This is a hauntingly beautiful song about introspection, specifically about looking back at a relationship that started bad and ended so poorly, that the narrator wants to go back to the very beginning and tell himself to not even travel down that road. I believe that the relationship started poorly because of the lines:
"Take me back to the night we met:When the night was full of terrors: And your eyes were filled with tears: When you had not touched me yet"
So, the first night was not a great start, but the narrator pursued the relationship and eventually both overcame the rough start to fall in love with each other:
"I had all and then most of you"
Like many relationships that turn sour, it was not a quick decline, but a gradual one where the narrator and their partner fall out of love and gradually grow apart
"Some and now none of you"
Losing someone who was once everything in your world, who you could confide in, tell your secrets to, share all the most intimate parts of your life, to being strangers with that person is probably one of the most painful experiences a person can go through. So Painful, the narrator wants to go back in time and tell himself to not even pursue the relationship.
This was the perfect song for "13 Reasons Why"
She'll lie and steal and cheat
And beg you from her knees
Make you think she means it this time
She'll tear a hole in you, the one you can't repair
But I still love her, I don't really care
When we were young
Oh-oh, we did enough
When it got cold
Ooh-ooh, we bundled up
I can't be told
Ah-ah it can't be done
It's better to feel pain, than nothing at all
The opposite of love's indifference
So pay attention now
I'm standing on your porch screaming out
And I won't leave until you come downstairs
So keep your head up, keep your love
Keep your head up, my love
Keep your head up, my love
Keep your head up, keep your love
And I don't blame you, dear
For running like you did all these years
I would do the same, you best believe
And the highway signs say we're close
But I don't read those things anymore
I never trusted my own eyes
When we were young
Oh-oh, we did enough
When it got cold
Ooh-ooh, we bundled up
I can't be told
Ah-ah it can't be done
So keep your head up, keep your love
Keep your head up, my love
Keep your head up, my love
Keep your head up, keep your love
Head up, love
Head up, love
Head up, love
Head up, love
And beg you from her knees
Make you think she means it this time
She'll tear a hole in you, the one you can't repair
But I still love her, I don't really care
When we were young
Oh-oh, we did enough
When it got cold
Ooh-ooh, we bundled up
I can't be told
Ah-ah it can't be done
It's better to feel pain, than nothing at all
The opposite of love's indifference
So pay attention now
I'm standing on your porch screaming out
And I won't leave until you come downstairs
So keep your head up, keep your love
Keep your head up, my love
Keep your head up, my love
Keep your head up, keep your love
And I don't blame you, dear
For running like you did all these years
I would do the same, you best believe
And the highway signs say we're close
But I don't read those things anymore
I never trusted my own eyes
When we were young
Oh-oh, we did enough
When it got cold
Ooh-ooh, we bundled up
I can't be told
Ah-ah it can't be done
So keep your head up, keep your love
Keep your head up, my love
Keep your head up, my love
Keep your head up, keep your love
Head up, love
Head up, love
Head up, love
Head up, love
Lyrics submitted by acmctav, edited by blinxbcr, sharkstyle
Stubborn Love Lyrics as written by Wesley Schultz Jeremy Fraites
Lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd.
Lyrics powered by LyricFind
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This song is about child abuse, and the lifelong damage and pain it causes, even extending to those who come to love the abused, like the author of this song.
"She'll lie and steal ...cheat, ....she means it this time"
Abused girls have trust issues that cause them to lie and cheat the very ones who honestly love them, then feel guilty and beg forgiveness...
"She'll tear a hole in you, the one you can't repair But I still love her, I don't really care"
He knows this and knows it’s not really her fault, he really loves her anyway…
"When we were young,... ...can't be done" He's remembering when their relationship was young, and though trust and physical love was difficult, they took it slow...and though all his friends said dump her, he kept on with her.
"It's better to feel pain, than nothing at all, The opposite of love's indifference"
But he can't live without her, and painful though the relationship was, it's better to be with fragile, broken her than to feel "love's indifference"
"So pay attention now, I'm standing on your porch screaming out And I won't leave until you come downstairs" This is the scene where he is at her doorstep in a city, walk-up apartment. When her destructive behaviour started made things go wrong, he tried desperately to get his girl...(to no avail)
"So keep your head up, keep your love..."
He’s saying: I know you we're abused, but don't sink down into this destructive behavior, keep your head up, have self respect, you're a good person. Despite your past, Keep your love (pure).
"And I don't blame ya dear For running like you did, all these years I would do the same, you best believe"
Now it seems to be years later…even from when he wrote the song. Apparently, her fear of loving him caused her to leave him. Again, he doesn't blame her for running away because of the feelings engendered from the memory of the abuse, he would have done the same.
And now she’s even running away from him, someone who loves her...
"And the highway signs say we're close, But I don't read those things anymore I never trusted my own eyes"
And now she lives only miles away...and the highway signs are a sad reminder for him, and even though the signs say they're close (both geophysically, and maybe emotionally) he's stop "looking", he closes his eyes, because it's just..too...painful…. So Keep Your Head up Love, I wish you well.
I agree with it being about child abuse. "When we were young, we did enough. When it got cold, we bundled up." To me this line is about surviving child abuse (the cold) and putting up the necessary defences to do so. Having the attitude, "I can't be told" is a direct result (for me) of bundling up.
Yes it works on so many levels...victims of abuse need, more than most, to just be held without any overt connection to sex. They crave the feeling of innocence and trust that was ruined by the predator...which in this song then seems to lead to all the problems "on the porch." I wish the Lumineers would make another video to this song, same style and director, but this time following the story of how his Stubborn Love won't die for his damaged girl.
i do agree about this my girlfriend has been sexually physicly and emotionally abused by her father and this kinda does sound like me and her only the end doesn't