#also how the hell is Once and For All the least popular fihwg song?? it's so good

[mysterypigeon]

once and for all, what does that mean?

There’s a lot of Crane Wives songs that are obviously connected to others. Scars and Never Love an Anchor are the real fallout of something that happened to Emilee and what she wishes that person had felt, Icarus and How To Rest repeat “It’s okay, it’s okay” at the beginning and end of their album. Glacier House feeds directly into Tongues and Teeth, but Back To The Ground features a very similar howl and both songs work as pairs to Tongues and Teeth. Notably, most of these songs are off The Fool In Her Wedding Gown.

CONSIDER: Steady, Steady and Once and For All.

(Disclaimer: I do think Once and For All is about someone who can’t bring themselves to leave their partner. Silly analysis below. I’m also going to refer to the characters as S and O. I can’t keep saying “the singer”.)

Steady, Steady is a song about feeling trapped by marriage and asking your partner to leave everything behind to live a wilder life with you. The singer eventually offers to get married if her partner promises not to be trapped by tradition, and by the final chorus she gives up on them.

Once and For All features a number of lyrics about a drawn-out conflict, being left in the dust, and trying to let your partner go.

“I tried it your way, you tried it mine” is a simple example of conflict. The first verse establishes this fight and the singer’s eventual resistance.

The second verse is really fun to apply to Steady, Steady’s story. O sings that they tried to fight for the relationship for S, but when O’s love grew restrictive to their partner and O decided they did actually want to get married, S pulled away and broke O’s heart. The second half of this verse, “Remember, you're the one that gave up when my blood runs dry You could still carry me away but you'd leave me here to die”, echoes the language in Steady, Steady, where the singer promises to run and chase her dreams down. She begs her partner to keep up but does ultimately give up on them when they won’t follow.

“You could still carry me away” seems a little contradictory in this framing, but O could be asking S to bring them away from the “battlefield” they’re suffering on- instead, S picks her dreams over them.

Verse three! This is fairly simple, too- O is feeling torn apart by the loss of their love and her sudden departure. Applying the story of Steady, Steady, O seems conflicted over whether or not to leave, and used to plan it with S. The suffocating tradition that S is freeing herself from is the same that O is left to drown in.

THE BRIDGE!!! This is the entire reason I made this post. Stick with me.

“Once and for all, what does that mean? It’s a promise I’m making that I don’t actually believe.”

LISTEN TO THE MUSIC AFTER “believe”!!! It sounds hauntingly like the faster parts of Steady, Steady. (To me, at least. I just listened to it another fifteen times and I may be making things up.) Back to the lyrics.

At this point, O is trying to get over S, and close the door on their love. They’ve tried so many times. But a part of them is still wishing they were running free with S, like they planned. And another part is wishing she had stayed and married them.

do uh. do you see the vision