True Love Waits 21 years
For Radiohead
There’s a quote supposedly from Leonardo Da Vinci roaming around the internet: “Art is never finished, only abandoned.” How about a song that has debuted in live shows and has been in the works since earlier than 1995, only being released in a studio album as recently as 2016? Well, that is the case for Radiohead’s True Love Waits. It was first officially released by the band as part of a live album, where its purely acoustic strings serenade lead singer Thom Yorke’s vocals. He himself stated in a recent interview that the song was struggling in its own simplicity, that it needed a reason to justify its existence in a full-on album. Until it finally did in (at the time of writing) Radiohead’s last album, A Moon Shaped Pool. Serving as the final track of 11 songs, the recording is reduced to mere piano-filled vocals, even more minimalistic than the initial acoustic. Fitting, as a closer to an album the song goes full circle to the way it was originally devised, a coda for live performances becoming closure for the entire band’s fanbase.
The title of the song itself may point to a movement of the same name, a Christian group that promotes chastity before marriage. Which is perfectly ironic considering the song’s first lines proclaim: “I’ll drown my beliefs, to have your babies.” Another interpretation may be about the concept of true love itself, either a critique or a celebration. One of the other lines speaks of true love living on lollipops and crisps, which Thom states is based on news he read of a child left home alone by their parents, only subsisting by eating the aforementioned snacks. Perhaps waiting for true love is as naive as a child believing their parents will always be there for them, or perhaps it is a sign of strength and endurance; linking back to the movement, maybe it’s a symbol of faith.
The difference between the two versions, bridged by a quarter lifetime, is in how Thom sings the same lyrics distinctly. Separated by years of new memories, the pervading guitar riffs of youth dissipate into spacious piano keys of recollection. Whilst the former version is recorded in front of a live audience, out in an open environment, the latter is far more intimate, the lyrics echoing in a solitary room. It is as if what once was pleading for true love to wait, a repeated reassertion, has slowly become an acceptance of it, a rhetorical statement. Where one is foresight, a young adult’s hopelessly romantic optimism, the other is hindsight, an adult’s acknowledgment of the way things are. Listening to it now, the lyrics ring hollow; written a lifetime ago, it’s like reading a childhood journal of someone’s confession for a once crush, or an apology letter sent to an old ex-something. The title sung repeatedly in the song itself feels like hope, seeping through time and tired hearts, a trite mantra reminding a bygone era.
Loud begging surrenders to quiet resignation, not knowing any better contrasted with a life well lived, the song is sung first with the voice of someone who wishes to be seen, and second by an adult who has seen. In the end, the song’s last line: “don’t leave,” disconnects itself from wanting, and becomes remembering (the beloved). A tragedy from two points in time, maybe the song’s message is simply:
If it’s true love, it’ll wait. Love stays, unlike people, it never ages (if it’s true). True love would wait, so no more pleading, just letting (go). But true love is also too often romanticized, clamored for by lovesick crowds, like the audience heard clapping in the background of the song’s live version. And as the album version tells sonically, sometimes lyrics do not reflect reality, the concept of true love likely haunts attics like all the ghosts of unfinished businesses. Along with things you can’t move on from or age out of, true love waits out of time, collecting dust beside prayer books and bedtime stories.
“Art is never finished, only abandoned,” someone somewhere said once. As is the case for art, it may be the same for love.
