My Musical Stories: Passenger's "All The Little Lights"

Passenger is many things musically.  It has been both a band and a solo act with a backing band, and it has also explored a few different genres of music from the quieter side of the folk to full on rock, and also some bold Americana.  Though it has only spawned one song to the major radio charts ("Let Her Go"),  Michael Rosenberg (as he's known in real life) has a lot to be proud of and has pulled in multiple listeners in many different ways through the ten studio albums he's released over the last twelve years as well as massive concerts with a backing band and even some street and subway busking.  There's enough fans for both sides of the music (acoustic and full backing track) that Passenger's 2018 album "Runaway" was recorded with both versions for each track.  How cool is that? 

I could go on and on about "Let Her Go" for ages, but that's the song everyone has heard off All The Little Lights, and there's a total of twelve tracks on that album, which gives me a lot to look at and listen to.  That's exactly what I thought when I discovered the album in KBXE back in April of 2017.  I popped the album into the player and spun the title track on the radio that night, giving it an honest listen, and I ended up really enjoying it.

My first thoughts when listening to the track "All the Little Lights" were "Man, Passenger is a savage, no doubt about it."  I say that because Rosenberg spends most of the song's verses talking about all these things he's done, such as smoking cigarettes and lying to his parents.  It's clear that the young character in this song had no respect for authority whatsoever.  I'm thinking that's the message most would get from this song the first time through, but there's actually another meaning to it for me now that's developed over just under two years of listening to it on a frequent basis, and also teaching myself to drum to it.

You see, the chorus of "All the Little Lights" goes as follows....

"We're born with millions of little lights shining in the dark, and they show us the way.  One lights up every time we feel love in our heart, and one dies when it moves away."

Later on in the song, another round of the chorus goes....

"We're born with millions of little lights shining in our hearts, and they die along the way.  Until we're old and we're cold, and we're lying in the dark because they'll all burn out one day."

It's at this point that I realize I've been hearing the song wrong for the last two years in a sense.  The character in the song is still an absolute savage, but it's not him that "went out" per the lyrics, rather it's the little lights in his heart that burnt out piece by piece.  Basically, as the character in the song loses friends and family or grows apart from people he used to hold near and dear to his heart, he gets a little colder and sadder on the inside.  This song got really dark really fast now didn't it?  But in a sense that's why I enjoy it.

You see, I feel we have to have these darker-toned songs in the musical atmosphere in order to help us in our emotional journeys.  If everything sounded like Sam Hunt's "House Party" or Cardi B's "I Like It Like That", would we feel better about ourselves as humans when we truly begin to struggle with emotions we aren't sure how to process?  Sure we should probably be out getting therapy or messaging our friends to ask for help, but some of us don't have our support networks fleshed out as well as we want them to be and we might be too afraid to reach out.  That's why music steps in and does it's job, or at least tries to until we fall asleep in our beds at 3:00am and wake up the next morning ready to conquer the day head on, or at least not spend it in bed dealing with feelings.  Music can be our mediator when our "friends" finally get sick of us.  It will never leave us, and it will never let us down, until someone releases a crappy cover that is. 

This song fits me to a T.  I used to have all the little lights in my heart back when I was a happy slappy younger child, and then s**t happened as I grew older and I discovered how bitter the world was, and I sadly let myself get slapped upside the head by it and grew weary and unsure of how to deal with it and process it all, culminating with me failing hardcore to connect out here in Fargo.  My co-workers keep me sane for the most part, but I have no friends to reach out to in times of need, which may or may not be a good thing depending on how you look at it.  But so many of the little lights in my heart have burnt out that I have extreme compassion fatigue and I'm almost always skeptical of anyone trying to show any type of positive emotion which damages all my personal friendships and relationships and it sucks.  I feel like I've become the toxic person I never wanted to be, and it really stinks.  But it's how things look to continue, so instead I must prepare myself to learn how to deal with it and roll with the punches that come with everyday life.  I cannot hide away forever. 

However, a few little lights still shine in my heart and keep me going in this darkness.  I hope they keep going until I get old and cold lying in the dark as the song says, because I'm trying my best to make it until at least my 60's or 70's.  I'll be darned if I'm going to give up on life now despite the strong voices in my head telling me I'd be better off giving up.  This song is just medicine for when I'm really not feeling the best, and it works, just as almost every other song by Passenger that's in my regular listening rotation does.

Do you have a song that you listen to when times get hard?  Share what makes it special for you in the comments :)