#this town Niall horan

[memphis0806]

This Town by Niall Horan reminds me of Stucky.

for those who have no idea what I’m talking about. Please stay regardless.

Here’s This Town by Niall Horan, I highly recommend you have a listen at some point: https://youtu.be/ic1l36GrNOU?si=Byjdt9eiFAA92pl1

And for those of you who don’t know what stucky is, stucky is a gay ship between Steve Rogers (Captain America) and Bucky Barnes (The Winter Soldier) also know as Stevebucky or Steve x Bucky. Whatever you choose. Shipping them in any universe is fine just as long as you are aware of the fact that Bucky is a teen while Steve is an adult in many of the comic universes and thus don’t ship them in those. Other than that, happy shipping!

For starters, the main bit of the song is “If the whole world was watching I’d still dance with you, drive highways and byways to be there with you.” The meaning Niall intended was essentially, I don’t care what other people think of it I love you and wanna be with you, which works pretty well for Steve and Bucky since they were literally born pre WWII. That lyric works so well for their time because of the way lgbtq people were treated at the time. Even the “…drive highways and byways to be there with you” fits perfectly because of the whole “I’ll be with you till the end of the line” thing and the quote from TFA where Bucky goes “The little guy from Brooklyn who couldn’t stay out of a fight. I’m following him.” Although I mostly ignore canon for the sake of this ship, we can still keep the fact Steve and Bucky continuously found each other. They literally went through so much trouble just to be together. (Even if you don’t ship them, that’s pretty much the plot of the cap movies. Steve is motivated to save Bucky. Just for the sake of this post, please ignore Endgame. Great movie, I ignore it as far as canon goes.) Besides all the wars and things Steve starts for the sake of Bucky, Bucky does a lot to protect Steve too, and even though I usually ignore it he even went into cryo again because he didn’t want to be a danger. Now, for a more literal standpoint, I head canon based on some other stuff I need that Bucky really likes to dance (even though he won’t usually show it around anyone but Steve or for the sake of pre-serum, dames he was trying to impress). He taught Steve to do it, and after he’s improving mentally and starts getting more comfortable/confident, (and especially after they start dating) he consistently asks Steve to dance with him. After Bucky gets even more confident as he’s doing better then they especially don’t care, and my little headcanon can be implemented in the literal canon thing I described above. That’s the thing I love about This Town, is that it fits both canonically for the most part and for lots of headcanons and fanfiction stuff.

You wanna know the best part about this song? There’s more. For the sake of your time and mine, I’m going to summarize it the best I can, but no promises.

The beginning of the song goes “Waking up to kiss you and nobody’s there. The smell of your perfume still stuck in the air.” Which works well if you like to count Endgame (and ignore the fact that it says kiss) since Steve left Bucky. It even works before Steve found about Bucky being alive since he is so motivated by the other. In continuation, “yesterday I thought I saw your shadow running round” was quite literally what Steve did consistently after he woke up in the 21st century. He swore that he saw Bucky everywhere. (It didn’t help that The Winter Soldier was mostly a ghost story.) You can also use it for pre-serum Steve since Bucky was constantly looking down alleyways to keep Steve out of trouble.

okay this post is gonna be really long because I just thought of more lol.

“And I want to tell you everything, the words I never got to say the first time around.” This one mostly only works if you ship Stucky, but that’s mostly the point of this post. How I imagine their love story is that they both were in love before the war (refer to tons upon tons of Pinterest and tumblr posts) and they tried to write letters to each other to confess and they either never got sent, got lost, or who knows what. (There are actually fan made letters somewhere on the internet that you can find for this). After they both find each other and whatever, this is when they get the second chance to telling each other everything “the words I never got to say the first time around”

and then of course there’s “and I remember everything” which is ironic because of Bucky’s brainwashing problem, but Steve still remembers everything so there’s that. And it gets better: “from when we were the children playing in this fairground”. Well, obviously as Bucky gets his memory back he remembers more, I mean like I’ve said I don’t tend to count the movies as canon however, he quite literally told Steve that he remembers “your moms name is Sarah, and you used to put newspaper in your shoes.”

of course there’s a couple bits of the song that don’t match well, but depending on what you believe you can interpret how you want, because that’s what 99.9% of music is.

While “I saw that you moved on with someone new” doesn’t quite fit, there’s “in the club that we met he’s got his arms around you”. Although they met in school, there’s still those times Steve was with Peggy and you can imagine how hard that must’ve been for Bucky.

also “and I know that it’s wrong, that I can’t move on, but there’s something about you” doesn’t entirely fit if you read it the way Niall probably intended it, however. Between Steve waking up in the 21st century and finding out that Bucky was in fact alive, you can imagine that he felt bad for not being able to move on from his best friend that he loved so much.

Finally, there’s the last lines (which are repeated throughout the song but I mean hey). “You still make me nervous when you walk in the room, butterflies they come alive when I’m next to you” Bucky is found to be alive, Steve feels all sorts of emotions at the sight of his best friend. If I wasn’t lazy I’d post the reaction shot of Steve from catws. If you ignore endgame, it’s also pretty evident that the two would be happy to have each other back, and as a plus, works pretty dang well as far as fanfiction goes.

then of course the last last lines are “over and over the only truth. Everything comes back to you” which FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS GOOD, IGNORE ENDGAME UNLESS CONVENIENT, GREAT STORYLINE, NOT CANON FOR THE SAKE OF THIS POST. Other than endgame and probably pretty much the motive for the entirety of their relation/friendship. Is there whole thing. They keep coming back to each other. They always find each other no matter what. They fight literally and metaphorically with each other in sync, and they are always saying they’ll be with each other til the end of the line.

To those of you that chose to read this post, thanks. I was not planning on analyzing the whole song but kinda glad I did cuz this was fun. And hey, maybe I awakened something as far as stucky goes for someone.

[ghostfacesfavoritevictim]

December 10th: This Town by Niall Horan

[seeinganewlight]

8 years of niall’s debut single, this town (september 29th, 2016)

[dailyniallnews]

niallhoran: This Town hit 1 billion streams on Spotify!! Unbelievable. Thank you so much to everyone who’s streamed it. I’ve loved hearing you all sing it back to me over the years.

[accidental-spice]

And I want to tell you everything

The words I never got to say the first time around

@chenford-prompts Two weeks of Chenford, day #8: Time

[apureniallsource]

Niall and Noah Kahan performing This Town in Nashville - 06/03

[niallsaturn]

“if the whole world was watching i’d still dance with you” niall horan, mullingar, ireland (2022)

[themoonsaid]

"over and over the only truth, everything comes back to you" says so little but means so much

[placeinsideyou]

SEE WHEN YOU’RE THE BEST, MOST POETIC, YEARNING ASS CLASSIC DEBUT SINGLE OF ALL TIME!!!!!! SO HAPPY FOR NIALL!!!!!!

[savebylou]

Funny moment between Niall and fans because they sing too loud.

This Town, TSLOT, Dublin n2 [24.02.24] credit: beanie_ontour

[stilldancewithyou]

I love the disco ball being part of the stage set up. Niall really said I can still make the whole place ✨shimmer✨

[she-fearless]

[rove-28]

I'm at the funeral of our grandmother and I was doing okay. After the funeral there was a meal and my spouse and I were asked to welcome guests. I was doing okayish.

After we welcomed the first guest This Town by Niall started playing and I just froze. My husband just sat me down at a table and said "I got this. It's okay". Bless him.

The way realisation just hits again and again needs to get studied. I go from realisation to shock to grief and back to start do not pass go.

I'll leave this with clip of Niall at Superbloom in Germany.

[srldesigns6277]

Niall calling the crowd to sing with him - This Town - TSLOT Dusseldorf video by the lovely @hellolovers13

[dailyniallnews]

“This Town” has officially hit 1 Billion streams! (via jen.ashworth)