Notes From The Underground

The Baroness has hinted that the singer feels different, isolated, apart from the mainstream, particularly in “Hopeful Hearts.” With these lines, this theme explodes into being, and it will be a major throughline of the rest of the album. The singer is not merely alone, she’s an exile; she’s different from everyone else. Whether this is self-imposed or not; whether the singer hates mainstream society and has left it on purpose, or whether she’s been pushed out, is as yet unclear.

And yet: this won’t be that easy. Loves fade (even if “Love” is eternal, a major theme of Slean’s next album, Land & Sea) and dreams die. The truth about oneself and the world will not always be apparent – at best we will sometimes reach it, only to have it fade away, somehow escaping our grasp. We’re still in “Euphoria” and “Get Home” territory here – things aren’t necessarily going to be that great even if we follow the singer’s advice.

We can see throughout this album, but most notably in this song, hints of the themes of cycles and repetition in Land and Sea.

We’re in “Get Home” territory again – it’s not the singer’s bed nor is it her bedroom. Despite this, she’s home – at least for now, at least in this song, with her fellow exile.

“They” appear again in the song, likely the same ‘they’ who cast aside love and dreams. Who are they? Are they the “busboys and bankers” of “Day One?” The soulless “Sweet Ones” of Night Bugs? Whoever they are, they don’t trust art, or indecision, or complex choices – they like their paths simple and straightforward: remember the “road not taken” from “Hopeful Hearts”.

It’s necessary to point out here the possible Christian religion interpretation of the “wide road.” From Matthew 7:13 – ““Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.”

This does not seem to follow the song’s overall meaning, but it is worth noting as Slean has often used Judeo-Christian and Biblical imagery, including on The Baroness.

The lyrics here should read “Dream with the dream they cast aside.”

These lines hint that the singer’s “exile” is somewhat self-imposed. The singer tells us not merely to love and dream, but to use the love and dreams “they” ignore, to transform and change those cast-aside desires into beautiful things.

Someone who feels this way about “them” – a “they” who ignores dreams and love – it’s not completely surprising that such a person might feel like an exile, however popular or successful she might be. Not to put too fine a point on it, but there is no version of “Sarah Slean the artist” (1997 to 2025) where hiding love, or casting aside dreams, is not a mortal sin.

It’s difficult to choose a couplet that most represents Sarah Slean’s lyrical intentions. She’s created or co-created 12 albums and keeps writing. However, these lines are arguably among the most overt, most clear, and most representative of her ambitions and goals as a lyricist, at least in this early stage of her career.

The line from the lyric sheet is, “we’re the mice who must write our lives down.”

The “we’re”/“where” homonym changes the song greatly. Based on the lyric sheet’s “we’re,” there’s no little Cinderella-style mice writing down the great adventures of the singer. This isn’t a Smashing Pumpkins or Nine Inch Nails song, where the dreams of sad loners are made into heroic myth.

The singer (and the person she addresses in the song) are the mice. They are responsible for their own stories: both the writing them down, and the living.

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