“Until It Happens to You” by Sasha Alex Sloan, Wednesday, August 31, 2022
The lyrics on Sasha Alex Sloan's 2020 record Only Child will leave you emotionally wrecked upon first listen. But by no means let that stop you. Sloan is one of the most poingnat songwriters today, which is why she has been called upon to write for other pop stars including Camilla Cabello, Juice WRLD, Lecrae, LANY, Charli XCX, Katy Perry, P!nk, Oh Wonder, and tons more. Only Child is a perfect Sad Girl album, with its lyrical honesty--not necessarily telling the whole truth, but holding nothing back about the unpleasantness of reality. However, despite the heavy topics of homelessness, conflicts with parents when growing up, divorce, and loss, Sloan seems to leave the listener with hope, showing a different perspective on the speaker's thoughts as a child and as an adult.
YOU WON'T BE THE ONE HAVING TROUBLE SLEEPING. "Until It Happens to You" is the penultimate track on Only Child and it serves as an emotional climax for the album. Sloan explains the lyrical and musical themes on an episode of the Song Exploder podcast. She explains how the songs on Only Child were produced collaboratively with her boyfriend Henry Allen, known professionally as King Henry. With Sloan's songs, the lyrics immediately hit the listener, but it's the music that delivers those lyrics almost subliminally. Song Exploder helps us unpack "Until It Happens to You," showing how the music and the lyrics meet to deliver an emotional punch. With guitar tones inspired by Explosions in the Sky and deliberate drumming at the end of the track mimicking a rain shower, building up to catharsis, "Until It Happens to You" is a singer-songwriter Alternative rock song. Sloan also explains that the guitars in the song were outtakes from when the band LANY was recording with King Henry around the same time as Sloan was recording Only Child. If Sloan were writing songs in the late '90s, she certainly would be heard on Alternative and Pop radio with the likes of Natalie Imbruglia, Meredith Brooks, and Courtney Love.
YOU NEVER REALLY KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE / 'TIL YOU WAKE UP TO SOME REAL BAD NEWS. Anne Lamott writes in her book on writing Bird by Bird:
The problem [with writing well] is acceptance, which is something we're taught
not to do. We're taught to improve uncomfortable situations, to change things,
alleviate unpleasant feelings. But if you accept the reality that you have been
given- that you are not in a productive creative period- you free yourself to begin
filling up again.
That nubbin on your back turned out to be your worst fears. There’s been an accident. She loved you, but she couldn’t take the pressure anymore. There was one string that was holding your whole world and suddenly it unraveled. That's the world that great writers, whether novelists or songwriters live. The uncomfortable is from where Sasha Alex Sloan writes. "Until It Happens to You" reminds us that, even if a friend experiences something tragic, we can't truly understand it unless, or in the case of the song, until it happens to you. The song also gives listeners a global perspective with the line: "Somebody loses their somebody every day," meaning that loss, as devastating for the individual as it is, is a common, daily occurrence. And yet the cosmic overview, one's knowing that tragedies happen every day offers no comfort to the one who loses a parent, a grandparent, a friend, husband, child, or a dog. And to a much, much lesser extent, someone telling you to look on the bright side on a crappy day is infuriating. But on a rainy day when nothing seems to be working, it feels fitting to sympathize with today’s song. It makes us realize that someday that rainy day will come for us if it hasn't already. Nobody lives forever. Nothing is really on the up and up with out a nosedive here and there.
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