with no exit wounds???
giving you a look into my brain when writing "exit wounds"
i promised i was back in my substack bag, and floated the idea of doing a lyric breakdown of “exit wounds” on here. a few of you were interested, and i thought it would be fun to give more insight into my brain and how i feel about this song to celebrate one week of her existence…
to preface…
i am undoubtedly an unreliable narrator, as i’ve announced many. we all have self-serving biases (cue the victoria justice snippet), and while i’d like to say i’m somewhat self-aware, in the wise words of hannah montana herself: nobody’s perfect.
when somebody once asked me what this song was about, i said an existential crisis about impending doom. i was trying to make a joke that did not land, and, in fact, flopped on its face. however, i think this song was brought on in a point of reflection and extreme anxiety that festers from time to time. part of the songwriting process for me is scripting a scene in my head, and knowing every facet to the point where i can watch it play frame-by-frame. ultimately, that’s also how my anxiety likes to play out 99% of the time.
overall, i wrote the song about running into someone who used to be a super close friend, but may not have treated me the way i would treat my close friends. we grew apart more naturally, and i definitely allowed time and distance to do her work. i don’t think they know the song is about them at all, and they may actually be the last person to believe the song is about them, which is comforting in its own way. when i first moved to LA, i struggled adjusting to the new city. coming home from college, usually, everyone's first question is "how is LA? do you love it? how's school?". i had all this anxiety about coming home and trying to act like i loooooved my first year living there.
from afar, i was concurrently watching through my screen on social media, doomscrolling, and torturing myself stalking profiles of people i had lost touch with the previous year. seeing the photos of them living their best life at college made me feel jealous and petty. while i was also posting on social media, seemingly having so much fun in los angeles, i still shook away any thoughts that someone else may be doing the exact same as i. we all know social media is fake, but then the pictures sometimes look so real that the manicured outward presence everyone spends so much time refining appears to be reality to any observer.
it’s never great to see someone who wasn’t kind to you thriving, while you’re struggling a bit. it's not necessarily because they should hate where they are, but more of a frustration with how their adjustment seems to be seamless, while my experience was the opposite. in hindsight, no one loves any place they move to initially, especially one with a very different culture from where they grew up. however, i'm lucky that such a fantastic song came out of so much anxiety, and i'm super proud of it. overall, the song is a bit petty, a bit sad, and a bop.
[verse 1]
back home, and i double take
cos to see you wasn't on my list
small talk like “how's your mom?”
and the weather? "it's been pretty shit"
but your face is something i had missed
the song starts out by painting a picture of me back in my hometown. my hometown isn’t really a town, given that it’s new york city, which is one of the biggest cities in the country. one thing many other city kids know is that it’s nearly impossible to go anywhere without seeing someone i knew from some point in my life. the open possibility of having to engage in awkward small talk is inevitably something i’ll have to face. the who is important to clarify when it comes to my willingness to actually do so. the open possibility leads to a lot of overthinking who i'll see when just going on a walk or running errands.
i wanted to allude to the fact that the person, who i wasn’t expecting to see, and i were once close enough to know each other’s family hence the “how’s your mom????” of it all. however, i also wanted to point towards the fact that we aren’t close anymore and grasping at straws for topics of conversation, resorting to the good old reliable weather commentary to fall back on.
[pre-chorus]
i've got memories i wish to forget
bury those thoughts in a graveyard
call them a waste of breath
when i wrote this song, i was coming out of a two-year period where it just felt like terrible event after event. i was being put through the WRINGER. I would like to think i came out of it stronger, but i also have a tendency to bury my feelings than deal with them. the pre-chorus alludes to the bad memories i associate with both the person i have the possibility of running into, but also all that was happening to me at the time. in the midst of this awkward conversation, i wanted to not think about any of the bad memories associated with them or the last year or so, instead try and come off like i’m doing great.
[chorus]
didn't wanna miss you, miss you like this
you called all of the shots
and i couldn't resist
how could you stand in the crossfire?
with no exit wounds?
i was kinda hoping you'd be hurt too
i do admit here that i missed them, but i also wanted to emphasize that there wasn't a ton of clarity in my mind as to why i missed them. i'm a pretty sentimental person, and sometimes when going back through memories, i revise them to fit a feeling of nostalgia and make them see better than the actual events that occurred.
i also wanted to emphasize that seeing them provided a sense of comfort, but i don’t truly miss knowing them closely. i delete the parts of my memories that remind me why we grew apart. i think sometimes just seeing a familiar face is more comforting than the actual person.
regardless of whether the feelings are just or not, sometimes as humans, we can't help but be haters temporarily. i think the last line of the chorus points to how i can be petty from time to time, i was annoyed this person was thriving, while i felt like i was crumbling.
[verse]
walk home spinning in my head
cos we never stood on solid ground
but everything that went up came crashing down
missed calls were my first mistake
and i promise i wanted to be around
but everything that goes up comes crashing down
this part of the song goes back to walking home after a bizarre interaction and trying to rerun it in my head. this person, for me, i always felt like there was a weird power dynamic, which is why i don’t think we faired well as friends. it felt like because they were a close friend, and knew my insecurities, they would play into them sometimes to make themselves feel better. the crashing down line talks about how inevitably i had to come to a decision on whether i wanted this person in my life.
i wanted to talk about how i potentially made the situation worse. i definitely was the first one to pull back, and i was going back and forth on whether i wanted to lose a friendship or not. i do think if that’s even a question, usually the answer is yes, which i followed up in the line.
[bridge]
back home
and i double take
cos to see you wasn't on my list
and i can't help thinking this is it
this bridge i wanted to circle back to the first verse, which is something i LOVE when songs do. going back to the beginning, i think i came to the conclusion not only how i would handle the situation, but also realizing that this is likely one of the few moments of closure i’m going to get with this person, and i have to decide how i want to move forward in the future.
anyways… i hope this word vomit gave you some clarity on how i wrote this song and how my brain works. usually, when i’m writing a song, I kinda know how the lyrics tie to each other, and definitely know how to continue on the scene playing in my head. HOWEVER, sometimes i’m not nearly as analytical about my decision as i was here, so it was fun for me to revisit the song.
stream exit wounds here: https://aux.bio/izzymacarthur/ExitWounds
ily all xx
izzy <3
me reading all of your substack posts rn bc why did i just discover it