THE HARDEST THING

You know the hardest thing
Is to say goodbye to someone you love
That's the hardest thing

Putting aside my conflicted feelings about Britpop’s sonic alchemist par excellence, Damon Albarn, I must admit that the heartfelt song Orange County, from his latest Gorillaz project The Mountain, is undoubtedly moving in its simple refrain. The track offers a recognisable home for anyone who has suffered a great loss in their life, a grieving place where too much elaboration and overthinking can disturb the honest encounter with pain, through which acceptance is ultimately found.

For Albarn, the song, along with its sombre prelude, The Hardest Thing, seems to have been inspired both by the end of a 25-year relationship with his partner and by the death of his architect father. There is a distilled beauty in his reflection on the maelstrom of feelings that grief induces, both just before and just after either type of loss.

Awkward conversations and the sharing of honest feelings with those on the brink of ending a relationship or departing this world also seem to be prominent themes in the lyrics, highlighting both the urgency of expressing profound sentiments and fears before time runs out entirely, and the reality that the answers we seek for reassurance may never arrive as we hope.

Orange County’s unique power also derives from its paradox: combining bouncy pop rhythms with a transient, whimsical whistle that seems to suggest that, no matter how deeply we fall into a spiral of grief, life moves on, and we must move with it. The buoyant, almost banal whistling motif reminds us that we cannot remain for long in our oblivion of despair, because life does not allow it. The dreamlike sleep of grief that we so often desire becomes a longing akin to death itself. Yet we have no choice but to continue engaging with life, living with the memory of those already gone, secure in both our wounded hearts and our restless minds.