payphone

i know it's kind of late and the song made the rounds months ago but i've only come into it in full living color just a few days before. i immediately appreciated its rhetoric, especially the chorus. here it is below with annotation.

i'm at a payphone, trying to call home
all of my change i spent on you

(i love how the words immediately conjure a recognizable and imaginably accessible situation with the stroke of just a few words. when i hear them, i see a guy in rugged denim jeans and jacket trying at a payphone by some lonely street or highway while city night lights flash in the background. his emotions and body language need no further explanation.

notice as well how they say "all of my change i spent on you" which works rather than "all of my change is spent on you" which doesn't.)

where have the times gone?
baby, it's all wrong.
where are the plans we made for two?

(i've always loved how words communicate meaning and feelings that would have remained abstract before they're made tangible and communicable through words. i love the plaintive feeling and the wondering and the beseeching of fate captured here.)

if happy ever after did exist,
i would still be holding you like this.

(love this part! favorite part! i love how the song segues and slides into these mournful and almost aggrieved lines, as if the singer is miffed and takes to task fate or life for promises of "happily ever after" that didn't pan out after all. at the same time, the line emits a wishful, sad longing to which, apparently, nakaka-relate ako, hahaha!)

all those fairy tales are full of it.
one more stupid love song, i'll be sick.

(initially, i had assumed that adam levine had written these lines.

cory: di pa naman ako naniniwala na ganito ka-deep si adam levine.

cha: jina-judge mo na si adam levine, cor.

hehehe.)

love the song!! it's played on loop until sawa! hehe!

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