“Please” by Turn Off the Stars, Thursday, July 18, 2024

 

Turn Off the Stars’ self-titled album is one that I listen to every year. The band only released one album in 2006, which contained several reworked songs from their 2004 EP Everything Is OK. The Brit-pop-inspired Toronto-based band’s lyrics are simple. Their minor hit “Please” only has two verses and what could be better described as a pre-chorus and a drop if the song were EDM. The song is a guitar-driven track and, of course, is not electronic dance music. The band creates a wall of sound with the guitars that reach a climax after each pre-chorus. Like bands like The War on Drugs and The Amazing, “Please” creates tension with two chords--E minor and C-- for most of the song. The song adds D and A minor to pay off the tension. While the guitar is the star of the song (no pun intended), lead singer Michael Walker’s vocals, particularly his falsetto on the pre-chorus contribute to the emotional payoff of the song.

WAIT, WHAT A BEAUTIFUL DAY. “Please” is my favorite song on Turn Off the Stars’ album, but the melancholy tune has been the soundtrack for many worries. I’m a recovering catastrophizer. Earlier this month when I watched Inside Out 2 (spoiler alert) and saw Anxiety taking the controls, I thought about how many times I let Anxity take the wheel. I always thought that if I worry about it, it will either not happen or not be as devastating when it does happen. Then I thought about how the new characters in Inside Out 2 seemed to be introduced a little late in the lifespan. Most of my anxiety came as I was a kid. It wasn’t really social anxiety until I was a teenager, but I deeply understood the character of Anxiety making plans “if this, then this”; always worst-case scenarios.  To alleviate my anxieties, or so I thought, I prayed about everything that could happen: “God don’t let the house burn down. Don’t let it explode. Don’t let it collapse under the weight of the snow. Don’t let there be a power surge that fries us when we use the microwave. Don’t let there be faulty electrical wiring in the house.” And so on. 

  

I KNOW THAT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND. When I was about 10 or 11, I began to have anxieties that I wasn’t worthy when Jesus came back again. I said my prayers every night, often falling asleep to them, but I also thought about the bad thoughts I had throughout the day and the times that I disobeyed my parents. And as I got older, there were strange, sexual thoughts. It didn’t help that Sabbath School lessons talked about never knowing if you are saved and things you do keeping you out of heaven. But there was one friend I had that seemed to be calm in his faith. He seemed to just believe and not worry about anything. One night I prayed the sinner's prayer as outlined by the Baptist theology I was exposed to from my dad’s side of the family and the evangelical media that we had in the house. And that was the point where I began to trust God. This happened around when I was about 12. Of course. For many years, I looked at this as my salvation story. But of course, my readers will know that there is a lot more to this story, and I interpret this grace from my anxiety in a different way today. When we’re kids, we don’t have a lot of control over our circumstances. When we’re adults we have choices that can keep us up late at night wondering what’s the differences between what’s behind doors number 1, 2, or 3. “Please” is a song about those late-night decisions. It’s about that late-night grief that lasts until the morning. In the end, we all need to draw our own conclusions to get past it, and ultimately we need faith in something even if that’s just yourself. 

Read the lyrics on Genius.