A Love Letter to The Beautiful South & Phil Collins

[typingnoise]

 They say you never forget your first heartbreak — mine came with a horn section and a deceptively cheerful chorus.

The Beautiful South taught me early that melancholy wears many disguises: a chipper piano line, a baritone muttering something brutal, a chorus you’ll hum in the supermarket and cry about in the car. No band was ever so polite about devastation. “Don’t Marry Her” is a hymn for bitter hope, “Prettiest Eyes” a love song that remembers time isn’t kind, and “Rotterdam” — well, that one just knows.

And then there’s Phil Collins.

Phil, patron saint of the emotionally inconvenient. His voice lives somewhere between a sigh and a plea, and I believed every word even before I understood what they meant. “Against All Odds” is a thunderstorm in slow motion. “Take Me Home” feels like walking alone in a city lit by sodium streetlamps. And “In the Air Tonight”? That’s a song you survive.

These are the artists who made it okay to feel too much, too often. Who said, yes, it’s absurd to be so wounded by ordinary life — but here’s a melody for that. Here’s a drum break that will make your chest cave in. Here’s a line you’ll repeat until it stops hurting, or until it does again.

So this is my love letter: to the unpretentious poetry of pop, to the way sadness sneaks into our softest places via FM radio, to songs that sound like walking home in the rain with your hands in your pockets. To The Beautiful South. To Phil Collins. To every moment that needed their voices.

You helped me name it. You helped me carry it. You helped me dance anyway.