To me, love is the perfect expression of religious belief. At the heart of all religious belief is the spiritual calling and the relationship between God who makes the call and the person who is called. Although I may have my so-called ‘free will’, when the call is so compelling and speaks to my spirit in such a way that I feel I have no choice but to believe, faith then transcends the boundaries of consciousness and rights and becomes as important to the believer as breathing itself.
Emily King makes this analogy at every level of the song in such a way that converts me into a ‘believer’ in her genius. At the beginning of the song, Emily’s trademark minimalist vocals portray an enforced distance she is placing between herself and her potential lover. But during the course of the song, little by little, the background musicality increases, the force is getting stronger. It is when the sheer harmony of the first chorus takes over that she is elevated to a position of faith.
More than just an excellently executed creative analogy linking love and religion, the song also seems to me to be an expression of the triumph of singing over speaking. Her words, although true, were not telling the entire truth, they were still protecting her heart. But when the final chorus hits, this is the truest expression of what she really feels, she wants to believe in love, and she sings in beautiful symmetry with the electric guitar. The song encourages us to always be open to being won over by love, beautiful.
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