Back in March we wrote about ‘Not in Love‘, a single by Texas‘ Lady Dan on Earth Libraries. A song which “prob[ed] into the complicated tangle of existence not with timid reluctance but fierce determination,” as we put it. “The result is both stinging and affirming, seizing the wound in order to close it, or perhaps just to feel the pain.” The track was part of a double single 7″ release, and now the partner song ‘Fuck the Stars’ has been released too.
“I wrote this song after a significant breakup,” Lady Dan explains. “A friend was trying to comfort me by telling me the breakup was due to the placement of the moon and stars. All I could think in that moment was, ‘If this is true, then fuck the moon and fuck the stars.'” The song is as irascible and brooding as this description suggests, from the vehement spit of the opening line (“fuck the moon and fuck the stars”) to the slow yearning of the middle section.
But there is an arc to the track, a sense of change across its run, something gained via the central admission of the song. “Regardless of astrology,” Lady Dan continues, “breakups suck and they can just happen because they happened, not for any cosmic reason or otherwise.” Acknowledging this help push the song beyond its bitterness into a cathartic climax, the racing rhythm lifting the very point of breaking before flattening out into something like clarity. “And if I never left,” the final line concludes, “I’d be feeling a lot worse than I do right now.”
