lighthearted "borrowed"
One of the best songs yet by one of Athens' best bands
I’ve spent a lot of words in this newsletter relating my fondness for the band lighthearted, so it will be no surprise to readers that my first new music Friday countdown of 2025 was for the twin-harmony folk-pop band’s first new original release in 21 months1.
The new single “borrowed” is a song about the impermanence of life, people and relationships and the totality of little moments that comprise living, and the freedom that come from understanding and accepting that.
We all live on borrowed time
I gladly gave you some of mine
There’s a hint of contrast in the song’s refrain — since time is fleeting, to give it away to an unappreciative or ungrateful party could be thought of as a waste, the differentiation between others’ borrowed time and your own freely (and gladly!) given time suggesting a hint of bitterness, a way of taking the high road while making sure you let the other party know that you’re taking the high road, a self-defense mechanism via passive-aggressive parting shot that sort of says hey, I never expected you to stick around anyway!
Or maybe it’s not bitterness but world-weary resignation, a willingness to try to stay hopeful amid the understanding that ultimately all things do eventually end, underlined by the way Gracie’s voice cracks uncharacteristically in the opening bars.
The song’s highlight is the showstopper of a bridge, which consists of a laundry list of all things borrowed, including, yes, bitterness, debts, and “pain burrowing inside my chest” — but that’s kind of the point: the hurt that comes from loss is temporary too.
“Those things do not stay; the pain doesn’t stay,” Gracie says. “I think that it’s a beautiful thing that pain cannot be dry-erased and removed from our lives. Scars exist because they represent that healing is possible — and healing is permanent.”2
We all live on borrowed time
Am I just the sum of mine?
And still, there’s a hint of longing in the coda, in which Gracie repeatedly wonders aloud if that’s all she is, just this sequence of temporary events. But maybe what the healing is really all about is the giving freely and steadfastly, without expectation of outcome, the willingness to spend what’s fleeting without reservation and the unwillingness to fall into cynicism.3
The song comes with an accompanying video, the band’s first since “wild woods,” similarly shot in fields of grass, though without the need to drag a whole piano this time around.
lighthearted will be headlining Rock the Ark, a benefit concert for The Ark United Ministry Outreach Center, with Khaliko and Karma Kat supporting, on January 25th at The Foundry.
Nominations for the 2025 Vic Chesnutt Songwriter of the Year Award4 are now open. Artists who released a song in the calendar year 2024 while living in Athens-Clarke County or one of the five contiguous counties (Barrow, Jackson, Madison, Oconee, or Oglethorpe) are eligible.
The five finalists will be chosen by a panel of guest judges and will receive $250 and perform their nominated song at the 40 Watt Club on May 1st. The winner will receive a grand prize of $1,500 and more.
In addition, tickets are now on sale for the inaugural Athens’ Songwriters Forum, a coproduction of the Vic Chesnutt Awards and Athens Resonates, featuring the legendary Andy LeMaster, 2023 Vic Chesnutt Award finalist Avery Leigh Draut, and 2022 winner Elijah Johnston. The show will feature performances from all three as well as conversation and discussion about the art and craft of songwriting, moderated by producer extraordinaire and host Drew Vandenberg.
It will always be a point of pride that Gracie, Eliza, and Toni spent a decent chunk of the afternoon before the release of from here on out in Amplify Studio with myself and a couple coworkers recording a Satellite Session.
The song makes for a nice pairing with “Stains,” (and what is a scar if not a stain on your body?) from the band’s debut EP asking for a friend, a longtime favorite of mine that moves from questioning and uncertainty into reclamation and ownership with the altering of just a few words (from “What if I changed? What if I stayed the same?” to “That’s why I changed. I didn’t stay the same,” etc).
Missed my last therapy appointment; I think it might be starting to show.
An award for which Gracie was a finalist in 2024, for “riverside.”