Less Than 24 Hours And We Have This Analysis 🤯

Less than 24 hours and we have this analysis 🤯

Change by Louis Tomlinson 

Analysis 

My first thought when I heard Change is timeless. That’s an amazing, rare achievement. Between Change and Copy, LT2 is shaping up to be a really incredible album that I’ll listen to for the rest of my life because I love it. 

On Change, Louis does a very good job of changing up his delivery and the instrumental to keep it fresh. My only complaint about Walls (album) was that there were times where it felt a bit repetitive and stagnant to me. Change suggests that Louis has totally grown out of that. 

The song starts intimately, then grows into the kind of arena rock I love so much and Louis is so good at. He keeps you interested. Toward the end, we get the psychadelic-via-brit-pop influenced drone which is also a part of KMM’s magic. Between the lyric, delivery, and instrumental, it’s an astonishingly direct moment in the best way.

You might consider that the first part of the song is dripping in nostalgia. It might recall Louis’ romanticized days as a teenager going for cheap beer at an indie club. And it has the sound to match. Then, Louis knocks us into the present. He says ‘stop getting lost in nostalgia and regrets, you have a present to live and a future to look forward to’ and punctuates the message with a psychedelic vibe - almost as though we are being awakened with realization, gaining higher insight. 

There’s also a touch of jazz influence, or perhaps more specifically, Amy Winehouse. I think this influence is the key to the magic Louis has achieved with Copy, Change, and his Beautiful War cover.  Louis describes himself as a subdued and moody performer and the intensity of that attitude gels perfectly with the influence. It shows off his musicality. It’s sexy. It’s genius.

Now, on to the lyrcis! I’ll be using my own version of the lyrics. I will post relevant revisions and link them [here] if necessary when we have an official copy.

‘Oh, oh, ah-oh-oh

Turn on the lights

It’s easy to see

We were just getting by

We weren’t complete

Louis starts by setting up the story telling us that he’s shedding light on a problem, specifically an interpersonal problem. It isn’t yet clear to whom exactly ‘we’ refers.  It may be one other person or a group. It could allude to a romantic partner, fans, friends, etc. 

It parallels “Lights Up” which has the lyric ‘Lights up and they know who you are/do you know who you are’. In both songs the light exposes a troubled sense of identity. Harry feels unsure, Louis feels incomplete. Both songs are retrospective. I think it is fair to say that like Lights Up, Change is a reflection on growing up in the limelight. Harry felt public observation exposed a conflicted sense of self and here, Louis feels that exposure reveals an emptiness. 

It hasn’t been long

That I’ve been away

I don’t know why

Everything’s changed

Louis says it hasn’t been long that he has been away. Maybe a brief time away revealed changes he hadn’t noticed. Maybe he’s an unreliable narrator, and he has been away for a long time, but he feels like he hasn’t. 

‘Cause inside

We’re still the kids on the Friday nights 

These two lines cement this as a song about growing up. Louis has commented several times on feeling his age. This is probably in part due to pop music’s unhealthy obsession with youth, but he also has very legitimate reasons to feel his life has passed him by - first with the incredible, demanding pace of touring with One Direction that removed him from ordinary life and then with the series of personal tragedies as well as the professional setbacks that brought us to today. In Fearless Louis asks someone if they ‘remember being young and strong enough to get it wrong in front of all these people’ and in Change, Louis still does feel young. It’s the dissonance between how he feels and the passage of time that stings.

Silver streets and the neon signs

My suspicion is that “silver streets” doubles as a way of describing how pavement looks at night and as a way of communicating that this memory is romanticized - coated in silver. There is also a song called Silver Streets and a radio show called Silver Street that could, in theory, have nostalgic value for Louis. Silver Streets by BOY seems to have some thematic resonance with Change.

Neon signs may harken back to his Miss You music video in which pink triangle neon signs featured prominently. 

Everything’s changed outside

Sometimes I wonder why

A clever inversion of “I don’t know why / Everything’s changed / ‘Cause inside”

If you need you can call on me

I’ll be the friend you need

Everything’s changed outside

But I feel the same inside

This seems to be Louis telling the other part of his ‘we’ that they can still rely on him just the same as they could in the past. It’s important to him that he is still there for the people.

The kids are alright

That used to be me

Always losing our minds

Out on the street

The Kids Are Alright is a phrase which originated with the The Who song and it is also the title of the band’s rockumentary which might remind Louis of his 1D days. (Also, the film The Kids Are Alright was the first mainstream comedy to depict lesbians raising children together.)

The phrase means that the current generation, for all of their problems and the hand-wringing of their parents, is capable and determined and will be able to grow into responsible adults. “That used to be me” adds the dark implication that, now no longer a kid, he’s may be not alright.  

“Always losing our minds/ Out on the street” evokes the Wellington incident where the boys were literally drunk and running through the streets. Make note of the word “Out” which may be a double entendre meaning both Out as in outside and Out in the queer sense.

A trip down memory lane 

Houses all look the same

There’s different names on the gates

And all the people have changed

Oh it’s such a shame, 

nothing stays the same

This line could be very literal because it’s what you experience when you grow up and people move and the place you lived changes. It may also be a  metaphor for people changing. They look like themselves, but they get married and change their names, and who they are inside changes as they grow up. 

Fame is said to put people into a state of arrested development at the age they got famous. For Louis, he may be feeling 18 inside while he sees his friends maturing through the ordinary rites of passage that sudden fame denied him. And now he can’t revisit the things he left behind when he left home.

‘Cause inside

We’re still the kids on the Friday nights 

Silver streets and the neon signs

Everything’s changed outside

Sometimes I wonder why

If you need you can call on me

I’ll be the friend you need

Everything’s changed outside

But I feel the same inside

When you gonna realize

You don’t get another life

Always overanalyse this, what’s the point?

I know it’ll be alright,

you’ve still got the rest of your life

I am completely obsessed with the brutality of this lyric. I love it. It resonates with my own experience of growing into an adult. I actually had a conversation with a professor that was very important to me which could be poetically depicted this way - I was really distraught over how certain things in my life had played out. He made the point that life is as beautiful and exciting as it is because we only experience them once. (And lemme tell you that man knew a thing or two about an exciting life)

Louis separates “you” from “I” here. You is another person he’s talking to. Maybe “you” is another version of himself or (more likely) “you” is a specific person this is directed at. He’s waiting for this person to realize they are lost in lamenting the past. He asks what the point is of analyzing the past  and wondering what could’ve been when you have a life ahead of you to live.

If the “you” here is Harry, then the obvious parallel is Fine Line with the repeating line “We’ll be alright” but the parallels go deeper. The first two verses of Fine Line might detail the conflict at the heart of this back-and-forth but the last two are more thematically relevant. “There’s things that we’ll never know” implies that he has been thinking about what could’ve been in another life and is coming to terms with the fact that they were not meant to be. “My hand’s at risk, I fold” followed by “Crisp trepidation / I’ll try to shake this soon ”  might relate to the idea of overanalysing, prioritizing ‘what if’ over the future he wants to live. I also think the idea of not getting another life is relevant to Harry because to me it seems apparent that Harry has a very real fear of dying (and his loved ones dying) which comes through on Fine Line and he explicitly stated while on Ellen’s Burning questions at 1:48.

Although I believe firmly in Larry and tonight only reinforced that belief, Larry or not, it’s important to remember that Harry and Louis were close friends in the same band for 5 years and experienced a lot of the same things. Harry’s the younger of the two so it makes some sense that he’s in a position that Louis has already worked through and made peace with. Their respective songs about this concept of making peace with the past reflect their individual struggles to move forward and create a sense of self beyond the band. 

Now it’s time to realise you don’t get another life

Always overanalyse this, what’s the point?

I know it’ll be alright

“Now” points to time as the factor that moves this person from one of the kids who are alright to the adult who has to make peace with the things that happened in their past and the fact there are no do-overs.

We’re still the kids on the Friday nights

Silver streets and the neon signs

Everything’s changed outside

Sometimes I wonder why

“I know it’ll be alright” into “We’re still the kids on the Friday nights”  softens the message up quite a bit. The revelation of ‘you don’t get another life’ reveals the answer to ‘why’. It says we are the same people who did those things, even though they are now in the past. 

If you need you can call on me

I’ll be the friend you need

Everything’s changed outside

But I feel the same inside

And even though time has passed, you can still rely on Louis

When you gonna realise

You don’t get another life

Always overanalyse this, what’s the point?

I know it’ll be alright,

You’ve still got the rest of your life

Now infused with the spirit of taking on the future together, there’s something very hopeful about concluding the song on this lyric.

Moving the story along in the verses and bending the meaning of the chorus is probably my favorite approach to songwriting and holy shit does Change deliver. 

Louis, you beautiful genius, I can’t wait to hear this in all it’s HQ glory, in it’s studio form, and to hear all of its companion songs. And I really can’t wait to sing these lines back to you through my tears. 

man, what a song