There are not many songs that I find that I relate to or feel close to. However, in Adele’s new album “30” there are a couple of lyrics that I find I have many thoughts about. I find these lyrics to relate to my low social battery, being a first-year college student and the feelings experienced when growing up. Here are my thoughts on four lyrics from Adele’s “My Little Love.”
1:34 – “Mama’s got a lot to learn (it’s heavy)”
Although I am not a mom, I feel as though we can all relate to still having more to learn in life, especially as college students. Having to do everything by yourself, create healthy habits and build a professional portfolio are new experiences college students are going through. There are mistakes that we know we are going to make and things that we don’t know about because many skills are built through experience rather than education. This unknown knowledge many college students are experiencing is something that is always on our minds. Sometimes, it is hard to keep going when you do not know what the end goal is. And even if you do, you don’t know what you are going to endure while trying to get to where you want.
2:05 – “I feel a bit confused.” “Why?” “I don’t know, and I feel like I don’t really know what I’m doing.”
Going into college is a time that is hard to understand. Oftentimes, many of us go to college because we know we want to learn more but sometimes college students don’t know what they want to learn more about. This makes life confusing when you start to doubt the choices you make, the job or internships you apply for, the number of times you do or don’t go to the gym or why you decided to go to college in the first place. There are other students who seem to have everything figured out, and when you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing, it makes it hard to keep trying. For me, the idea that keeps me going professionally, educationally and socially is that I won’t know how much potential I have unless I keep learning and accumulating experiences.
2:30 – “When you lay on me, can you hear the way my heart breaks?”
As someone who is an empath and feels emotions strongly, it has always been easy for me to tell when someone is under the weather or acting differently. No matter how many times someone says that they are okay, I always know. When growing up I saw my parents as superheroes and not really people, and this made it hard for me to see my parents in distress and upset. As I’ve grown into my young adult years, I started to realize how emotionally down my parents have been before, but this was hard for me to realize. Even with my parents having 35 more years of life experience than me, they still struggle with mental health and strong emotions. This has shown me that emotions and struggles never get easier, and we simply learn how to deal with them in our own way.
4:35 – “I always preferred being on my own than being with people.”
I’ve always known myself better than anyone else. This brings me comfort. But when hanging out with other people, I tend to be a people pleaser. After quarantine, it made it easier for me to isolate myself and harder for me to spend time with others, creating a smaller social battery. As someone with strong emotions, many people don’t understand why I feel the way I do and sometimes I don’t even know why. This makes it hard for me to communicate with others when I don’t feel like hanging out. I enjoy going out, having fun and talking with others when my social battery is charged, but sometimes I simply do not feel like explaining myself or sharing information about every single thing in my life.
This song provides a deeper meaning for me even if the intended meaning of each lyric is different than the one I feel it makes. After providing my own thoughts on the four lyrics, I suggest finding a song and writing down your own meanings and thoughts for the lyrics that speak most to you. The intended meaning of a song is the reason the artist wrote the song. The meaning you find within the song is the reason you’re listening.