“What Happened to Us?" by Shura, Monday, August 15, 2022
Today we enjoy another track from Shura's debut record, Nothing's Real. While Shura is an out and proud lesbian, she decided to release her first record mostly with ambiguous second person pronouns which can be interpreted by listeners however they wanted to interpret the song. Several songs on Nothing's Real refer to the same break up, and today's song "What Happened to Us?" refers to the drifting apart in that break up.
I WAS NEVER READY FOR YOUR LOVE. The Madonna for millennials as one magazine article called her, Shura's vibey first record captures the wonderment of growing up, even if there's a little pain involved. I've talked quite a bit about Nothing's Real and even did a track-by-track analysis in April. Today, I'm going to look at this one track and how it captures an unhealthy nostalgia about our past. At the core of the song, Shura talks about falling in love with someone who is a "fiction / someone [she] made up." The pre-chorus says: "Funny how we remember things / How we hold on to the good / But throw out the bad stuff." In the past, the speaker has idealized this person and may still to some extent; however, she realizes that the person who lives in her mind is different from who the person really is. In the first verse, the speaker realizes that the other person is perfectly content on herself; she has found a perfect sense of flow, which does not include the speaker. The speaker partially appreciates this, but is mostly sad because of her taciturn ex.
I'M NO CHILD, BUT I DON'T FEEL GROWN UP. The album Nothing's Real centers around Shura growing up. The ambient intro and interludes placed throughout the record are of Shura as a little girl. They come from the young singer's father, an English documentary film maker, taking home videos and Shura's fascination with recording. The synthesizers backing the tracks are a bit eerie, but they capture the innocence of youth and contrast with the pains of growing up. Immediately listeners are introduced to Shura's panic attack in the second track, the title song "Nothing's Real." Today's song seems to tell a story about high school or college, when the speaker is having lunch with a lover who is breaking away from her. The song speaks about how the memories are idealized and really the relationship was probably unhealthy. Maybe they outgrew the relationship; maybe it was toxic. There will inevitably be good memories, but it doesn't excuse what it's become or what you are realizing was there all along.
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