Video: Iron & Wine – “Bitter Truth”
Directed by Hannah Welever. From Beast Epic, out now on Sub Pop.
Man, if my middle school student activities coordinator had booked Iron & Wine to play my formal dance I’d have been pissed! Can you imagine the heckling? Although it’s funny to think about Sam Beam covering “What I Like about You” and “Careless Whisper.” Actually, I bet he’d do a pretty good “Careless Whisper.” Or maybe not. Anyway…
“Bitter Truth,” as the title suggests, is my favorite kind of breakup song: bitter. Or as the chorus calls it, “getting even in a song.”
I kept reading hidden meanings
You would rage how I was wrong
That life was too short, and you’d stayed too long
Let’s be honest, we were strongest
Until I let you drag me down
I was sorry then, I’m not now
Relationships are complicated. And that’s true whether you’re a middle aged man or a middle school tween.
Director Hannah Welever told Billboard: “I think there’s something really poetic about how we deal with our emotions at different ages. Using the song as a backbone, we were able to revisit this window of time full of excitement and wonder, and compare it to a more pragmatic present-day self. Relationships evolve and shift constantly and I find that to be such a ubiquitous, human characteristic I find in Sam’s music.”