Ah, breakup songs. They’re an integral part of our societal fabric. It’s cathartic to hear a heartbreaking song when we’re going through heartbreak. Just picture it. Picture your high school boyfriend just dumped you. What do you do? Crank up the tunes, that’s what.
I remember the first time my heart was broken. I was in 10th grade and I really liked a boy, but he didn’t like me back. In those days, I listened to a lot of Broadway showtunes, so I cranked jams from The Phantom of the Opera to blast my cares away, but I also cried along to touchy-feely songs, acting like I had a much deeper relationship with that boy than just “hey I like you but I’ll never talk to you cuz I’m too shy kthanksbye.” A very teenage mood for ya right there.
In 2010, the punk rock band Anberlin released their album “Dark is the Way, Light is a Place.” It’s full of achey-breaky anthems – and for good reason. The target demographic for most punk rock bands are people between the ages of, let’s say, 15 and 20. The angsty teens. The ones who just ~feel everything.~ The ones who were editing pictures on PicMonkey in 2010 and wearing Converse high-tops that went up to their knees. Or maybe just kids who didn’t know what to do with all the things they were feeling.
That’s why we have bands like Anberlin.
Day 3: Art of War – Anberlin
“Art of War” is a tried and true breakup song with all of the angst of a teen going through a heartbreak. It’s part of the aforementioned album, which highlights the impossibilites and extremes of young love. Cuz young love is intense. Take lyrics from a different song off the album – “Take me as you found me, or leave me to die.” Like, yikes. Okay. I guess it’s one or the other.
Now let’s look at “Art of War,” which, at its heart, is 100% a breakup song:
Am I the greatest in your arsenal
Or just the latest in your art of war?
That old adage “All’s fair in love and war” comes into play at the very beginning of the song. The lyrics are questioning the integrity of a romance – was I this, or was I that? Whatever I was, I was just ammunition for you to defend yourself against the world.
You’re so good at what you think you do to me
You’re no good at what you said you’d do to me
The more you listen to this track, the more you feel the push and pull. The lyrics ask a lot of questions and makes a lot of contradictions. The love being talked about was “so good” at pulling him in and keeping him there, but “no good” at being faithful and steadfast.
I listened to this album on repeat when I was going through my first infatuation. I’d listen to punchy jams off the album like “Impossible” (“Take what you want from me, it means nothing now; take everything, honey, it means nothing now”) when I was in the “highs” of the relationship and more somber songs like “Art of War” when things seemed to be plummeting. And let me tell you, it was a rocky relationship, so there was a lot of both.
Which is why breakup songs are so cathartic. It allows you to project your feelings, if only for a little while. They sort of take you out of yourself so you don’t have to feel ~everything,~ like the emos do.
There are songs I’ll never write
Because of you walking out of my life
There are words that don’t belong
Because of you, I’ll never write another love song
If that’s not angsty, I don’t know what is. If I had listen to this in high school, I would have worn a lot more black eyeliner and shopped at Hot Topic a lot more often. But now here I am, 22 years old, still listening to angsty teenage songs even though I’m in a pretty good place in life.
The music of this song isn’t what you’d expect. It’s not dour or melancholy. The melody itself seems to ask a question, as if full of doubts. When talking about this album, frontman Stephen Christian had this to say about “Dark is the Way, Light is a Place:”
There is going to be so much pain in this lifetime, but that doesn’t mean it is worth losing a single moment of it because at the end of the day there is still going to be Hope.
There’s just something about breakup songs, isn’t there? I love listening to them, even when things are going great. I don’t know what makes them so addicting, other than we like knowing where we’ve been, because we’ve all felt those feelings before. And it’s nice to know someone else has fought the war, too.
Audrey D. DeBoer 