw a fit.”

It has been said that pop music desires a body. And “Ankles” is about the moment when we do surrender. Or given in. When the longing becomes too much. And there is an admittance of what we perhaps had been unable to articulate for any number of reasons. 

Even with the slightest hesitation she references in the first verse, she arrives quickly at accepting whatever is about to happen, which is where the song takes its truly sensual turn. Writing about sex, or physical intimacy, in pop music, often presents challenges because it does perhaps become too easy to become raunchy, or ribald, or sophomoric in how you depict it. Dacus is never explicit, but is forward with what she wants, or needs, rather, and is suggestive enough, or playful enough, to leave some for the imagination.

“So bite me on the shoulder,” she commands, surprisingly. “Pull my hair. And let me touch you where I want to.”

“Pull me by the ankles to the edge of the bed and take me like you do in your dreams,” she asks in the chorus, as the music swells and dazzles around her gently. “I’m not gonna stop you this time, baby.” And it isn’t all sexually charged, though, in “Ankles,” as the chorus continues with more small, tender moments depicted. “I want you to show me what you mean, then help me with the crossword in the morning,” Dacus sings. “You are gonna make me tea—gonna ask me how did I sleep.”

And there is a balance, of course, which I think Dacus strikes with ease in how, and what, she details in “Ankles.” The balance of insatiable sexual attraction to another, and the kind of sweet, romantic, private moments, however small or large, that are often in between. Because there is a give and take, I think, between both, and both of which can have a palpable intensity to them. And I think that, in describing the kind of magnetic pull, Dacus is very articulate, and thoughtful, with what she observes at the end of the second verse.

“How lucky are we to have so much to lose? Now, don’t move when I tell you what to do.”

*

Forever Is A Feeling is bookended with its most earnest, or sentimental, or revealing songs—and maybe because I do listen analytically, yes, but also personally—I am still always hoping to catch glimpses of myself, flattering or otherwise, in pop music, “Big Deal” and “Lost Time” are the albums crowning achievements in terms of the delicate tone they strike, and the frank way they deal with the notion of love, and being in love.

The album itself is united by a concept, yes, but Dacus has structured the songs so the story is nonlinear in how it unfolds. However, in smartly placing “Big Deal” at the top of the album, and “Lost Time” as its final, gorgeous, thoughtful exhalation, the former adds depth, clarity, and a real sentimentality to the way Dacus and Baker fumbled through their true feelings for one another, with the latter not serving as an afterward, exactly, but bringing us to a more present day, depicting truly heartfelt and gentle quiet moments, while trying, and succeeding, at articulating what it is like when you arrive at this place. Where love, or loving someone for who they are, and being “in love” converge in a way you had not anticipated. 

Across Forever Is A Feeling, I’m hesitant to refer to the places Dacus goes in terms of arranging and instrumentation as a “departure” for her, because as an artist, she has only continued to grow, or to wish to expand the sounds, and textures she’s working with. “Big Deal” serves as a kind of thesis then, certainly in terms of what the song is about, and what the album is mostly going to cover, thematically—it also, in just how gentle it is musically, does set the tone, or at least implies that Dacus is working with a much larger and more diverse sonic palette this time out.

“Big Deal,” I suppose in mirroring what is described in its lyrics, operates from this place of slight tension, with little if any release,  because even though the sentiment of the song is ultimately one of affection, there is something melancholic and somber that surges through how it sounds, and the reserve it swirls around in, with the gently brushed rhythm tumbling behind the acoustic guitar strums, that are then joined by the gentle rumbles of the bass, a quiet, charming melody coming from a very faint sounding keyboard tone, and by the time the titular phrase arrives, the twinkling of piano keys.

Admittedly, there is a hazier nature to how “Big Deal” sounds and unfolds—it is very deliberate, and only near the end is there a hint that some of this tension could be released in the way that some of the sounds do begin to ascend, and grow, glistening while the rhythm remains steady underneath. This haze, too, also impacts Dacus’ vocal delivery. She doesn’t sound distant, but there is a kind of ethereal gauze that is draped over everything, giving it such a dreamlike quality. Her voice, too, remains in a specific range here. Just a little bit lower, and maybe just a little moodier in how it sounds. It’s fascinating, actually, and just a small detail within the album—I don’t think she really sounds like this, or like this for as long, anywhere else. Just remaining in this moment while everything gently spirals, and wondering what will happen next.

So, what changes if anything? Maybe everything can stay the same.

It has been said, and I have continued to remind you, that pop music desires a body. And that, at least a decade ago, Carly Rae Jepsen, in how she was writing, was writing from a place of perpetual longing, or desire. Want gives way to more want. She, in the songs specifically on Emotion, and sometimes even in the material on subsequent albums, takes us right up to the moment when something is going to happen. But we are never let in on what occurs after the song ends.

“Big Deal” is, inherently, about two people slowly finding their way to one another. It is a love song, but it is also a song about love. It is about loving someone, or realizing that you do, in fact, love someone, for who they are, but along the way there, you were in love. It is where all those things converge, and in the space of overlap, we’re left with a kind of nervous uncertainty. But it is also exciting. And beautiful. And full of potential. 

Dacus is truly masterful in how she both weaves her feelings and thoughts into the verses of “Big Deal,” while still portraying these observational, narrative building, and ultimately hushed moments of intimacy.

“Flicking embers into daffodils—you didn’t plan to tell me how you feel,” she begins. “You laugh like it’s no big deal—crush the fire underneath your heel,” she continues, before she pulls us out of this moment into a space that is much more personal in its reflection. “I’m surprised that you’re the one who said it first. If you had waited a few years, I would’ve burst. Everything comes to the surface in the end—even the things we’d rather leave unspoken.”

Forever Is A Feeling is, of course, a very personal and very open album. And in that openness, Dacaus makes no attempt to disguise that many of these songs are about her partnership with her friend and bandmate, Julien Baker, referencing at the top of a second verse, when the two first met, in 2016, sharing a bill in Washington D.C, where Dacus was in the dressing room ahead of time reading The Portrait of a Lady, to which Baker understood that there was a connection, and they exchanged not even phone numbers, but email addresses. 

“You knew when you caught me reading at your show,” Dacus winks. “I knew when you came to visit in the cold. We could have done something we’d come to regret. Do you remember,” she continues, playfully. “You say, ‘How could I forget.’”

There is a thin, wavering curtain between liking someone, and LIKING someone. There is a dance between a hunger for certainty, and the beauty of uncertainty. “Big Deal,” from beginning to end, is that dance. Two people circling around something much larger than themselves and wondering what will occur when they both give in. And in that circling, there is, of course, trepidation. The need for delicacy. To try to treat one another, and what is happening in this intersection, with great care.

“What changes, if anything?,” Dacus asks, tentatively. “Maybe everything can stay the same. But if we never talk about it again, there’s something I want you to understand,” she continues, before arriving at the titular phrase, which she repeats, allowing her voice to naturally rise and fall as she says it. “You’re a big deal.”

And it seems like such a small thing, or a simple thing, to tell someone. But it does arrive with the weight of affection, and admiration. And the way one person can, perhaps without either of you realizing it, have such an enormous effect on your life. 

*

I notice everything about you—I can’t help it.

Forever Is A Feeling is, of course, a bold statement. I mean, it is certainly a bold artistic statement in terms of Lucy Dacus’ growth as a singer and songwriter, and the sounds she wishes to incorporate. But it is also a bold declaration of sentiments. Of affection. Of honesty. And there is a bravery in that. I mean, a bravery of course in the surrender that comes with the uncertainty of loving someone, and falling in love. But the bravery in writing about it—in shaping those feelings, and those quiet moments, into stories to be shared.

There are countless moments of affection, or sentimentality, or earnestness throughout the album, but I would content that the most romantic, or the most affectionate in what it really wishes to get across, is its stunning closing track, “Lost Time.”

“Lost Time” moves slowly, and deliberately. It doesn’t have the haze that its counterpart, “Big Deal,” has, in terms of a swoony, dreamlike quality, but it does gently and confidently float along, gradually becoming a little more robust in its instrumentation by the time it finishes the second verse. Opening with the quiet, glistening strums of the acoustic guitar, Dacus is joined, right on cue in a way that is truly cinematic and stirring, by subtle, clattering percussion, the lightest atmospheric noises, and a tender, melancholic sounding piano, all of which she guides towards the song’s surprising, crunchy, and cathartic conclusion.

There is a kind of reserved jubilance, or giddiness even, as the song opens, and Dacus describes the trees in bloom against an overcast sky. “It’s almost spring,” she explains. “And I can’t wait, and I can’t think. The sidewalk’s paved with petals like a wedding aisle,” she continues, before the song shifts fully into a kind of unabashed sweetness. “I wonder how long it would take to walk 800 miles to say I do, I did, I will, I would.”

“I’m not sorry. Not certain. Not perfect. Not good,” she confesses, with her voice rising, and a minor swell in the music, indicating the start of the extraordinary sentimental chorus. 

“But I love you, and every day that I knew and didn’t say is lost time,” Dacus explains. “Now I’m knocking down your door, ‘cause I’m trying to make up for lost time.”

The pattern of the rhythm shifts slightly, and eases, for the yearning within the second verse. “Wish you were here,” Dacus laments. “Wish I was there. I wish that we could have a place that we could share,” she adds, before creating truly vivid imagery that makes the longing feel palpable. “Not only stolen moments in abandoned halls—quiet touch in elevators, and bathroom stalls.”

“Lost Time,” as it reaches its breathtaking conclusion, becomes the most intimate in what it depicts, in terms of tenderness and affection, and small, quiet moments. And it does so in such a startling and emotional way. The instrumentation does really fall away, leaving Dacus’ voice and the acoustic guitar, as she crafts an evocative portrait. “Our formal attire on the floor, in a pile,” she begins. “In the morning, I will fold it while you get ready for work. I hear you singing in the shower—it’s the song I showed you years ago,” she continues, “It’s nice to know you listen to it after all the time.”

Sometimes, I think about the ways we show one another love. Not even really romantic, or platonic. But rather, just the connection that you have to another person, and how you don’t run out of words to describe it, exactly, but it does, at a certain point, become easier to show rather than tell. You can tell someone that you love them. And you can certainly mean it with every fiber of your being. But how do you show them, or allow them to see. 

Musically, the song takes such a startling turn, becoming noisy and distorted, with crunchy, chugging guitars and bashed out percussion, with Dacus’ voice almost becoming buried within the wall of sound. 

“I put your clothes on the dresser with your 60-Day chip,” she narrates. “And your broken gold chain. Your unpaid parking ticket,” she continues, before arriving at what is, without a doubt, one of the most sentimentally poignant lines across the entirety of Forever Is A Feeling.

Sometimes I think about the ways we show one another love. Not even really romantic, or platonic, specifically. But I am just thinking of the connection that you have with another person. The small, seemingly insignificant things you may remember, or observe. And how you use those things as vessels to show the kind of admiration, and affection, you carry.

“I notice everything about you, I can’t help it,” Dacus explains, with the music crashing down around her. “It’s not a choice. It’s been this way since we met.”

“Lost Time” continues with this aggressive, heavy aesthetic for three more lines, where she stretches out the sentiments from the song’s chorus, altering the way they land, and making a change to extend the thought out a little further. “‘Cause I love you, and every day that I knew, and didn’t say is a crying shame.”

The song ends with the warbled and warped sound of Dacus belting out the song, strumming the acoustic guitar—pulled from an early demo recording of “Lost Time” from her phone, giving an already earnest song unflinching and emotionally raw final breath.  “It’s a crime. A waste of space. Lost time.”

*

What if we don’t touch.

What if we only talk about what we want, and cannot have.

It has been said, and it is something that I continue to think about, that pop music desires a body.  A single, focused human form as an object of interest. 

I am often giving consideration to so many things. Of convergences. Of the differences and the similarities and where those things all begin to overlap. Or blur until something new, or unexpected forms. I think about the spaces that form in between the notion of a love song, and a song that is about love, in all forms, and what that could mean. 

I think about how we love, and wish to be loved in return. And what it is like to love someone, truly, for who they are. And when that converges with what it is like to be in love. 

I think a lot about longing. Or yearning. Whatever you wish to call it. This propulsive desire. Or want. 

The Kingdom of Desire, if you will. 

It was pointed out to me, somewhat recently, and it is not something that should have surprised me in the slightest, that I am extremely sentimental. I am often earnest. I cannot help my inclination to romanticize. 

I tell you all of that to tell you this. In the same way that I am an often somber, or melancholic, or extraordinarily and severely depressed individual, which causes me to be attracted to somber, melancholic, severely depressed, or “dark” music, or other forms of art, because I am also sentimental, and earnest, and a romantic, I am drawn to an album like Forever Is A Feeling not only because I am simply a longtime fan of Lucy Dacus, but because I can admire, and I can look for reflections of myself in the way she unpacks these ideas—of desire and longing, and what it is like when affection and attraction have blurred into something that is difficult to articulate but beautiful, regardless.

Sonically, Forever Is A Feeling is an enormous step forward. Like, just in how meticulous and crisp this album sounds, it is impressive. But it is Dacus’ writing—vivid and honest, that makes the album something to truly behold. Love, of any kind, is bold. Like, loving someone, and telling them that you love them, is a bold thing to do. Forever Is A Feeling, then, is regularly fearless, and at times, rather jubilant in how it unpacks the idea of love—the moments we share, or catch, with another, both large and small. It is, in the end, all of those moments that matter, which is what Dacus truly understands, and she has a preternatural ability to incorporate those human observations into her songwriting.

What if we don’t touch. What if we only talk about what we want and cannot have.

You do, eventually, find you must surrender to the longing. Where things blur. And something unexpected, and difficult to articulate, but beautiful, regardless, forms in the center where everything converges at once. 

Forever Is A Feeling is out now on Geffen.