Note: I could imagine a world in which this is an ongoing series, but we’ll see. For now, I just threw this together as an IG post during a free moment, and this post is a transcription for people who prefer to read it here rather than there.
I know a lot of teachers and teaching artists who like to incorporate pop music into their poetry units. And this album has SO MUCH going on that makes it perfect for that kind of work. And not just creative writing—I could imagine some of these questions/prompts being relevant in health classes, healthy relationships workshops, etc. Here are a few notes, discussion questions, and writing prompts.
What makes a lyric feel real?
At least part of it, for me, is the use of images:
- pressed up in the bathroom line
- heart made of wax / melting in the sun
- hop the fence in the park
- everything feels moldy like the fruit that’s in my fridge
We sometimes think people can only relate to our writing if we keep it vague, so they can map their experience onto ours. But I think it’s actually the opposite: A song that is just about “love” or “loss” in grand, abstract terms will usually not feel as real as a song that zooms in using these kinds of images, memories, scenes.
The smallest moments on an album can make its biggest ideas come to life. What others stick out to you?
Juxtaposition/Recontextualization
A lot of us are used to music being bite-sized: singles, or even just snippets in videos. But this is a capital-A concept album, and hearing the whole thing can potentially “reframe” songs.
For example, my way is a fun, confident tell-off… when you hear it by itself. In the context of the story the album is telling, though, does it change? Do you hear fury in the lyrics, or fear?
Similarly, maggots for brains describes some pretty serious negative feelings, but the hook writes it off as just feeling that way “when my baby goes away.” Is that really what’s going on? Or could that be foreshadowing?
More juxtaposition to look for: traditional romantic imagery right alongside rot, decay, poison, etc. What effect does this have?
Digging Deeper
I think this album has a lot going on beneath the surface. A few themes worth thinking about:
- The difference between love as connection and love as obsession.
- Expectations vs. what real life actually feels like… and how we sometimes perform excitement, romance, etc. for both others and ourselves. (and how all that is so often gendered).
- The tension and insecurity rooted in a society in which everything is documented online and we are constantly exposed to others’ performance of their (edited) lives.
It’s not that there’s one perfect thesis statement or secret to “unlock,” but what themes, motifs, or big ideas come to mind for you?
RE: that ending
Some might say that expectations makes sense as the last chapter of the story this album is telling. So why is cigarette smoke the closing song?
In poetry classes, we talk about how you never “owe” your audience a happy ending, or a neat-and-tidy conclusion, but also that it can sometimes be worthwhile to think about what you do want them to walk away with.
There’s no perfect, right-or-wrong answer here, but what do you walk away from this album with? Especially after listening through a few times: how do the songs build on one another, or recontextualize one another? With those last two songs, what might be the reason they are in the order they are in?
A FEW WRITING PROMPTS
carve our names into the car seat leather
When you think of an important or formative time in your life, what is a specific image you associate with it? Rather than writing about that time, write about that image. Let the small thing (an object, a moment, a smell, etc.) be a doorway into a bigger idea.
’cause, baby, I’m unraveled
There’s a lot of discourse online about performance: how we perform our values, our politics, our “external” self vs. who we are inside, etc. Write about a moment of unraveling, when a mask falls off, when something real shines through… and what the consequences (good, bad, or otherwise) of that can be.
amber lights and warning bells
There’s a lot on this album about the feeling of knowing something but not having language for it. Is there a feeling, emotion, or tension in your life that is difficult to describe? Instead of trying to perfectly capture it in writing, maybe use a list of images to create an impression of it instead. Sometimes, writing “around” a topic, using images, scenes, etc., can unearth insight we wouldn’t find by approaching it directly.
the most alive I’ve ever been
So much poetry (not to mention pop music) is about heartbreak. And that’s fine! But for a moment, let’s explore joy. What is the last thing that made you smile? Describe a moment that, against all odds, did not disappoint. Tell the story of something in this world that is worth fighting for.
Why can’t it ever be enough?
From Aretha Franklin to Bruce Springsteen to Bad Bunny to Olivia Rodrigo and beyond, artists often use love songs as vehicles to comment on society, sometimes subversively.
Because people have gone through the same stuff (insecurity, heartbreak, joy, etc.) for thousands of years. But what’s different about those relatively universal human experiences when you’re experiencing them in 2026, in the specific place you live, holding the specific identities you hold?
Maybe you write a love poem (or song) in which different forces are in tension: the force of love itself can be one, but what happens when it meets other forces: racism, capitalism, social media, AI artificiality, the climate crisis, etc?
A few last thoughts
This series of notes and questions could have been two or three times as long as it is. It’s a rich text!
I think it’s fine to just like art and not overthink it, but also that it can actually be fun and rewarding to engage with it on this kind of deeper level.
There are forces in our world that want us to treat all art as “content,” all expression as just something to buy or sell. And patient, thoughtful, critical engagement is a muscle that is worth building, a practice that can have ripple effects in our lives.
If you like this kind of poetry/lyrics-nerd stuff, a few other resources:
- I’ll be facilitating a virtual course as part of Button Poetry’s “Button Up” series on Thursday, June 25. A bit more info here, and anyone interested can register here (there’s a dropdown where you can register for the whole series, a monthly subscription, or just my workshop).
- Check out my asynchronous online class, Meeting the Moment: Political Poetry and the Anthemic Impulse – lots of examples, writing prompts, and seven video lessons.
- Even more at my spoken word poetry resource hub.
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