"You're So Last Summer" -Taking Back Sunday

Taking Back Sunday is a popular Pop-Punk Rock type band from Long Island, New York. Since forming in 1999 they have gone through many lineup changes and only two of the current members are from the original band. They use a layering style of singing where there is a lead singer but also a very prominent back-up singer. The two usually take turns singing every other line giving they’re vocals a pleasing harmony. Adam Lazzara, the lead singer and songwriter, writes most of his lyrics about first hand experiences with love and heartbreak. In the song “You’re So Last Summer”, Adam uses varying point of views to convey a guy and a girl’s feelings during a specific relationship.

The song starts with the lyrics “She said ‘don’t, don’t let it go to your head’”, a lyric from the third person subjective mode. This first line sets the structure of the rest of the song, going back from one point of view to another trying to tell the story a relationship. The main character had strong feelings for the girl, but she only thought of their relationship as a fling. The opening lyric is him recalling something the girl had said to him about “boys like (him) are a dime a dozen”. This statement makes him feel dejected about the love he thought they had. During the chorus he sings “All I need to know is that I’m something you’ll be missing”, this lyric being from the first person narrative mode. The chorus shows his need for this girl to recognize what they had and maybe come back to him. The chorus is a constant that gives the song structure by going back to the first person. The song then switches to second person narrative mode and then back to first person when he says, “You could slit my throat, and with my one last gasping breath I’d apologize for bleeding on your shirt”. This line shows his devotion to the girl and for how much this guy would do for her. Near the end of the song he goes to a mix of third person subjective and first person by giving a quote from the girl and his feelings all during one point. He says “If I’m just ‘bad news’, then you’re a liar” pointing out that at one point the girl had said something that made him feel like she was in love with him, but now she is saying that he is just bad news making her a liar in his eyes.

Without the use of different point of views in this song the listener can’t get the feel of both sides of the story. Even though they are both told from one side of the story the different points of view give a better idea of what was happening to both of the subjects in the story. There could have been some bias or embellishment because of it being told by the guy in the relationship but by having some of the story told from the girls perspective make it easier to understand all of the feelings between them.