The Hague :: "Everyone"

Even for the least cynical listener an opening lyric like, "Love is complicated and cruel" rings as a bit of platitude. After all, another small rock song about small heartbreak is like another big Michael Bay movie with big explosions. We have seen this movie before. For The Hague, a bunch of seemingly earnest Pacific Northwesterners, their lead single, "Everyone" for forthcoming LP Black Rabbit runs deeper than this initial lyrical foray. "Everyone" rather immediately spirals into a melody backed by a string arrangement that implies a street full of spinning people, maybe even a full cast, our narrator now cast a legitimate protagonist in a musical where people wear dark jeans and have tattoos. Some of this Central Casting is in the chorus where the band shouts, "Everyone in this town looks like everyone in this town", turning a song about a small heartbreak into a song about heartbreak in general. The first verse lyric of "you were selfish and now you're alone" changes noticeably to a final verse about everyone quitting, fires of pity and regret, a platitude that actually works here. The particular becoming the general is another rock music trope, my pain is your pain is everyone's pain, a sort of Kantian imperative where one sadness is writ large for "Everyone." The antagonist here is accused of the worst of crimes in the grammatically incorrect last lyric, "you wouldn't know nothing about that." This, unlike the rest, is specific.

Listen :: The Hague - "Everyone"