Lucy Dacus grapples with time on her latest album, ‘Forever Is A Feeling’
On March 28th, the American singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus released her fourth studio album, Forever Is A Feeling via Geffen Records.
Sweet and sentimental, retelling fleeting moments and deeply-rooted fantasies, the album opens a far more expansive and adult world than her previous work, Home Video, offering more honest approaches to sexuality and romance.
According to Lucy: “I got kicked in the head with emotions, falling in love, falling out of love. You have to destroy things in order to create things. And I did destroy a really beautiful life.”
“You can’t actually capture forever,” Lucy said. “But I think we feel forever in moments. I don’t know how much time I’ve spent in forever, but I know I’ve visited.”
The first of thirteen tracks, Calliope Prelude is an instrumental opening of stirring violins played by one of the album’s key collaborators, Phoenix Rousiamanis.
For those who love a symbolic song title, in Greek mythology, Calliope was the goddess of music, dance and song - later referred to as the Muse of Epic Poetry. Often depicted with a writing tablet in hand, Calliope was known as an inspiration to writers, artists and artisans - and clearly Lucy, too.
Next, the track, Big Deal takes listeners through the doors of the album, into a place of gentle guitar, soft drums and lush melodies. With the opening line, Lucy sings: “Flicking embers into daffodils / You didn’t plan to tell me how you feel / You laugh about it like it’s no big deal / Crush the fire underneath your heel.” Immediately, we’re brought into springtime where “Everything comes up to the surface in the end / Even the things we’d rather leave unspoken.” Though a relationship might be out of the cards - or rather, out of season - the song is tentative and emotional, like brushing your shoes against the dirt on a contemplative garden walk.
Lucy confesses, “we both know that it would never work,” […] “But if we never talk about it again / There’s something I want you to understand / You’re a big deal,” before repeating the titular phrase throughout the chorus. Like the epitome of the ‘words of affirmation’ love language, this song is one we’re sure the TikTok editors will love.
Coming third within the album is Ankles, a track originally released on January 15th that has since accrued over 8.3 million Spotify streams. Where sparkling synths meet a simple proposition, Lucy asks: “What if we don’t touch? What if we only talk / About what we want / And cannot have?” In the pre-chorus, she sings, “let me touch you where I want to / There, there, there, there,” as if she’s painting the image of her lover inch by inch.
A fantasy about forbidden sex with pulsing strings, a vibrant bass line and playful lyricism, the most iconic line comes with the chorus: “Pull me by the ankles to the edge of the bed / And take me like you do in your dreams.” Never one to miss a chance to embed something symbolic in her writing, ankles represent stability, mobility and flexibility, with a spiritual meaning of deep connection and the ability to move or change directions in life. You might think this one’s more of a ‘the curtains a red because they’re red’ kind of moment but where’s the fun in that? Like Chappell Roan being “knee deep in the passenger seat,” we’ll leave the interpretation up to listeners…
The album’s next track, Limerence, however, is much more literal and narrative-driven, with Lucy admitting, “I’m just shovelling popcorn into my mouth / So I don’t say the things that I’m thinking out loud.” Within 3 minutes and 12 seconds of oscillating piano, she confesses, “I’m thinking about / Breaking your heart some day soon / And if I do / I’ll be breaking mine too.”
Admitting she feels most alive whilst behaving her worst and talking about “toeing the line of betraying your trust”, this diary-like confession is a hit from doubt and reality after the hope and optimism of Ankles. Within the last line, Lucy summarises her feelings: “I want what we have / Our beautiful life / But the stillness, the stillness / Might eat me alive.”
Next comes Modigliani, another stellar example of Lucy’s storytelling abilities as she sets the scene of the track: “‘Loving father, friend and son’ / Printed backwards on my shoulder blade / From leaning back on a plaque on a bench / I carry David’s name until it fades.”
Amedeo Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor known for his modern-style work that portrayed faces, necks and figures with a surreal elongation. Stirred by pizzicato violins and background vocals by fellow boygenius star, Phoebe Bridgers, Lucy sings, “I should know my neighbour’s names, I should not stay up so late / Modigliani melancholy got me long in the face.” Soon after, one of the album’s most thematically potent lines comes to summarise the song: “You make me homesick for places I’ve never been before / How’d you do that? How’s tomorrow so far?”
Arguably the most powerful and potent three minutes of Forever Is A Feeling, Talk takes the sixth spot within the album’s tracklist. Lucy recalls “drivin’ up the mountain” […] “We run out of conversation, day runs out of light / Silent, watchin’ high beams, interrupt the night.” Soon after, the vibrant drum beat is joined by haunting background vocals that sound like they’re straight out of Music From Before the Storm - if you know, you know.
In the chorus, Lucy asks: “Why can’t we talk anymore? / We used to talk for hours / Do I make you nervous or bored? / Or did I drink you to the last drop? / Your body loomin’ like a specter, hungry as a scythe / if you come reapin’, I’ll come runnin’, I still know what you like.” A song completely laden with similes and metaphors, “Your body loomin’ like a specter, hungry as a scythe” is a particularly haunting way to describe being doomed by the narrative.
In the final chorus, Lucy admits, “I didn’t mean to start / Talking in the past tense / I guess I don’t know what I think / ‘Til I start talking.” A song of catharsis and realisation, it truly is the equivalent of ranting to your diary and scribbling over it all with a marker pen.
The album’s seventh track, For Keeps moves in a lighter direction to a more romantic, guitar-strung ballad. Opening the track, Lucy asks the question: “If the Devil’s in the details and God is everything / Who’s to say that they are not one and the same?” But neither were there “in the mezzanine cheap seats, or waking up in dirty sheets” because she and her lover “were in between things that made sense.” With a newfound hypothesis, Lucy sings: “If the Devil’s in the details then God is in the gap between your teeth / You are doing the Lord’s work every time you smile at me.”
Choosing to believe in fate and nothing else concrete, she explains how “you wanted it, and I wanted it / And that’s the only thing that mattered in the end.” A song about falling in love in the moments between ordinary things, Lucy sings, “I don’t believe in anything anymore except you and me.” Of course, set within an album all about human fallibility and mortality, Lucy brings us back down to Earth, admitting in the finale line, “I still miss you when I’m with you / ‘Cause I know we’re not playing for keeps.”
In eighth place within the album come’s the titular track, Forever Is A Feeling. A thematic continuation of For Keeps, this song matches a more upbeat production of drums, piano and synths with equally meaningful lyrics. “You knew the scenic route / I knew the shortcut and shut my mouth / Isn’t that what love’s about? / Doing whatever to draw it out?” Lucy sings in the first verse, before confessing, “This is bliss / This is Hell / Forever is a feeling and I know it well.” One of those iconic goosebump moments where the album’s title features within its lyrics, this line is a great set-up for the rest of the song’s deep dive on duality.
A track that feels exactly like driving along a forest road, windows down in a “1993 Grand Cherokee”, Lucy admits, “I’m no good at faces or names / Places or days / Zip codes and time zones” but “I’m reading you like road signs, tell me where to go.” Time stretches across the outro as she sings, “Forever is a feeling (I know it well),” and the song gains that coming-of-age, cathartic feel like the ending scene of The Perks of Being a Wallflower.
Next is Come Out, a song dappled with longing lyrics and harp-strung instrumentals. Lucy sings, “Why am I not wherever you are? / There is no distance that wouldn’t be too far / Even on opposite sides of the room / I am orbiting you / So come out, come out, wherever you are / I miss you, I miss you, I miss you in my arms.”
Like a “man on Main street with a megaphone,” the singer wants to be screaming her favourite things about her lover - even if she loses her voice. Clearly talking about being on tour as she’s “waking up in a new city everyday,” Lucy sings of sunsets at five and tourist attractions “that most locals hate,” realising that some incredible things she just can’t describe - but maybe she wouldn’t mind having nothing to say, if only her lover were by her side.
Talking of the future, Best Guess comes in next to round out the story. Sonically like the younger sister of Big Deal, this track is all about uncomplicated, queer joy and tenderness. With the devil now in the details of a clasped necklace and zip on a dress, Lucy sings: “I love your body / I love your mind / They will change / So will mine, but you are / My best guess at the future / You are my best guess / If I were a gambling man, and I am / You’d be my best bet.”
A song all about imagining what could be whilst accepting what may not, the bridge is an endearing standout of Lucy’s discography that summarises the track in just a few lines: “You may not be an angel, but you are my girl / You are my pack a day, you are my favourite place / You were my best friend before you were / My best guess at the future.”
Turning the tables to a song that looks backwards on a broken relationship, Bullseye (with Hozier) comes in to tell another story. In the first verse, Lucy sings: “I heard you’re playin’ around in a couple of bands / Wish I could come to the show, but I understand / Can’t just walk in like any other fan.”
The Ponts de Arts - now named the Love Lock bridge - is a Parisian pedestrian bridge that crosses the River Seine. A place where lovers add locks to the rails as a symbol of their undying love, Lucy references this in the song, saying she and her lover “were two such suckers” who did that. “But the metal weighs down the bearings and the city has to cut the bolts / If our spell wore off, maybe it’s all their fault.”
Blaming their downfall on young love, dumb luck and “Holdin’ each other so tight, we got stuck,” Hozier joins in for the second verse with his heavenly, nostalgic vocals. He sings, “Man, it’s hard to quit while you’re ahead / Lettin’ the best-laid plans become empty threats,” but the song ends on a more uplifting note about how - even though their world together ended - “the other worlds keep spinnin’.”
The album’s penultimate track, Most Wanted Man goes all in on the western aesthetic of its title with Lucy’s partner, Julien Baker accompanying with background vocals and cosplaying as a cowboy-like figure pulling the singer back to her. Assuming Lucy has run away before, she sings, “I never thought I’d see you / Looking at me this way”, “twisted in anger / I thought you’d hate me forever.” With the chorus, we’re brought into the present with hands under the table “gripping on my inner thigh, like if you don’t, I’m gonna run / But I’m not going anywhere, least not anywhere you’re not.”
Bringing listeners back to the philosophical realms of the album’s seventh track, For Keeps, Lucy sings: “I thank God for you when I don’t know what else to do / Don’t know where the words go, but I’ll still say ‘em / If it’s not God, it’s fate, if it’s not fate, it’s chance / If it’s my chance, I’m gonna take it.” With a partner who’s quite literally the ‘most wanted’ person in her life, this song takes on a beautiful double meaning within the romance of her discography.
To close out the album, Lost Time brings a melancholy and sentimental tune to the final four minutes of Forever Is A Feeling. Paired with gentle guitar strums, Lucy sings: “The sky is grey, the trees are pink / It’s almost Spring and I can’t wait and I can’t think / The sidewalk’s paved with petals like a wedding aisle / I wonder how long it would take to walk a hundred miles / To say I do, I did, I will, I would.” As if a year has passed throughout the last twelve tracks and we’re back around to Spring, Lucy admits her faults: she’s “not sorry, not certain, not perfect, not good,” but is trying to make up for lost time.
Atoning for all the days when she didn’t say those special three words, the singer dreams about what they could have together in the future. Wanting more than quiet touches and stolen moments, Lucy sings of a place that they can call their own and brings the album full circle once again with a final mention of time: “Nothing lasts forever but let’s see how far we get / So when it comes my turn to lose you I’ll have made the most of it.”
Making the album itself an all-encompassing time capsule of a love affair filled with doubt, understanding, promises and acceptance, Lucy has certainly immortalised the feeling of forever for her listeners.
Across 13 tracks, we see Lucy exhale her deepest and innermost thoughts, using the studio as a vessel for all manner of confessions. She is not perfect, and neither are the love stories she tells but by transforming them all into 43 minutes and 38 seconds of art, they’ll get to be eternalised in the frame of her listeners.
Those who want to hear the new album live are in luck, as Lucy will soon be heading out on tour across North America…
