“The Only Exception,” a top 30 hit by Paramore, was one of my three favorite songs of the year 2010 (along with “The High Road” by Broken Bells and “The Uprising” by Muse).  Compared to those two songs, Paramore’s hit is a slow and straightforward ballad.  I first became familiar with the song because a friend of mine (and former roommate) bought the album this song is on and raved about this song.  It is a measure of how different we are that he thought this song was happy and optimistic and I thought it was bittersweet, and a particularly sad and poignant song in light of my own life history.  Much of what we get out of songs is what we bring to them, after all, and this song definitely belongs to a family of slow, sad songs (such as Simeone [1] and Luka [2]) where I bring a lot of personal history.

At its heart, “The Only Exception” is a song that deals in a very direct and straightforward way with the emotional scarring suffered by the children of ugly divorces.  As the child of an exceedingly ugly divorce, both the song and its accompanying music video are heartbreakingly accurate portrayals of what happens when a child deals with the breakup of their parents when it comes to forming stable and lasting intimate relationships of their own.  I have already commented, at some length, about the connection between “The Only Exception” (and the Taylor Swift song “Mine”) and the statement of Malachi 2:13-16 about God hating divorce because it covers one’s garment with violence and leads people to cover the altar of God with tears elsewhere [3].  Indeed it does.

What I would like to do today is examine the lyrics of Paramore’s song “The Only Exception” and speak specifically to the clinical detail they provide on the difficulties the children of divorced parents have in forming intimate relationships (since marriage and strong relationships of any kind are founded on trust, and trust is precisely what is most difficult for people like me to place in interpersonal relationships).  With that gloomy preface stated, let us examine the lyrics of this straightforward song.

The first verse goes as follows [4]:  “When I was younger, I saw my daddy cry, and curse at the wind.  He broke his own heart and I watched as he tried to reassemble it.  And my momma swore that she would never let herself forget.  And that was the day that I promised I’d never sing of love if it does not exist.”

The phrases of this verse read like Hebrew sentances with simple “and” phrase construction and Hebrew parallelism.  Hayley Williams (the lead singer of Paramore) begins with the divorce of her parents, and her father’s crying (sadness) and cursing (anger) at the divorce, and his (presumably unsuccessful) attempts to put his heart back together.  I know my own father was a very emotionally guarded person who let no one in–not his family nor his friends.  He put on a false cheer for others while he kept his own heart (and its vulnerability) hidden underneath the iron sea.  Since his heart is what killed him at the age of 59, I was warned of the danger to myself of his coping strategies.

Like Haley Williams, I too have a mother that has sworn never to forget, and like her I have a deeply difficult time singing of love in the innocent and carefree and optimistic way that so many others do.   When one has been involved in a divorce, either as a guilty party (one of the parents) or an innocent victim (the children), it tends to make the formation of future stable relationships very difficult, because it’s hard for love and trust to build through all the scar tissue.

The second verse adds layers of meaning (and relevance):  “Maybe I know, somewhere deep in my soul that love never lasts.  And we’ve got to find other ways to make it alone, or keep a straight face.  And I’ve always lived like this, keeping a comfortable distance.  And up until now I had sworn to myself that I’m content with loneliness, because none of it was ever worth the risk.”

Again, this verse continues the Hebrew poetic style with the “and” phrases (what would be considered the waw-construction of Hebrew poetry) and the resulting straightforward development and elaboration.  This verse gets right to the heart of the problem that children of divorces (like Hayley Williams or I) have with building serious and lasting relationships:  fear of risk (with an awareness of the horrible multigenerational cost of failure) and lack of trust, hope, and faith.

What is especially poignant to me personally is the fact that in the music video, at this point Haley Williams is dressed elegantly for a date with a series of likely male partners taking turns at a dinner table as she talks to them with a look of intense frustration and pursed lips, a face that many people have seen from me, as she grows increasingly exasperated by the difficulties of a relationship.  It’s painful to watch someone with the exact facial expression I have towards such matters and (presumably) the same feelings of annoyance and concern about the lack of progress towards the desired end of a loving, lifelong relationship.  Given that Paramore’s “Brand New Eyes” album was recorded during an ugly breakup between Haley Williams and one of her fellow band members, the song takes on additional meaning in light of the Fleetwood Mac-esque relationship drama.

The bridge continues to add to the bittersweet mood of the song:  “I’ve got a tight grip on reality, but I can’t let go of what’s in front of me here.  I know you’re leaving in the morning when you wake up.  Leave me with some kind of proof it’s not a dream, oh.”  Now, there are several ways these lyrics can be interpreted.  Viewed in one way, the lover has to leave the next morning because he has other business (like a job) he needs to be going to, and he can’t stay all through the day like she might want.  That interpretation is kinder, and makes more sense, than the interpretation that this is a one-night stand along the lines of Michelle Branch’s “Tuesday Morning” (which became the title of one of my complete plays).

It is the chorus, though, that provides the sweetness in this bittersweet song:  “(But darling) You are the only exception.  You are the only exception.  You are the only exception.  You are the only exception.”  and the closing lyrics:  “And I’m on my way to believing.  Oh, and I’m on my way to believing.”  From these lyrics, with their gentle and sad repetition, we come to the heart of the difference in interpretation that my friend and I have about this song.  To him, the song is ultimately happy because she (Haley) has (presumably) found her only exception.  And to me, the song is ultimately sad because the fear and mistrust either cause someone to hope against hope in a bad situation or because they make it more difficult to find out for sure if the love is genuine and can be safely believed.

At any rate, whether you take this song as a somewhat gloomy examination of the difficulties of the child of a divorce to find love or as the triumph of hope over experience, of optimism over evidence, of longing over fear (and I think that both levels of meaning are clearly present, which gives the song its tension and emotional resonance, and its appeal even to someone as pessimistic as me).  Perhaps one of the biggest lessons of this song (and others like it) is that as long as someone has hope life has worth, and that the only reason that life is bearable for some of us (myself included) is because we are not purely rational creatures, but we have irrational qualities like hope that allow us to survive the gloomiest of times because we can imagine a better future that makes it worthwhile to hang on to life despite present suffering and misery.  Despite the simplicity of the song, the message is a profound and worthwhile one.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/simone/

[2] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/luka/

[3] http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150315365630084

[4] http://www.elyrics.net/read/p/paramore-lyrics/the-only-exception-lyrics.html