Any songs on the tortured poets department or the anthology that remind you of Emilie agreste or any other ML character? (though I know Emilie’s your special interest) I feel like the albatross and I can do it with a broken heart remind me so much of Adrien, and I always love your Taylor swift lyric analysis posts.
EXCELLENT question considering taylor swift just released an emilie agreste album. (and you’re so right about the adrien songs i definitely thought so too.) there were 6 songs that stood out to me as emilie songs, the first being:
I Can Fix Him, No Really I Can
this one is. well. it’s obvious that emilie is into toxic men. i love the idea that when she first got entangled with gabe, he was just an absolute broke problematic punk bisexual disaster (we can't ignore the harriel evidence) who her parents hated sooooo bad. and like literally everybody was so right that he was bad news but emilie was so confident that she could fix him until she finally realized that she was fr dying and he was actually going to terrorize the world about it. oops.
I Can Do It With A Broken Heart
already mentioned as an adrien song (which it is) but emilie and adrien are admittedly very similar and this song hits on exactly why. it’s about having such a tight control on how you’re perceived by others, putting on a fake persona that can be idolized and adored by everyone no matter how you’re feeling inside. it’s about being SO good at your job that you can’t actually get out of it. accidentally mythologizing yourself. losing your grasp of what is performance vs authenticity. you get it
Clara Bow
OKAY THIS ONE MAKES ME CRAAAZY. okay okay okay. so SPEAKING of accidentally mythologizing yourself, the song clara bow hits on a lot of the same themes as icdiwabh but there's this added sense of inevitable circularity to it that just drives me insane. I especially think a lot about adrien almost inheriting his mother's space in the public eye - the way emilie's acting career and universal adoration paved the way for adrien to be famous from birth, the kind of fame that makes his life almost unlivable at times. the whole bridge articulates it beautifully, I think - "beauty is a beast that roars down on all fours/demanding more" and "it's hell on earth to be heavenly." the idea that the world demands beauty from emilie, and she gives and gives until her ambition eventually breaks her, and she passes the performance down to adrien. and he takes up the mantle. the future's bright, dazzling.
Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus
so again, we return to the alleged bisexual punk disaster youth of gabriel agreste😭 this song is mostly related to my personal way that I imagine gabe and emilie's early years lol. I imagine that one of the things that drew emilie to gabe initially was that he was so opposite of the way her british nobility family was, and she was trying to escape that life. but eventually, once the money and success got to him, he became someone exactly like the family she once ran from. and she became different too, in a way she always regretted. hence the "say that I loved you the way that you were." the part of this song that feels VERY emilie to me is the "I changed into goddesses, villains, and fools/changed plans and lovers and outfits and rules/all to outrun my desertion of you." I think that emilie is very malleable, easily adapting her personality and presentation to fit whoever she's trying to please at the moment. but she never plans to stick around for long.
I Hate It Here
this one makes me laugh bc "I'd say the 1830's but without all the racists😒" ABSOLUTELY feels like something emilie agreste would say😭 and feel like she cured racism. but as for the actual song, I see emilie as always tending toward escapism. no matter how content she's trying to be in her situation, she's always stitching together an escape plan in the back of her mind. she doesn't like being tied down. she's such a romantic, and constantly disappointed by reality. always planting secret gardens in her mind
The Bolter
THE BOLTER!!!!! IS THE EMILIE AGRESTE SONG OF ALL TIME. TO ME. okay okay every single line but especially verse 2. "he was a cad, wanted her bad/just like any good trophy hunter/and she liked the way it tastes" just SAY gabriel and emilie. just say it. also the "splendidly selfish, charmingly helpless" SCREAMS emilie to me. one of the first things that ever came to me about emilie was her being flighty and kind of unreliable, as well as deeply attention seeking. I think of her as someone who gets restless if she's in the same place for too long, who has trouble with commitment. it's easy for her to feel trapped, and her impulse is always to break free. thinking about how content she was to leave behind her loved ones, "there's an escape in escaping" really defines her character to me. and of course it bleeds into adrien's struggle with confinement and tendency to run away when he's feeling unwanted etc etc <3
THANKS FOR ASKING A QUESTION SO RELEVANT TO MY CURRENT INTERESTS<3 umm I will throw in a bonus adrien song which is robin. ok goodnight