Songs That Make Me Feel: Mistakes

Artist: Lake Street Dive

Song: Mistakes

Album: Side Pony, 2016

Click here to the song listen on Youtube

“Thinking that I'm gonna change

Oh, it's good

That these men don't know each other

Well, every time I lose one, I can just move on

I always find another”

On the surface, this is speaking about relationships and lovers.  A confident person has the capacity, knows their worth, scorned or not (most likely the former), and will have the opportunity to line up the next domino, or a whole Rube Goldberg series of relations when a partner is no longer in the picture.  The next dime will be set up, and be ripe for the fall. 

Where the song’s double entendre hits home is the reference to another is singular, but applies to the singer’s as-the-past-has-shown-us relationships are mistakes, they have been, and the next will also carry the sad tradition.  Inevitability.  God’s great plan.  The choice has already been made.  If Regis wanted to ask if you were sure on Who Wants to be a Millionaire he couldn’t because the story is written.  

If the above quoted lyric is read with a relationship in mind, it works, especially with reference to these men.  If read from the perspective of a fallible, clumsy, self-destructive person speaking about anything in life where their track record is tracking down, it works also.  Brilliant writing.  To personify the concept of mistakes is atrocious, yet poetic.  These Mistakes with a capital M, have names, scent, they moved in, bought a dinner or two and a knick knack, and fell short of the singer’s standards.  Or, she fell short?  Could it all be unnecessary expectations?  Should’s?  Could’s?  Supposed to’s?  The Mistake, or mistake, is in the batter and the cake.  It is had, and eaten.  However, this cake is indigestible.  This mistake will live again.