Cry

Ashnikko has told that the song is about her best friend sleeping with her ex, here's a quote from her Instagram: "This song is about my (now ex) best friend who slept with my (now ex) boyfriend behind my back. I was so heartbroken and mad at her for so long for betraying me. It wasn’t even about the boy anymore (he was dispensable lol). I write songs to help me get over things, and writing this song a year and a half ago did just that." I think the friend and boyfriend probably started dating after this, because there's a reference to their sex life in her other song, Halloweenie.

Like many of her lyrics, these are also pretty self-explanatory once you know what they're about, but I'm gonna deep dive into them anyway. I also wrote some thoughts on the music video under the lyric interpretation.

"I'm a tough bitch, but I'm sensitive" If you look at her other songs, you really get the image of a tough bitch, who cannot be hurt by anyone. But she is still human and has feelings, and her (ex) best friend had the power to hurt her.

"Coulda, coulda, coulda quick fuck be a sedative? It's relative 'cause you were pushing me out to the fucking edge" Someone on Genius wrote that she's talking about herself in the first sentence, but my first thought is the best friend... It could be interpreted as her needing some sedation, something to numb the pain and anger her friend is causing her. Or it could be interpreted as her friend is gonna need to be sedated, because she's really pushing Ash's buttons, but deep down inside, she doesn't want her friend to feel the pain she's about to cause her. This would also undermine the sex that happened, calling it "a quick fuck". Also, my dirty mind saw the words "fucking edge" and thought of the sexual act of edging (bringing someone to the verge of climax and then stopping, repeatedly). But it doesn't make sense in the context of the song, so it's probably accidental.

"I'm about to rip all of my hair out 'cause I'm madder than I've ever been" Have you seen Ashnikko? Her hair is a gorgeous, vivid blue color and pretty much floor-length. It's gorgeous and expensive. She must be VERY mad to rip all of it out.

"I just wanna call you, but I know I can't Fuck a fuckin' fuckboy, fuckin' up my plans" Who do you call if someone sleeps with your boyfriend/ex? Your best friend, so you can trash talk the bitch. But what if your best friend is the bitch..? On Genius, someone said the next line of "fucks" she uses is called a semantic satiation, "where a word is repeated so much it starts to lose all meaning". As much as I like those fancy words describing a literal line of fucks she gives, I disagree. I think they hold multiple meanings. First "fuck" is a verb, like "fuck him", expressing anger. as is also the second "fuckin'", but that one is also describing how he was literally fucking (having sex with) Ash's best friend. Fuckboy is a slang term and it means a man who only wants casual sex with multiple women and doesn't want to commit. The type who sleeps with you, but also sleeps with your friend. And the fuckboy is fucking up aka messing up her plans to call her friend.

"Lay another finger on me, you could lose a hand You could lose a hand, you could lose a Bitch --" Do not touch me or I will lose it, but also, the last "you could lose a" is missing the word "hand" and the sentence combined with the next line becomes "you could lose a bitch" - if you sleep with your best friend's boyfriend, you could lose her. She calls herself bitch twice in this song - in the beginning and now - and I feel like this kinda softens it when she calls her best friends a bitch.

"Bitch, are you tryna make me cry? Are you tryna make me lose it?" Not "you are making me cry" or "you are making me lose it", but asking, are you trying to do so. Did you sleep with him just to hurt me? This isn't about the actual sex that happened, that's not the point. Ash is hurt because her friend betrayed her. What she did is irrelevant. Why she did it, the intention behind it, is relevant.

"You win some and lose some" The best friend won him, or at least some sex with him, but lost Ash.

Grimes wrote the next parts herself, so I'm writing "Grimes" on top of all her lines to signify it's her and not Ashnikko. Also, I think that in this song Ash is saying what she's saying out loud, and Grimes is what she is thinking but not saying out loud. The music video supports this theory, in my opinion. I wrote about the video in the end of this comment, since I have many thoughts about it.

Grimes: "This is the winter of my discontent Everything else is irrelevant" The first line is a Shakespeare reference. Gloucester’s monologue from Shakespeare’s Richard III starts: "Now is the winter of our discontent" and in modern times, it is used to describe the rock bottom, the lowest point in your life. Ash's best friend betraying her is the winter of her discontent, her rock bottom, her lowest point. Her best friend caused her to hit rock bottom and nothing else matters. He doesn't matter anymore, the best friend doesn't matter anymore. Nothing else matters when you feel like you've got nothing left. All reason and logic go out the window, as you're consumed by your own feelings.

Grimes: "Are you trying to make me cry? (Cry)" Even in her mind, she's thinking this same sentence. Did her friend hurt her on purpose?

"This is the winter of my discontent This is the winter of a never end It'll be fine if you just repent" You feel as if this winter is never going to end, you'll never get up from this again. But it'll be fine if the best friend shows remorse and repents. Then Ash might be able to move on and rise up again. At this point of the song, I wasn't sure if she was being serious, though, or sarcastically saying "it's all good, just say you're sorry".

"Careful with me I'm volatile (this could get gruesome) Careful with me I'm homicidal (this could get gruesome)" English isn't my first language, and so I googled these words (volatile and homicidal) to get the full meaning of each word. What I found was: Volatile = "liable to change rapidly and unpredictably, especially for the worse" Homicidal = "capable of or tending towards murder; murderous" So, neither of these words suggest that Ash IS going to be violent towards the friend, just that there is a potential in the situation for it to go that way, potential to get gruesome. But if the friend repents, they might be able to move on.

Interpretation on the music video: It's an animated video, where a three-headed Ash has parts missing from her body. She is chasing a green-haired girl, the best friend. Best friends tries to shoot Ash with a gun, but Ash just gains power from this. The friend has one of those half-a-heart necklaces. Ash rips the friend in half. Ash almost cries a tear, but not quite. Scene cuts to Ash being inside a robot-shaped (mecha) spacecraft in space, crying her eyes out when she sees her half of the heart necklace. Scene cut to Grimes, who is a hive-minded set of fairy characters in a forest, crying even harder than Ash (tears running down her entire body). She sends a ball of light up to Ash, exploding the spacecraft. Crying Ash is floating naked in space. Huge Grimes character touches her with a finger, Ash goes through a magical girl (anime reference) transformation into the monster we saw in the beginning, and approaches the friend. Ash's body grows extra heads (Grimes' heads) that come out of her head like the snakes on Medusa's head.

Three heads could be a reference to Cerberus, the three-headed dog in Greek mythology. He guards the gates on Hell, letting people in but not out. The three heads represent the past, the present and the future: obsessing about the past, overwhelming in the present and fear of the future. (Source: http://extraordinaryconversations.com/thought-leadership/2014/4/16/the-three-headed-dog) In the video, Ash is letting her friend enter the hell she's about to unleash, but is not going to let her leave before she's done. Ash is also obsessing about the cheating that happened in the past, overwhelmed by the present feeling (the winter of her discontent) and fear about the future of the friendship.

She has parts missing from her body, which I think represent how the events have made her feel not quite herself, like she missed parts of herself in the fall of the relationship and friendship. The parts she is missing are a huge chunk of her right pelvis/stomach/back and parts of her chest (above the boobs). I think she's missing a heart, and is not missing any legs or arms she needs for chasing and ripping, but otherwise I think the parts are pretty random. She might be also missing parts because the friend has shot her before the video starts (when the cheating happened and when Ash found out).

Green hair is probably the hair color of the friend in real life as well, but it could also represent jealousy she felt towards the relationship, which caused her to go after the boyfriend? Idk, I might be reading into things, but I think it's just an awesome coincidence if something was not meant to be an artistic choice and it turns out to be one anyway.

After Ash rips the friend in half, she's literally half the woman she used to be. Just like sleeping with her friend's boyfriend made her figuratively be half the woman she used to be.

I don't know why Ash is in space (maybe this represents her mind?) but the mecha is clear - it's the touch bitch exterior we see, under which she is sensitive and crying.

Grimes is Ash's inner self, her thoughts, where she is crying even more than in her private spacecraft. Grimes is also kinda like a literal fairy godmother, looking after Ash and giving her strength. But in reality, fairies don't exist and we need to seek that strength from within by ourselves. That's how Grimes is also Ash's innermost self.

Ash floats naked, because she's exposed and vulnerable.

In some anime shows, there are these characters called magical girls. They're the main characters of the show and they are usually teenage girls in real life, but for a magical world or magical protecting purposes in the real world, they occasionally go through this transformation into a magical girl, spinning in air while they change into a more mature, more powerful version of themselves. Ash has that transformation and comes out as the Cerberus monster instead of a beautiful young woman, like in magical girl anime.

The Medusa heads are Ash's inner self, all sides of her persona, out in the open. And all of them done crying. In modern feminism, Medusa represents female rage, which is very appropriate when you think of the song. You can read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medusa#Feminism