Lyrically Speaking: Wolf Alice’s tender wave goodbye on ‘No Hard Feelings’
There are songs of love; there are songs of hate, but what about a song that exists somewhere in-between? After the glory of goodness that comes with giddy infatuation, and even after the gut-wrenching devastation of heartbreak, what happens then? Wolf Alice ponders that exact question in ‘No Hard Feelings’, their tender ode to the true ending when the aftershocks have settled down and the weapons have been surrendered.
“No hard feelings, honey / There’ll be no bad blood / Losing your love has been hard enough”, Ellie Rowsell sings. Immediately, the Blue Weekend track is the band at their most stripped-back. Beyond a simple, muted guitar line, Rowsell’s voice stands alone on the song. Perfectly marrying the track’s instrumental world with the story it’s telling, it’s as intimate as the lyrics and as singular as the person singing them.
Singular feels like the right word. There is something isolated and cut off about that song despite its widely relatable content. But from start to finish, it feels like a message into the void. This isn’t a kind of pained and upset breakup letter or heartbreak track that’s penned in the immediate aftermath. Instead, the message of the song is a more eventual conclusion that is rarely shared. Instead, it exists like a silent goodbye that’s only ever whispered into the air rather than shared with the other party. Because, by this point, the other person feels regardless like a distant figure.
Rowsell puts it beautifully, “The threads that kept us together / Were already wearing thin.” There is no more pleading or fighting to be done on this track. ‘No Hard Feelings’ is an anthem for the point after that, when the reasons behind a split become clear and even though both sides are still sad and still hurt, the bitterness has burnt out, and the tethers between them have split. There are no more clawing hands, fighting trying to keep hold of each other, instead, Rowsell sings “we both will take the win” as she waves from her side of the breakup to a lost love, now existing in their own space.
But that’s what’s so beautiful about the song. So often, the emotions that are shared in art, music and literature are huge and explosive. As humans, we’ve romanticised and glorified the extremes. There are countless songs about infatuation, about complete and utter devastation, about huge fights and grand declarations and gestures. We’re all well versed in the language of heartbreak as it serves as inspiration time and time again. In turn, the comfort with that has made the sharp pain of loss easier because we understand it. But the result is that sometimes, the period right after can feel even harder. Once friends stop checking in and the immediate crisis of a break-up subsides, grief takes on a new and tricky form, similar to the weeks after a funeral once the cards stop arriving.
It’s often hard to know what to do then when it seems that suddenly life just goes on and the only option is to move forward. With little art made about this weird moment in time after it all, it can feel untethering and confusing. Just outside of the impact zone, as the explosion begins to subside and the wounds begin to heal, it’s this no man’s land of feeling that Rowsell is writing from.
“It’s not hard to remember / When it was tough to hear your name / Crying in the bathtub / To ‘Love Is A Losing Game’”, she sings, looking back on the phase just before. But as she steels herself to move on and continues venturing through the heartache, she delivers words of wisdom like an affirmation for herself and any listeners who relate; “There’s only so much sulking that the heart can entertain.”
In all its beautiful simplicity, the phrase “no hard feelings” becomes Wolf Alice’s final wave goodbye.
