“Enough for Now” by The Fray, Wednesday, September 14, 2022

 

The Fray’s eponymous second record was propelled by the success of their first record How to Save a Life. While it’s true that television dramas can still make the careers of bands, in some ways it seems like the storytelling lyrics of bands like The Fray were going out of fashion with each subsequent release from the Boulder, Colorado-based band. But with still eight million monthly listeners on Spotify despite not releasing anything new since 2014, and even lead singer Isaac Slade leaving the band last year, there still is a market for coffee-shop lyricism, even if you don’t hear it on Top 40 stations anymore.

HE’S NO LONGER WITH US, BUT HE LEFT THIS DUSTY ROOM. Like many of the songs on The Fray’s second LP, “Enough for Now” deals with an emotional subject related to family. The seventh track on the record deals with the death of lead singer Isaac Slade’s maternal grandfather. The lyrics of the song paint a bleak picture about a bitter man who longed to pass on his name with a male heir. Only Slade’s mother was born to the couple. The song accuses Slade’s grandfather of not loving his daughter and leaving his daughter and his wife “without so much as a kiss.” Slade told The Sun that “Enough for Now” was written after a year after processing the grief. This is a conflicted grief for all family members involved. Feelings of love, resentment, abandonment flavored the grandfather’s life and are heightened by death. When the ideal of the family structure contrasts with the cold reality of dysfunction, the underpinning of the house isn’t correctly installed.

SIXTY YEARS OF SORROW, HE GOT FIVE OR SIX OF BLISS. Even if you do your part, some family conflicts cannot be solved. In recent years, the idea of chosen family has become more and more popular. In the case of family dysfunction and toxicity, it's much better to chose with whom you spend your time. Chosen family has been a long-standing tradition in queer spaces, but especially in a time when political and religious polarization run high, many people are choosing to forego a Thanksgiving dinner with uncles and aunts in favor of "Friendsgivings" and other occasions in which close friends with compatible ideologies can create meaningful experiences rather than fester in toxic environments. Recent songs like Elton John and Rina Sawayama's "Chosen Family" and Harry Styles' "Matilda" how comfort of friends can replace family ties. While you might need to keep your cortisol levels in check during the holiday season, it may be impossible to block the emotions associated with a terrible family completely. A chosen family may be a great way of coping with some of the loss one feels when making a choice for mental health.

Read the lyrics on Genius.

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