After releasing the video for the first single from the forthcoming The Blue Hour, “The Invisibles” (seemingly inspired by Elton John’s “I Want Love” video), in early June, Suede continues to give us teases of what’s to come with “Don’t Be Afraid If Nobody Loves You” (also known as everybody’s theme song). For who isn’t fearful of being totally unloveable in the same way that the apparently actually unloveable Morrissey once described? Especially in times such as these, when to attract the attention of another person through means not related to a screen is utterly impossible.
With what is soon to be their eighth studio album (making for a total of four released in the 90s and four released thereafter–meaning they’ve almost fully cleansed themselves of being part of the Britpop movement), Suede’s lyrical content and themes have not necessarily changed so much as become even more intense, forlorn reworkings of themselves. And yet, not in the same way as The Smiths, a quartet that could only sustain four albums of pure melancholia before disbanding. No, there is slightly more poetry in the stylings of Suede and its one constant, Brett Anderson (quite busy this year after releasing an autobiography called Coal Black Mornings), who has of late posited, “Why shouldn’t something as transforming and life-affirming and celestial as music have a heft and a gravity that transcends the trivial and the everyday?” It’s a valid question, and perhaps one that more musicians should be asking themselves in this landscape so chock full of “bitches” and “niggas” that it all coalesces into one sound of soullessness.
With “Don’t Be Afraid If Nobody Loves You,” Anderson acts as a patron saint once again to “the invisibles”–the lonely souls that disprove the maudlin adage that there’s someone for everyone. Because alas, that is mathematically impossible, especially when factoring in this newfound love of genderlessness and sexual fluidity. Thus he holds himself up as an example of fellow desolation and alienation, urging, “Don’t be afraid if nobody loves you/Don’t be afraid if nobody sees/Don’t be afraid if nobody loves you/Don’t be afraid ’cause no one loves me.” One supposes there is comfort in knowing she’s not the only one. While not quite as cinematic and stadium-ready in auditory scope as the lead track from Night Thoughts, “When You Are Young,” the single does bear the mark of being a source of consolation to the disenfranchised. In the case of the former, that means reminding the youth confused about why they feel so frustrated and abused all the time, “When you are young/There are battle plans and distant drums/When you are young/There is nothing right and nothing wrong.”
Unfortunately for some, growing older doesn’t serve as much of a panacea to the problems of youth, which one soon realizes are literal and metaphorical child’s play in comparison to the crippling beleaguerment (paired with a requirement to pay for things) that comes with adulthood. To make it all the more challenging, there is almost no one to relate to unless you drink the Kool-Aid called society’s expectations, trickling down into friendships, romantic relationships and workplace “interfacing.” Suede speaks to this odious phenomenon oh so poetically in their latest offering.
In the end, Anderson declares, “I’m alone like a Trappist monk.” There are few people who can truly understand what that entails, so afraid are most to surrender to genuine isolation–to not merely surround themselves with others for the sake of being able to say they are not alone, despite the fact that they are. So many, in fact, that it’s easier to numb ourselves with the modern conveniences of the internet, TV/film and alcohol as opposed to just purely existing in the same space as another human being without distraction. So don’t be afraid if nobody loves you–people can nary find the emotional strength to love themselves.
