Hello again my friends! I almost forgot about posting this month – probably in part due to my recent extended absence! At any rate, I’m back, and I hope I won’t be going away again for at least a few months. It’s always hard to know what med school, or life in general, is going to ask of you though!
Today we are looking at the song Beautiful by Ben Rector. This song tells a story of longing for days gone by, of regret and change, is ultimately shows us what beauty really is. Here’s some lyrics to get us started:
There are days when I wake up
That I don’t know what I’m doing here
I barely recognize the pair of eyes staring back at me in the mirror
There was a day that I was free
Not a care that I could see
So good I barely could believe that it was happening
Oh take me back again
What we have here is the first verse and pre-chorus. We see in the first verse that this guy is not really happy with his life, or even with himself. He says that he doesn’t know what he’s doing here, and that he barely recognizes himself when he looks in the mirror. He then starts to reminisce about days gone by. He remembers a time that he was “free” and without a “care” in the world. He enjoyed that past time in his life so much, that he could barely believe it was happening. Now, due to apathy with his current situation, and his memories of a better time, he wishes he could go back. He then recounts some of the specifics of his past better days:
I was 16 with an open heart
Windows down in a beat up car
When I was dumb and the world was young and she was beautiful
She was beautiful
She was beautiful
In this part (the chorus), he talks about when he was 16 – this is assumedly the past days he was talking about earlier. He recounts the cliché scenario of him and a girl in his old beat up car with the windows down. The picture I get from this part is him and his girlfriend driving down the road under a warm summer sun, windows down, blasting music, hair blowing in the breeze. We’ve already got a few things I could talk about, but before we really get into analyzing the song, lets take a quick look at verse 2 (the final verse):
How do we end up like this?
Living lives that we don’t care about?
Too busy fixing things
On computer screens
While the grass grows green
Me, I’m screaming out
This is more of him being dissatisfied with his life, but now with a hint of recognition of other people. In the first verse, all he talked about was himself. But now in the second he asks “How do we end up like this?” Of course, I can’t be 100% certain this was intentional, but from my point of view it shows a little growth, which leads me to believe (and this is purely my personal opinion), that he progresses through life as we progresses through the song.
Of course, at this point he is still pretty hopeless. All he cares about still is going back to the good ol days and going for a drive with his girl. Is there hope in this song, does this guy redeem himself, and reconcile with where he has ended up in life? Lets look at one of the final chorus repeats for some answers:
I was 16 with an open heart
Windows down in a beat up car
When I was dumb and the world was young and she was beautiful
She was beautiful
She was beautiful
It was you, it was you, and you are beautiful, yeah
As you can see, he does finally realize what’s important. He discovers that true beauty is not something that’s found in a moment in the past, or in becoming fixated on a memory. He recognizes that the woman in front of him, who seems to have stuck with him through his whole rough/dreary life, is just as beautiful today as he remember her being then – just not in the way he expected.
I’ll be honest, when I first listened to the song, I was initially saddened by the man’s lack of acceptance of change. It seems like all he wants to do is go back in time and relive his glory days from high school. Which I’m sure is a very common desire for many people. I mean, from time to time, I even have days that I wish I could go back to a time when things were simpler – but I know that can never happen. We don’t get to go back in life, we can only move forward, and strive to make things better than they were yesterday (see rules #6 and #9 on my other blog). But the man in this song seems to live his whole life wishing he could go back.
However, at the end, I think he recognizes something very important – he discovers that beauty doesn’t change with time. I wrote a post on beauty a while back, and in that post I talked about the difference between being “pretty” and being “beautiful.” I think that concept applies here. For most of his life, he pictured that perfect moment – him, young, driving his car, girlfriend’s hair blowing in the breeze on a summer day – and he equated that with beauty. When really, he just had a picture of superficial attractiveness in mind. What he realizes at the end though, is that she was beautiful, but she also IS beautiful – even now that she’s old and wrinkly. She is still beautiful today, because being beautiful is more than looks – in fact, it really has nothing to do with looks at all. Being beautiful is not about how pretty you are, it’s about what’s on the inside that radiates outward.
So, do I recommend this song? Sure. I think it’s a little ridiculous, and the guy probably focuses too much on the past for much of the song. But if you keep in mind that it’s a story with a happy ending, in which the guy in the song (and the song itself) is redeemed in the end, that I think it’s great. Just remember what true beauty really is.
Be beautiful,
Teegan
The Meaning of Music 