Get Lyrical: Andrew Belle's "Make It Without You"
posted in: Artist Features • Features
Last week, Get Lyrical gave you a taste of both the romantic and decidedly unromantic fare on OurStage. This week, we forego the happy love songs altogether and look into a break-up song that”despite being beautiful”is pretty much just depressing. The song is Andrew Belle‘s Make It Without You, from his 2010 release The Ladder. Grey’s Anatomy fans might recognize the tune from a May 2010 episode; it played while Alex signed her divorce papers and Callie and Arizona had their break-up talk. Grey’s music producers were spot on (as they usually are when they manipulate viewer emotions with a well-timed song), because Make It Without You is truly heart-wrenching.
At the song’s opening, Belle is planning to leave town when he gets a call from someone asking him not to
go. He sings that he can’t stay, saying that somewhere, there’s a Northbound train. Those lyrics, paired with the song’s title, might initially cause listeners to believe that this song is intended to be an f-you to an ex. Lines like, This is the starting of a brand new day/I never liked this town much, anyway, only seem to prove this point. But despite this claim, and with the repeated mantra, I’ll make it without you, in the song’s chorus, Belle never appears certain that he actually will make it. His annunciation makes the track sound like a desperate attempt to convince himself that he’ll be okay on his own. And with a casual nod to his burgeoning alcoholism”I never cared much for the taste of gin/I still don’t now, oh, but it’s been helpin’” the listener has to wonder if Belle actually will make it alone.
Make It Without You fits perfectly as the tenth and final track on The Ladder, closing out a record whose major themes include transition and change. Its painful uncertainty and delicate melody make it an ideal song to play at the end of an album, a relationship or a tear-jerking television drama.