Find this essay in more in: Someone Said This?! Vol. 1 No. 3: All I Do Is Try Try Try
Great lyrics stay with me. They fuel my endless pursuit to write one great sentence. Who knows. On a long enough timeline, it’s not impossible that I could write a verse like:
Just as time knew to move on since the beginning, And the seasons knew exactly when to change
Just as kindness knows no shame, know through all your joy and shame, that I’ll be loving you always.
It’s not probable. It’s just also not impossible.
Great vocals, on the other hand, exist in another world. There’s no timeline in which I hit a single note that Whitney Houston ever sang, and that makes her something else entirely in my mind. She’s winning a race I can’t figure out, much less compete in, so I’m happy to watch from the stands, amazed.
When a great vocal performance carries incredible lyrics, like when Hayley Williams sang:
I could follow you to the beginning, just to relive the start
And maybe then we’ll remember to slow down, at all of our favorite parts.
All I wanted was you. All I wanted was you
I just feel angry.
I also feel so lucky to be able to live in a time that I can hear it literally whenever I want to. Which is at least once a week. Because here’s the thing. You’re not supposed to be able to do both at that level. The pressure to remain that talented is too much for one person to handle.
And maybe Hayley would argue that she can’t maintain that because “All I Wanted” is the only song that Paramore has never performed live. She admitted that she did try to sing it during one of the band’s Parahoy concerts. But at the last minute, she decided she couldn’t hit the note well enough and pulled the song from the setlist.
The lore of the song is bigger than the note at this point. The expectations grow with each performance. And try as she might, she doesn’t feel like she can deliver on a version of herself she revealed years ago.
You can see the way that wears on a person in a video from 2020. A Paramore fan acts out a skit where the fan’s friend is dying. The doctor tells the fan they’ve tried everything, but his friend isn’t going to make it. The fan asks if he can try one last thing, and pulls out his phone. It’s at this point, as a viewer, you notice that “All I Wanted” is playing in the background. And if you’re a Paramore fan, you know that the big note is coming. It works as a simple joke, but it’s perfect if you’re in on the joke.
Hayley reacted to the video a couple of years ago. She’s unsuspecting for the first few lines of the skit, but then, right on cue, she rolls her eyes the second she understands that the power of her voice in All I Wanted will save the dying teen. It’s a funny response for the most part, but there is genuine irritation, too. Because, to us, that note represents her brilliance—her ability to scream out vulnerability with such power that you might mistake it for anger.
To her, it’s a level of effort or accomplishment that she cannot find her way back to. A single line in a single song that proves no matter what you do, you can always disappoint someone—even yourself.
I think about that difference a lot.
Achievement, especially after any amount of effort, should be the ultimate reward. If you don’t have a thing to accomplish, what is all the trying for? But what Hayley exposes in that video, or at least what I’m projecting onto her, is that achievement can feel just as bad as failing.
Reaching your goals proves that what you imagined is possible, but not always. You can have what you want, but you probably can’t keep it. What could be more heartbreaking?
Keeping yourself a secret from everyone turns into an inescapable hell. But showing people what you can do just gives them the tools to keep you trapped in a moment forever. And it’s a wonder any of us do either.
All of this is probably too deep of an analysis for a silly joke that exists mostly inside a fandom. But it’s worth acknowledging that trying can be excruciating. And it only begets more trying. The cycle is defeating, exhausting, and terrifying.
I guess what I’m trying to say is I hope we can all give ourselves the grace to know that once is enough. And patience when we aren’t ready to try just yet. And the wisdom to know that when you don’t have the energy to try again, that’s ok.
None of us need you to try all the time. All I ever want is you.