This one hurts, over and over. The melodies are just as beautiful as the dreams that the singer used to believe in, and the song repeatedly describes those dreams from the past and the pain in the present.
The meter of the lines has a precision that adds to the cruelly inevitable outcome. Those first four lines all end on an emotional negative. We know from the second line (in fact, from the title) how the story ends, but the singer seems to find it most galling that his earlier expectations were so badly betrayed.
Many songs repeat the hook because they don't have much to say, but in this case, the repetition comes across as the way a suffering person keeps reevaluating the unpleasant past and finds it just as bleak every time. But the sweetness of those soaring upbeats keeps setting us up for the heartache that immediately follows.
This one hurts, over and over. The melodies are just as beautiful as the dreams that the singer used to believe in, and the song repeatedly describes those dreams from the past and the pain in the present.
The meter of the lines has a precision that adds to the cruelly inevitable outcome. Those first four lines all end on an emotional negative. We know from the second line (in fact, from the title) how the story ends, but the singer seems to find it most galling that his earlier expectations were so badly betrayed.
Many songs repeat the hook because they don't have much to say, but in this case, the repetition comes across as the way a suffering person keeps reevaluating the unpleasant past and finds it just as bleak every time. But the sweetness of those soaring upbeats keeps setting us up for the heartache that immediately follows.