I saw your green hair
Beauty mark next to your mouth
There on the subway
I nearly had a breakdown
– Chappell Roan, “The Subway”
These opening lines from Chappell Roan’s “The Subway” first rang out live at the Governor’s Ball in June 2024. A year later, when the studio version was released, I finally began to understand why people in New York often cry in public. The performance had been floating around in the form of grainy clips for a year already, but hearing the studio version felt like finally getting a good look at the ghost that has been haunting you. I’m not one of those people who romanticise public transport. I’ve always thought of it as a kind of social purgatory: you wait, you endure the sweaty crowds, and then you leave. But this song made me experience a total paradigm shift in a way only Chappell Roan ever could.
the intro
To me, the concept of New York Subways was always a grimy myth – cold metal and the distinct smell of urine, with filthy rats running around, and, according to Michael Scott from The Office, men defecating in cardboard boxes. In India, we have metros. They’re clean, cold, and every time I step into one, I half-expect ‘paas aao na’ to start playing from the ceiling like some hyperbolic ad for CloseUp. But ever since “The Subway” entered my bloodstream, first as bootleg and now as gospel, I’ve quickly grown attached to the idea that transit spaces are heartbreak machines. There’s something so romantic and melancholic about a place that is literally designed for departure. That’s exactly what the song captures – a queer, aching, unbearable longing that is sharpened by the transient nature of the setting.
What follows now isn’t exactly a review, but a Genius-esque, very personal dissection of the song. We will call the-one-who-got-away “Liberty”, a nod to Chappell’s Gov Ball outfit, and the song’s opening lines.
The Verses
The first verse of the song is all about fragments. It explicitly highlights the fact that every day, Chappell sees little things in strangers that remind her of Liberty, and that hits me somewhere ugly. I see metal-heads on the street and freeze doe-eyed in headlights. I walk into a music store just to run my fingers across piano keys and feel what my Liberty felt, to get near them, even abstractly. Sometimes, I’ll hear their name in public and I have to hold myself still, arms crossed so tightly it’s like I’m wearing a straitjacket made of flesh and bones. My Hippocampus turns into a psych ward, every memory a screaming patient. Liberty is a vicious ghost carved into the back of my neck like a brand. Haunting everything and taunting me from every face in the crowd, nestled deep into the narrative.
Then there’s the chorus, where she sings, “It’s just another day,” – the most devastating line in the world, if you’ve ever had to grieve while still catching the 8:00 a.m. train to Ghatkopar. You get onto the metro, grip the overhead grab handles, and try not to look at the person sitting near you – even though their hair looks just like Liberty’s, or their bag is the exact kind Liberty used to carry. Or you step off the train, bump into someone trying to get on, and they smell exactly like Liberty. And still, you’re meant to just walk down the metro steps, out onto the street, and hail an auto like it’s any other day. Because it’s always going to be just another day, all you can do is push down the longing that rises like bile in your throat, then smile, and move on.
Now, the line that absolutely gutted me was “…or wish you thought that we were still soulmates,” because I think about that constantly. What do all my Liberties think of me? How they saw me, and if they ever even think of me now. There’s this feral, obsessive urge to know, to crack their skull open and comb through every thought just to find myself in there, to see if I still exist in their mind. And then: “Made you the villain, evil for just moving on” – it’s not Liberty’s fault if they’ve forgotten me, but it still curdles something in me, fills me with acrid vinegar, makes me want to scream their name like a curse and throw salt in their wake. I’m sorry you’re more emotionally mature. I’m really sorry I turned you into a monster just because you had the strength to leave. I didn’t realise how sorry I was about it till I heard this song.
In the second post-chorus, there’s a line about foreplay. That one barely grazed me, because most of my devastating lost loves have always been platonic. But “counting down the days”? That stung. I used to do that. I used to know the exact day I stopped talking to my Liberties. The exact month – grief and longing circled on a calendar in bright, red ink.
The Outro
The way Chappell sings the last verse made my neurons short-circuit. “She got a way” – that’s like Liberty’s charm, their pull, the way they could light up a room like summer reflecting off a tall glass of lemonade. But that memory doesn’t stay warm. It flickers, and then suddenly Chappell is singing “She’s got away,” and Liberty lights the room like fluorescent lights in a pharmacy – too bright, and too cold, humming softly like they know something I don’t. I used to bask in them, and now I flinch at the glare.
One contributor on Genius perfectly described the ending as a loop. The way those lines keep folding over each other, swinging between being captivated and yearning. It reminded me of Waiting Room by Phoebe Bridgers, where the last verse is just the phrase “I know it’s for the better” on repeat.
As another Genius contributor explained, the repeated line “know it’s for the better” shows Phoebe trying to convince herself to let go of this person, and to believe that moving on is the right choice, that she’ll be better off without him, even though her unrequited love is painful and still deeply felt. This is achingly similar to the last verse of “The Subway”. Both songs use repetition the same way we do when we’re hurting: curling up in bed, whispering the same words to ourselves over and over, hoping that eventually, we’ll believe them.
Want more reflections that hit like closing metro doors? Check out Her Campus at MUJ!