“Park Song” by Bee Hall is smooth and soft: the melody is calm, and nothing shouts out at you. The song is deceptively simple, relaxed and slow. You can hear the whistle of the winds and the screeching sounds of the city’s subway breaks.
“Park Song” is supposedly an ode to Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York. The lyrics tell us what the song is really about, and as it turns out, it’s not just about Prospect Park; that’s just where she happened to be when she started to realize the intensity of her feelings for the person she’s seeing.
“I don’t want to write a song about you yet.”
The words are clear and leave little room for interpretation.
The early, anxiety-and-euphoria-ridden days when you meet someone new and start to realize you actually have feelings for them. It’s the combination of being over the moon with anticipation, and also having to fight the persistent, nagging worry that you are now emotionally vulnerable and anything you do could potentially ruin it when it’s the only thing you’ve ever wanted.
The song starts with the words:
“I said I don’t mind the rain, and so do you.”
They’re both lying and they mind the rain.
What better way to depict the early days of budding romance than standing, soaking wet in the rain together?
We tiptoe and we hold back, even though it can sometimes be physically uncomfortable. When things are tentative and you could ‘jinx’ something by writing a song about it, even though technically they’re unrelated. Sometimes we self-deceive and name songs after parks so that if we get accused of writing a song about that one person, we can deny it.
The song’s melody, title and literal words are deceiving, and yet it’s incredibly honest. It closes with the lyrics, or maybe confession would be a better word choice:
“All I wanna do in this world is hold your hand.”
There are two stories told in the melody of “Park Song,” but when you listen closely you can hear what the song is really about.
