Despite the ridiculous title of this article, I am being very serious when I say this song is incredible. I’ve been following YWAG for a few years now, ever since their album Anonymity came out, back in 2017. I was stoked on how catchy the song ‘Grace and Focus‘ was, and how well they blended that catchiness with amazing technical sections.
The same holds true, and even more so, for the new single. As much as I love Anonymity, I believe Paper Bodies may be their best song they’ve ever released. It makes me feel the same way that I felt when I first listened to ‘Nineties Nine Ties’ by Aviations, who also have been releasing new music lately. Both songs fill me with a feeling of majesty, pulling me in with insanely catchy, soaring clean vocal sections. At the same time, both of these songs have beautiful and intricate piano sections as well. That’s definitely something that’s always been endearing to me; piano sections in prog metal.
The Windsor progressive post-hardcore quintet has been putting out music since 2014, which started off with two early EPs, Let Go Lightly and What’s Left of the Distance(2016). Soon after they released the aforementioned Anonymity, which got them some well-deserved recognition, namely from Alex Baker of Kerrang Radio. They were starting to play a multitude of shows throughout the UK, and also released two more songs, ‘Lights to Leave Behind‘ and ‘Recursive.’ However, Recursive released right as the covid-19 pandemic was starting to cause lockdowns around the world, and it seems like this may have slowed their growth for a bit. Despite all of that, they’re definitely back and going hard once again.
Now onto the single itself. ‘Paper Bodies‘ is a masterpiece, simple as that. It starts with a nice, rolling piano intro, that honestly reminds me a bit of Hollow Bastion from Kingdom Hearts, iykyk. This is also not an insult either, I personally don’t love when people immediately equate metal songs to anime theme songs, but I think this is fitting because the hollow bastion music slaps in a very special way. The piano in Paper Bodies, though, is a bit less foreboding and more somber. It slowly builds to the chorus which seems to come out of nowhere, and much catchier than we deserve. I normally don’t put so much weight on the chorus of a song, because progressive rock and metal normally has so many sections and other draws to it that you can ignore the chorus if you really want to. However, I feel like the chorus is the centerpiece of this song, and they intentionally made it this way to capitalize on the lyrics that comprises it, which we’ll get to next.
The lyrics of this song are extremely relevant to things many of us are seeing around us these days; political division, taking sides, mean-spirited debates. Personally I’ve let these things bother me a lot in my life and I’m often left wondering… “Why is everyone so quick to fight with each other?” or “Why can’t we be a bit more empathetic?” and “Why can’t everyone see that we’re just making things worse this way?” It seems as if everyone is constantly on edge and constantly at each other’s throats. In this song, the most powerful lyrics also happen to be the catchiest:
Wait, I’ve barely had time to think
and I’m already partisan
can’t someone just tell me why we’re here?
While the band is from the UK, and they have different political woes than the US, I would say that the message resounds anyway. Everywhere people feel the need to take sides in every argument, and it feels like there no longer is a middle ground. It’s Left vs Right no matter the issue. I really appreciate this song and its lyrics because it shares the sometimes unspoken view that much of this debate and fighting isn’t getting anywhere, and just causing more destruction and hate in the world.
One thing I loved that they did with the song was that the line, ‘mute everything, mute everyone’ is the only line in the song that’s done with harsh vocals. This highlights the infantile behavior of muting and blocking all the people on social media who don’t agree with what you’re arguing about. it’s not really debating if we create echo chambers online of just people who share the same opinions as ourselves.
Although the chorus is ultra-catchy, I do think my favorite small part of the song is when the power of the chorus subsides during the line “And you have to be on mine” and then the piano from the beginning comes right back. It’s a very beautifully done transition, and feels almost calming in a way.
Listen to the song and let me know what your favorite part was, and if you have any more insight or opinion about the song’s lyrics! I also didn’t know what sellotape was until I was looking at the lyrics for this song and looked it up. Turns out it’s the most popular brand of British tape, so that’s my fun fact for the day. The band has a linktree where you can see all of their different social media and their merch site.
I do not own any of the images in this post, all rights reserved to You Win Again Gravity.
