"If U Love Me Now" by MUNA, Monday, October 31, 2022 (updated repost) Trigger Warning: Suicide

 Muna's 2017 record About U takes listeners on a rollercoaster of emotion. Unlike their 2019 Saves the World record, About U focuses on the positive and negative of being in love and breaking up. About U doesn't enjoy the near universal acclaim that their follow up has, but album helped to establish the three-piece band of queer musicians on the scene of Alternative dark synth pop. Today the sadness, desperation, and loneliness of "If U Love Me Now" resonated with the sadness felt by the nation of South Korea after the tragic events of Saturday night in which at least 153 people lost their loves, crushed in a stampede during Halloween festivities. While today's song doesn't deal with the topic of tragedy, it is a very sad song, so I think it reflects my feelings about an otherwise beautiful Halloween day.

IT'S JUST A HYPOTHESIS I TEST. “If U Love Me Now” explores the theme of mental illness and suicide. The singer explores options before telling someone that that person should "just let [her] leave." A large proportion of the LGBTQ+ community struggle with thoughts of suicide. When singer Katie Gavin sings on this melancholy track, her voice sounds weak and wounded, as if the singer of this song has resigned after her last hope has been dashed. The feeling in this song isn't exclusive to queer life and certainly could be cried over by anyone of any sexuality; however, there's a special level of connection this song can have with queer angst. Many have grown up around religions that condemn our sexualities, and this causes us to feel alienated from our loved ones and, more scarily, from God. Others grow up in supporting families, but struggle with society's acceptance of us. Sometimes societal pressure causes queer people to feel that they need to hit the same milestones at the same time as straights in society. Other times, queer people struggle to get on the same page with other queer people who are also struggling with religious or societal expectations and one partner's struggle drags the other into it. We all want to be the subject of a single-layered love song, but in reality, we don't want to listen to that kind of song. 

I COULD BIDE MY TIME HOPING I FIX IT. Yesterday President Yoon Suk-yeol (윤석열) declared a national mourning period for South Korea until November 5th. Still many of the details about what started the stampede are unknown. But judging from the pictures from Saturday night when ten times the expected cliental showed up, music blared in the alleyway, and people became trapped in the maze-like old buildings blocking in partiers, I wonder why this hasn't happened before as Itaewon has been a party hub for a while. But with thousands of people descending upon the street, the smallest movement which would be anodyne on a normal day could cause panic in the streets when others are so close that you are practically wearing them as clothes. Just a senseless tragedy that killed mostly younger people--teens and twenties--and yet it makes many of us feel a deep grief as Itaewon is a place many Koreans and foreign nationals feel as a safe place. Okay, many will say that there's a lot of drunken incidents in Itaewon, and it's where foreign nationals often misbehave in Korea--the media is littered with examples of this. But Itaewon is a place where, at least during the day, everyone plays nice. And at night it's one of the few places where the LGBTQ+ community can meet up in Korea. As an American who knows that you have to put your guard up in big cities, Itaewon always felt just a little dangerous, like you could get into trouble, but only if you were seeking it out. You can mostly avoid the sleazy parts or the loud drunken parts and gravitate toward your scene, whether that was International Food Street, Homo or Hooker Hill. I feel bad for all those who came to celebrate Halloween thinking that they had a safe place to enjoy a night out after Covid restrictions had kept everyone at home for so long. I wish their families peace as they grieve.

Read “If U Love Me Now” by MUNA on Genius.

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