Me analyzing something that need not be.

Hello and welcome to me over analyzing things that don’t need to be analyzed in the first place.

Foolish Love - Priscilla Ahn

This is a song I discovered one day in my math class senior year. I paid for youtube music premium because it has a wider selection, and when I let one of my favorite songs at the time play- this song was in the radio playlist it puts together. I became obsessed with it for a couple of weeks before it faded into the depths of my ‘liked songs’ list. That was, until the 3rd week of october, 2022. I was putting together a list of softer songs to fall asleep to, none of which were soft in lyrical nature, but in the voice of the singer and the background music. Listening to this playlist one night, I all of the sudden had the urge to listen to this song and add it to the playlist. Of which, I did. Since then I have listened to and thought about it on and off. I began to actually listen to the lyrics and take them in, instead of just thinking ‘pretty voice, sad song.’ Which has led us here. 

Shall I start?

To be blunt, the song doesn’t present as anything remarkable in the first couple of listens. But I recently found myself intrigued by one lyric, and once I realized and understood- All of the other parts of the song I once thought unremarkable made sense. 

“Don't forget it, don't forget me

'Cause before I was a mother

I was once your younger lover”

This line all of the sudden brought me out one day because of the words “younger lover”. Obviously, this implies that the narrator is younger than her partner. Now, there is a huge stigma with age gaps in relationships recently. Rightfully so. There are healthy, and unhealthy age gaps. In healthy age gaps, both are old enough and mature enough for their differing ages to not have much of a barring on the relationship. But the emphasis and importance of her being their “younger lover” kind of fits the bit of her being of a more immature age when they ‘fell for’ each other. Now this doesn't mean an actual child, but more so within the age range of probably 18-21 maybe. In the line before this one, she asks them ‘not to forget her’, and then says this lyric. As if the draw of her to her partner was her youth and being less mature than them. 

In the song it is said that they have aged a bit, enough time to have two children- as implied in another lyric before the one I just mentioned. And in a few lyrics, it’s implied that her partner is losing interest in her, the relationship, and the life they’ve built together. Those specific lyrics are:

In the first verse

“You ran away for ten days

Left the three of us to play house

But a house is not a home

And we are all alone”

In the second verse

“Every time you look away

I convince myself to stay around

'Cause it's hard enough as one”

In the lines from the first verse she says that her partner left her and their two children alone for ten days, doing god knows what. Obviously since she felt it necessary to bring up, it obviously wasn’t to visit a friend/family member, or for work. They just left, and the “'Cause it's hard enough as one” lyric from the second verse kind of ties together that she is doing most of the carrying of the relationship and childcare. Moving onto the second verse and that line- said lyric implies that she is relying on her partner still for something. It might be financial, but it also might be her emotional attachment to her partner along with the stress of having to deal with two children in that type of situation. She also might believe that she’d be totally alone in taking care of the kids if she leaves, because she isn’t confident that her partner will want to be in the children's lives because they are more interested in something else. 

The line “Every time you look away” implies that her partner is disinterested. In her, their life, etc. That there is something else they are interested in, or are looking for something else to look at because they are now disinterested. Now, what would make them disinterested? I would like to go back to her being their “younger lover”. When the age between two partners is of that much importance, it's usually a fetishized thing by the older person in the relationship. The power and control they have over the younger partner, a person who is probably naive to their motives and inexperienced in most things. Because our narrator is now older, and is now a mother, she seems to have lost her novelty to her partner. Again, leading her to beg them not to ‘forget her’, or at least to not forget the person she was when they first met- young and naive. It is highly likely that, for one reason or another, that she doesn’t fully take into account that this is why they have lost interest. Maybe it’s manipulation, or the rose colored glasses have yet to fall off.

Now, technically the chorus states this all of this blankly. However it adds to everything in a different way, and has parts to it that have to be explained separately. Which is why I have yet to include it. 

“We were fools in love

Thinking love would be enough

To hold us strong until the end

But we're older now

And we got babies in the house

Now we need some foolish love again”

The other lyrics express that our narrator is having to take responsibility for everything, convincing herself to stay with this person who is disinterested, and begging them to love her- because she still seems to love and want them. In another part of the second verse she expresses that she still cherishes them and the memories they have together. Unlike the other lyrics, the chorus seems to point the finger at both of them. They both need the sweet, youthful love that they once had. However, nothing else in the song points to her being the problem in the relationship. Her partner is the one leaving for days at a time and losing interest. Our narrator just blows the naivety of the relationship on them both being young and dumb when they fell in love, but she was the younger one. She was the one who’s youth mattered. 

Even with this self blame, you can still hear her pleads in the “But we're older now,

And we got babies in the house”. While she has grown and mature enough to take care of the kids and this adult relationship, she’s begging her partner to help her and take on this responsibility that they both agreed upon. To be mature and grown because they have kids that need to be taken care of- but that’s not what her partner wants anymore, or at least has fallen out of being interested in. 

This is a very common phenomenon that you see in these very structured heterosexual marriages- and even though her partner is never gendered, I feel as though this still applies. The man or older partner enters a relationship with a woman or younger partner, it gets serious, they settle down but the man/older partner looses interest or isn't actually interested in the responsibility of a serious committed relationship. And with the addition of children, they no longer see the woman/younger partner as an object of their affection and just as a mother. They see them as the grown, mature adult they are. Which the man/older partner was never interested in, in the first place. This leaves the woman/younger partner wondering what they did and possibly blaming themselves when the man/older partner begins to lose interest.