Drake – Brand New

So Far Gone, Track 17 : Brand New

One of my mates was describing the movie ‘Her’ to me, and he said it was basically the worst movie to watch after a break-up, because it deals with the idea that once you reach a certain age, you’ve pretty much felt all the emotions there are to feel. Happiness, pain, love, grief, heartbreak – you get old enough and you’ll have been through them all. And so, when it comes to getting into a relationship again, nothing is new anymore. You’re tainted by the past, past experiences and past mistakes, and from first meeting to falling in love, they’re all motions you’ve gone through before. Which does seem pretty depressing. Will anything you ever experience again feel as good as the first time? Can you find joy again in the all too familiar, knowing that you’ve been in love before, and knowing that love ends?

Listening to ‘Brand New’ reminded me of that conversation.

In this song Drake struggles with being with a woman who seems like she’s been through it all before, he knows her past and who she’s been with and it feels as if he’s competing with the life she lived before him, ‘feels like I’m in crazy competition with the past, that’s why I gotta ask, is anything I’m doing brand new?’ Or has she felt it all already with someone else? And if Drake is somehow able to get over her past boyfriends, and past mistakes and his personal insecurities, is she herself able to let go of those experiences? Or are they just two people embarking on another new beginning to an inevitable end?