#ha:tfelt life suck | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

sommniac · 4 years ago

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breaking down "life sucks” by ha:tfelt

Life Sucks by Ha:tfelt (real name: Park Yeeun, nickname: Yenny) is an underrated masterpiece. I loved Pluhmm but this song is the one that really drew me in. One thing that I adore is how the music video pairs with the song to create a vivid image of Yenny’s mindset during this period of suffering.

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To kick everything off, I need to explain what the general song is about. Life Sucks is Yenny speaking out about her father who abandoned her family when she was a child and wormed his way back into her life for money once she got famous. She cut him off repeatedly, but felt guilty because he was still her family so she would always let him back in. Then he was caught soliciting fake donations from the church he was the pastor of and using her name and fame to gain his victims’ trust. He claimed she was an accomplice in all of this, even though she was entirely innocent. Although her public comments were minimal, she was emotionally distraught and later admitted to being depressed and suicidal during this period and its aftermath. Luckily, she found the strength to pull herself out of the darkness and released this song dedicated to the pain she’d undergone at her father’s hands.

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Note: All of the analysis below is my own interpretation and should not necessarily be regarded as fact.

Trigger Warnings: Suicidal thoughts, self hatred, and homicidal thoughts

Yenny begins the music video on the floor, in a room covered in plastic, cloth draping, and newspaper articles. Curled into an almost fetal position, she rocks back and forth with blood dripping from her hands and dress, pooling beneath her. At her feet are a broken mirror displaying the fragments of a warped reflection and a knife, close enough to grab. Scattered through the room are red shoes, matching the blood splattered against the walls.

The room itself likely represents her own head, covered in reminders of her father and herself and everything the media has collected about their (alleged) wrongdoings. Everything is sterile and white except for the darkness of her blood and hair which pierce through the cleanliness of it all. The color and size of the chamber and somewhat reminiscent of a padded cell, implying that she is trapped in her own mind where no one can ever hear or see her suffering in silence. She slowly lifts her head up to directly face the camera, blood smeared across her face in an acknowledgement of the eyes on her.

For the first time in my 29 years Daddy sent me a letter Never knew how wack his handwriting was I guess I should've known better

This part is depicting Yenny reconnecting with her father for the first time since her parents’ divorce. Although its meaning seems relatively simple on a surface level, there’s an interesting note about how she didn’t know “how wack his handwriting was,” implying that in her whole 29 years of living, she had never once seen his handwriting. It really goes to show how estranged they were from one another.

In the music video, her back is to the articles, all talking about what’ll happen to her and her eyes are blindfolded, insinuating she was naive and blind to what was going to happen in the near future.

That's why mine is so ugly too That's why mine is so ugly too For the first time in my 29 years Daddy wrote me a letter

These lines are far more tragic. As you’ll come to see, a recurring theme throughout the song will be Yenny noting her similarities to her father in a defeated sort of way and that is visible here as well where she repeats “that’s why mine [handwriting] is so ugly too.” She’s acknowledging that he and her are closer than she would like and this little mention here devolves into deeper, more scathing self hatred later on.

How's your mom? How's your sis? I really miss ya But you better not come here I'm sorry, but don't you worry 'Cause I'm prayin' for your health and future

Like the snake he is, Yenny’s father returns to her life in a trojan horse constructed of pleasantries and false pretenses. He pretends he just wants to reconnect with his daughter, claiming that he “really miss”es her and is “sorry” but, as we see in the next verse, he only wants something from her, namely money. He doesn’t actually care about her as he claims to.

In the video, Yenny sits on a bed, dragging the knife from the first scene across the mattress before lifting it up to survey. Perhaps too obviously, it appears she’s looking at the knife that will metaphorically stab her in the back, examining his claims with hindsight she couldn’t access before.

Oh dear, sweetheart Things have gone a little south My girl, need your help Could you bail me out

This is where we see his true intentions. The attempts at rebuilding the father-daughter relationship that he so selfishly destroyed were, all along, just efforts to coerce her into giving him her hard won money. The word choice of “bail me out” is especially apt considering what he needed that money for.

The video depicts her singing from behind a piece of plastic that’s obscuring her face for the first line of the verse, representing how her vision still was not clear. It is only when he begged her to bail him out that she stepped out from behind the distortion and finally understood his true intentions.

Life sucks for everybody (No need to cry, no no no) Life sucks for everybody (Act like no child, no no no) I'm just survivin' everyday Right at the edge of losing my mind Life sucks for everybody Just let me find peace of mind

The lyrics for the chorus are pretty plain in their meaning. It’s an explicit expression of vitriol toward the world and her father. At first, Yenny’s words seem almost comforting, telling the listener that life sucks and they don’t need to cry because she understands them. But then she sings “act like no child” and it becomes clear she’s speaking to herself with a sort of spite, ordering herself not to cry. And it’s really really sad to hear. It’s voices in her head whispering to her to not cry like a child. That’s why she’s “right at the edge of losing [her] mind” and why she’s begging the voices to “just let [her] find peace of mind.”

The newspaper articles around her are the physical manifestations of these voices, surrounding her and caging her in accusations and hatred. There are flashes of her with the knife and the blindfold before entering into the chorus and each of them mean different things. The first shot is a look to the future where Yenny is more closely scrutinizing the knife now that she knows what it’ll do to her. The second shot is set in the past, where she is boxed in by the fabric and plastic on either side of her and her blindfold is still on, blinding her to the lie her father has trapped her in. The rest of the chorus is dedicated to shots of her singing in the room, nothing extraordinary to point out.

If only I could go back and tell myself "Don't you trust him, he already hurt you" When you cried on your knees Showing some regrets Wish I could've known better

People don't change so easily, nah People can't change that easily If only you meant all you told me that night But, guess I'd better blame myself

Here, she’s speaking from the future, cursing her naive past self for being so foolish as to believe her father, considering their history. She wishes she hadn’t been so eager to assume that he’d changed from the man he was when he left her family.

The video shows her shining a flashlight around the walls, looking for something beyond the articles that surround her.

Even though she clearly wasn’t at fault for having hope that her father wasn’t as awful as he really was, she unfairly blames herself for everything for being oblivious to the future. This furthers the themes of self hatred first introduced during the verse about how her father’s handwriting was as ugly as hers. Especially self hatred regarding her relationship with her father, blood or otherwise.

This part of the video is, perhaps, my favorite. She rips away newspaper articles talking about her present connection with her father to open a window into the past. A crayon drawing, clearly done by a child, appears beneath the controversy to expose a house beside the image of a bloody, hanged man that, supposedly, represents her father. The cadaver is separate from the house, implying her father and the concept of home are two different, individual ideas. Depicted visually in a single shot is Yenny’s current and past relationships with her father, both equally twisted and tragic.

How's your night? How's your sleep? Have you ever woken up by your conscience? Well I'm sorry, I've got no worries All I have are wrath and disgust

Here, Yenny is speaking directly to her father, asking him all the questions she never got to after he betrayed her. She’s sarcastically asking him how he’s been, wondering how he can sleep at night despite being such an awful person. She assures him that she isn’t worried about him, she’s just wrathful and disgusted. Her hatred toward her father is overwhelmingly clear here. She really does despise him for all he is.

To be honest, I don’t know what this scene of the music video means. She’s sitting on the bed, ripping apart red high heel shoes which would insinuate the red shoes have some meaning but I don’t have any definite ideas, just some theories. The first is the red shoes represent home like in the Wizard of Oz and she’s ripping them apart because home doesn’t exist anymore since he destroyed it. Another theory I have is the red shoes represent danger as the color red is often associated with that. It implies she’s ripping the danger out of her life. However, I’m not so sure how much of a stretch these ideas are and so I’ll refrain from saying anything conclusively.

One time, you said "Must obey or be cursed" You were right, I am cursed Running your blood in my vein

Yenny repeats a phrase her father employed to scare her when she was younger: “must obey or be cursed.” And she affirms that she was cursed, but not for disobedience. It was from her biological relation to him. The very blood running through her veins taints her existence. Her hatred of her father and her self hatred connect spectacularly here as she once again proves that a large reason she despises herself lies with her father and the DNA and features and blood they share. She loathes him to the point she also abhors anything related to him, including herself.

In the video, she speaks the first couple of lines facing away from the camera, talking to someone unseen, imitating her father. She then slowly turns to stare directly into the camera, singing straight to him to tell him that he’s wrong, yet right at the same time. During the last line, her hand creeps up her neck, strangling herself in a physical representation of how the idea of her father’s blood running through her veins makes her feel.

The lyrics and meaning have not changed from the last chorus so I’ll jump right into the video because there is a significant difference in how this part is visualized in comparison to the rest of the song. Yenny has managed to be composed up to this point, looking at everything almost apathetically, stood up straight, not betraying any emotions. This is the point where that careful facade absolutely shatters. She collapses to the floor, the camera shaky and blurry as she claws at the floor and her head. By the end of the chorus, she’s back to her carefully constructed self but the time where she completely shattered is not forgotten. It’s a quick glimpse behind the mask of the perfect Kpop star into the head of a broken girl who is perpetually “right at the edge of losing [her] mind,” on the precipice of deciding that maybe the effort it takes to continue “survivin’ everyday” and soldiering through the pain just isn’t worth it.

I might pull the trigger, you know I might do it for good, you know I might pull the trigger, for both of us I might do it for all, you'll see

I might pull the trigger I might do it for good, you know Pull the trigger Do it for all

The lyrics here are chilling, especially in their repetition. She’s talking like a martyr, claiming that “pull[ing] the trigger” would be good “for all.” The “all” in question isn’t specified. Is it just for the “both of [them]”? Is it for the victims? Is it for humanity in general? She isn’t clear but perhaps that was the point. Yenny sings about how she wants to kill herself and her father with a certain oxymoronic apathetic vigor. She just sounds so confident in her words, that she’ll do it and everything will be better afterwards.

At this point, the music video reconnects with the beginning. As Yenny sings to the camera, blood flows from the ceiling, covering her face and dress and hair in red. She tries wipe it from her face but only succeeds in smearing it. Her expression is wholly apathetic, matching the nonchalance with which she speaks the lyrics. The state she is in at this point is the exact same as the one from the beginning of the video, creating a sort of loop. This likely represents how she was stuck in an endless cycle in her head, a time loop of guilt and loathing and death. For years, her mind was a broken record of her father’s crimes and her relation to him.

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Life Sucks is a painfully sad song of self-condemnation and mental suffering. For listeners, solace can only be found in the knowledge all of this happened in the past. For the most part. This is the type of event someone can never truly recover from and, as much as I would like to believe the contrary, I doubt Yenny is the exception. She’s a bright soul who deserves infinitely more than the life she’s endured and I’m glad she’s found the strength to move on that many others can’t. For now, we can only support her and her music. Her latest album “1719″ is a masterful body of work that reflects her mindset over the past few years. I would highly recommend it, especially Pluhmm, Sky Gray, and Cigar. Her latest release is La Luna and the music video, while having highly, highly dubious scenes, is visually beautiful.