vine”. I still remember the nice and deep talks I had with some of my friends, just sitting on a bench and sharing our aspirations, even showing some of our darker sides at night. Lorde herself continues to declare the genuine and steadfast affection for her soul mate through the last verse of the anthem:“ You’ re the only friend I need / Sharing beds like little kids / Laughing till our ribs get tough / but that will never be enough”. Opening up her heart, she asserts that only that one bosom friend matters to her in her once-lonely journey of growing up. Childhood, which is now dead and gone, is brought back to life when a pair of friends share a night talking about dumb thoughts and deep thoughts.
Lorde, now twenty-one, released“ Ribs” in 2013 when she was just sixteen years old.
but we are all confined in some sense. We once said we were never going back to school, but we all pay for part-time studies that will sustain our full-time jobs. We felt annoyed by our parents, but now we find ourselves deeply indebted to them.
“ We’ re reeling through the midnight streets”. One reels when he walks side to side as if he is about to stumble, while there is usually nothing but tranquility and aloneness in a midnight street. With graduation approaching, I feel more and more reluctant and uncertain about my future every day. There are always some roads on which I must walk alone, and I can tell I will fall someday. When these moments come, the last two lines of the verse—“ I’ ve never felt more alone / It feels so scary getting old”— will probably hit me hard.
“ There is one track called‘ Ribs’, which I still really like … [ the track ] was a warm hug”, said the singer who was still 16 years old in a MTV interview. Given how scary and crazy getting old is depicted, how could“ Ribs” be warm? Real friends and soulmates made this possible.
Before the last verse, the song seems to have no correlation with the song title. Be ready to be shocked by Lorde’ s wordplay: rib, as a noun, means the bones protecting our organs as we all know, but it also carries a meaning of joking and laughing as a verb. It is evident that roaring laughter is always the best medicine to soothe the pains we experience in adolescence, and the protection of our souls.
“ Ribs”, through its lyrics, ends with gentle warmth, despite the genuine bitterness and insecurities expressed in the beginning. Lorde is simply a lyrical genius who poetically articulates what youth is about. This underrated song goes beyond a mere song and rather serves as an anthem of adolescence.
A language geek, a music nerd and an educator studying English education.
I am Sing and I sing.
“ We can talk it so good / We can make it so di-
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