The head and the heart rivers and roads lyrics

Rivers and roads, by The Head and the Heart, is a beautiful, brilliant indie pop song. This band is one I have come to know and love: they have a summer night, windows down, car ride kind of vibe. Each of their songs hold deep meaning, it was hard to choose just one to talk about (so don’t be surprised if you see them in another post!). The band formed back in the summer of 2009, and released their incredible first album, The Head and the Heart, in 2011. Rivers and Roads, in my opinion, is the greatest piece of art in it.

“A year from now, we’ll all be gone, all our friends, will move, away”                                                    “Nothing is, as it, has been, and I miss, your face, like hell”                                                                          “If you don’t, know what, to make of this, then we, will not, relate”                                                “Rivers and roads, rivers and roads, rivers ’till I reach you”

The first interpretation is the clearly literal one: the physical distance that separates people causes this undeniable feeling pain. Something we all crave is love; it’s comforting and makes us feel like we’re worth something. So when people we love have to leave us, whether it be for college, moving to a different state, even death, we feel empty. There’s feelings of loneliness, sadness, longing for that person, and it’s going to be a long time before we get to see them again.

The second interpretation is much more abstract: the rivers and roads are the distance we are from someone, mentally and emotionally. These are the people we held close to us once in our lives: a sibling, a best friend, a person we considered to be our “soulmate”. These people who had been our everything are now strangers, people we’ve grown apart from, and there “rivers and roads” in between us and our old relationship to that person.

Both meanings, though sad, are something everybody can relate to. When I was leaving for school, I listened to this in my car, while passing roads and bodies of water, and I was thinking about all those people I was leaving behind. Even though it wasn’t permanent, it still caused me great pain, and Rivers and Roads was able to give me an outlet to that feeling.