There’s a particular kind of magic that lives inside the best songs. Not the kind you notice right away. The kind that waits.
A little while ago I came across a Facebook reel from Allison Hagendorf, a music journalist and host who spends a lot of her time doing exactly what that title suggests — digging into the stories behind the songs. Her reel was about “Closing Time” by Semisonic. I thought I knew that song. Turns out I didn’t know it at all.
The Song You Thought You Knew
You know “Closing Time” by Semisonic. Of course you do. It’s the song that played at the end of every school dance, every bar night, every moment where the lights came up and the night had to end. Last call for alcohol. Last call for your broken heart. It’s a song about a night being over.
Except it isn’t. Not really.
Dan Wilson, the songwriter, wrote it about the birth of his daughter. The bar isn’t a bar — it’s a womb. “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end” isn’t about stumbling out into the night looking for a ride home. It’s about a life beginning. It’s about a door opening that can never be closed again.
Two truths, living in the same song. One obvious, one hidden — and both of them real.
Wilson is from Minnesota, by the way. One of ours. And I think there’s something very Minnesotan about the whole thing — putting something that vulnerable and that enormous into a song and just letting people think it’s about last call for twenty years.
The Meaning You Bring Yourself
But here’s the thing about songs holding two truths: sometimes the writer puts both of them there on purpose, and sometimes you bring one of them yourself.
Sara Bareilles’ “Gravity” is, on the surface, about a person. A relationship you can’t escape no matter how hard you try. The pull of someone who isn’t good for you, who keeps drawing you back in even when you know better.
That’s not what I hear when I listen to it.
I actually touched on this in an earlier post — The Story of Me: A Life in Songs — where “Gravity” was already part of my soundtrack. I noted then that the song had become a conversation with my depression and anxiety. But I want to go deeper here, because that description doesn’t fully capture what it means to me.
What I hear in that song is depression itself.
Something always brings me back to you. It never takes too long.
That’s not a person for me. That’s the weight that has followed me for most of my life. The pull that never fully goes away, no matter how much work I do, no matter how many good days I string together. Depression is always there, somewhere in the background, with its own kind of gravity.
There are days when the pull is weak. Days when I barely feel it and I can move and breathe and just live my life. And then there are other days, days I don’t talk about as often, where the pull is so strong I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to break free. Days where I was deep enough in the darkness that I couldn’t see a way out.
I’m not in that place right now. Things are better. Not perfect, not cured. I want to be clear about that, because I think the “I got through it and now I’m fine” story does a disservice to the reality of how this works. But better. Manageable, with the right medication and the right support. That’s the honest version.
But when that song comes on, I still feel it. I still hear the truth it holds for me, even if Sara Bareilles was writing about something else entirely.
The Other Side of the Dark
“Angel” by Ellis Delaney lives in that same space for me — and it also appeared in The Story of Me, sitting just a few songs away from “Gravity” in my Act 2 playlist. Not a coincidence, I think.
I’ve actually talked with Ellis a handful of times, and I’ve heard them speak about what “Angel” means to them. And I’m pretty sure it isn’t what I hear when I listen to it.
What I hear is the other side of depression. If “Gravity” is the weight pulling you down, “Angel” is the reaching. That quiet, aching hope that someone will just show up and be there not to fix anything, not to have all the answers, just to sit with you in it.
I need a little company. All I need is a pat on the back.
There have been moments in my life where that was all I needed, and it felt like the hardest thing in the world to ask for.
Knowing what Ellis intended doesn’t change any of that. I’ve heard it straight from the artist, and I still walk away with my own meaning intact. That’s not me mishearing the song. That’s the song doing something Ellis may not have even known it was capable of.
The Gift Inside the Song
That’s the power of a great song. It gives you something, and then it gives you permission to find whatever lives inside it for you.
Dan Wilson wrote a lullaby for his daughter and handed the world what sounded like a bar-closing anthem. Sara Bareilles wrote about heartbreak and handed me a map of something I’d been carrying for years without quite having the words for it. Ellis Delaney wrote whatever “Angel” is really about — and handed me a lifeline on the nights I needed one.
The meaning you weren’t supposed to find might be the one that matters most.
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