EPISODE 930: WHY 'GOOD LUCK, BABE' IS THE REAL SONG OF THE SUMMER
You’d have to stop the world to choose another.
POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW
I’m just finishing up my vacation. And while I’ve been away, I’ve been listening to two songs pretty much non-stop. One, “The Prologue,” by the Australian artist Emmi, you may not have heard yet. But by all that is good and holy stop what you are doing and download it right now. It begins by imagining the narrator at the beginning of a show welcoming the audience, but quickly turns that moment into something far more profound. So, so good.
The other is “Good Luck, Babe” by Missouri songwriter Chappell Roan and songwriters Justin Tranter and Dan Nigro, an infectious 80ish synth-pop anthem about a woman in a relationship with another woman who refuses to just be with her, insisting she’s really into boys.
I mentioned Chappell Roan last week in relation to the Harris/Walz campaign. She’s definitely having a Moment; her last album, “The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess” has been a huge hit, and people kind of adore her.
Today for your reading pleasure, a little jam on why “Good Luck, Babe” is such a great song.
THE SET UP: YOU’RE BREAKING MY HEART
First, let’s take a listen to the song.
This is the actual official video for the song, which is clearly playing on both the YouTuber practice of creating videos like this to show people the lyrics, and early computer graphics, which is very much in keeping with Roan’s bigger the-80s-are-new-again project.
The opening chords sound kind of amateurish, like maybe they were created on an old school Casio keyboard. They signal a story that is going to be kind of unpolished, which well fits what seems like the genre of the song, teen heartbreak.
And even as Roan’s voice has a far greater maturity to it, the lyrics of the first verse reinforce everything that we’ve thought from the opening bars. “It’s fine, it’s cool,” she says, exactly the kind of informality we’d expect from a teen song, and then lays out that she wants this girl to love her but the girl just won’t. Boo hoo.
VERSE TWO’S BABY
Though the sound of verse 2 is exactly the same as verse 1, the content actually attacks what has come before. “It’s cliché,” she sings. “Who cares?”—using the same sentence structure as the start of the first verse, but now basically to attack that verse’s sentiment.
The visuals also have the same formatting, which is a great touch.
From there she goes on to reveal that she has decided to find someone else. There’s a deft full circle moment where she returns to the end of verse one, how this girl just wants the narrator to call her baby, and says she needs someone who will call her baby. It’s great.
It’s also very unexpected. This is the kind of moment that these sorts of songs usually end on, the moment of catharsis and freedom. You won’t be with me, fine, I don’t need you anyway. Cue some pop version of the cry at the end of “Defying Gravity” and we move on.
SUDDENLY, THE REFRAIN
The refrain after verse one and two is exactly the same. But the context changes the meaning entirely. After verse one, the narrator telling the girl you can deny this all you want sounds like she’s talking ultimately about their love. Again, totally in keeping with the Bad Boyfriend/Girlfriend song genre.
But having dumped the girl in verse 2, in a sense she drops away as a focus as we enter the refrain again. And now we hear it fresh for what it is—one queer girl telling another, honey, you cannot boy-kiss this away.
KATE BUSHING THE BRIDGE
From there the song moves into a pulsing bridge in which Roan’s voice has an incredible Kate Bush quality–again, the 80s are new and awesome. And the lyrics are all about inviting the girl in question to imagine her future, married to some guy and up in the middle of the night haunted by what the narrator had warned her (in the refrains) all those years ago. The moment that Roan chooses to imagine is so perfect—the girl waking up.
And three times in a row Roan sings “I told you so”, lyrically each building on the next—you know I hate to say it, you know I hate to say it, and then boom, I’m saying it, all with a heavy breath behind, giving the whole thing that physical layer that in some sense is at the heart of all this, the thing that should have clued the girl in but she refused to accept.
THE GRIEF REFRAIN
From there we go back to the refrain to close the song—there’s nothing more to say really. But now Roan keeps the I Told You Sos going underneath it, each of them a sort of cry of its own. And that extra element transforms, or maybe reveals, that the repeated “Good Luck, Babe” are not some kind of Fuck you for not wanting me. There’s nothing in this song actually that feels like revenge or poetic justice.
No, it’s grief. Knowing what this girl is in for, no doubt in part because as a queer woman she’s been through it herself, the narrator actually feels for her. It turns out this is a You’re Breaking My Heart song, but not because they’re not together—because this poor woman can’t accept herself.
In less than 3 minutes, we’ve gone so far from where this song started, both narratively and in its musical complexity—though listen closely and that Casio is still playing.
THE CHERRY WITH THE THORN ON TOP
Each refrain ends with “You’d have to stop the world just to stop the feeling.” After verse one, maybe we take it to mean you love me whether you’ll accept it or not. After verse 2 it’s got a lot more bite to it—try as you might, you can’t not be who you are. It’s the perfect lead in to the bridge.
But then Roan has the genius idea to end the song by taking the idea of that last line and realizing it. She sings the line four times through, each time slowing the music itself down, until that last time where the music and her voice are actually deformed by the speed change. And the song ends on that moment of basically giving the girl what she seems to want.
And in that moment what does she have? What is left? A mutated, empty silence. (And in the video a hand on the globe, signalling how important it is that she stop this. That hand has actually been present in every verse.)
A great song is often like a great joke—it creates expectations so that it can cut them out from under us and give us something more.
You can listen to “Good Luck, Babe” and think it’s a queer break up song, but in actuality it reveals itself to be a story of a queer woman mourning the girl she loves who is running from herself. It is a song where there is the standard break up song’s hopes of freedom, but dashed. Because the narrator isn’t ultimately trying to gain it for herself, but for this woman she loves. And she just won’t go there.
A brilliant, painful piece of work.
I’ll be back next week with more Wow. Happy Labor Day!