106, “Northern Lad,” Tori Amos (1998)

150 Favorite Songs: 106, “Northern Lad,” Tori Amos (1998)

I broke up with my first serious girlfriend because of “Northern Lad.”

That’s maybe an overstatement—I broke up with her because I wasn’t in love with her, not because I heard “Northern Lad” and was hypnotized somehow by the piano into ending a relationship that had lasted a year or so. But I didn’t realize what exactly was missing from that relationship until I heard “Northern Lad.” Once I did, once the realization got me, it was clear that I couldn’t go back.

The story isn’t that interesting: Mostly, we were a wobbly match, with different ambitions, different hopes, different ways we wanted to live. We were both nineteen when we met, living in the same place, but we weren’t going to stay there. I hadn’t dated much before her—I’d had one girlfriend in high school, but it wasn’t serious and didn’t last more than a couple of months, and then some mutual crushes or whatever that didn’t turn into anything—so I didn’t know how relationships worked. I suppose that the main point of the relationship was for each of us to start to figure that out, the way most teenage relationships are about practicing for adult relationships. Sometimes the former evolves into the latter—I know several couples that met when they were teenagers and who grew into adults in a way that still fit together—but that wasn’t how ours would go. We weren’t a very good match.

But I didn’t even really know how to identify that, because I had so little experience with relationships at that point.

“Northern Lad” is about a relationship ending, too. Tori and the lad in question, they’re not a good fit either. The song is tender—she likes this guy, her northern lad, has happy memories of when they met, they share inside jokes—but it’s also certain. It opens, like a lot of Tori Amos songs do, with her voice, always rising and pure, accompanied by her piano, and then the drums and the bass come in as she gets to a bridge that comes early into the song, and she starts singing about how she feels something wrong, she knows he does, too, knows that he’s not seeing her for who she is anymore. It’s a neat trick, what she does in this song—the early verse, the one in which she sings about having this northern lad and what attracted her to him, is quiet on the piano and tentative in her voice, and then when she comes into the part about how the relationship ends, her singing is clear and loud, the rhythm section is up and running, the song is full and fleshed out. The switch, from tentativeness to certainty, provides a finality that makes “Northern Lad” a deeply convincing breakup song.

I can remember listening to this song for the first time even all these years later, driving around McAllen with my friend Bob, hearing it come on in his car, probably mostly knowing what I was supposed to do but needing to be told, and then Tori Amos starts singing the hook, and suddenly she was singing directly at me. girls, dan, you’ve got to know when it’s time to turn the page / when you’re only wet / because of the rain. A completely devastating line, but still somehow compassionate—it’s not the northern lad’s fault, it’s not even about blame, but it’s still undeniable that it’s over. There’s nothing to fix, it’s just time. I didn’t even need to get to the second verse for it to be clear.

The breakup was bumpy—I didn’t have experience with that part of it, either—but ultimately successful. It felt like the second verse of “Northern Lad,” where the song is rolling along, and she’s singing to the northern lad again, but it all blends in with that bridge and the chorus, on its own momentum, moving toward its inevitable conclusion. Maybe you have a few more conversations, make a half-hearted attempt at trying again, but once those drums come in, they’re not going away again until it’s over.

Eventually, I’d learn to navigate my feelings without the input of Tori Amos, at least for the most part, but I’m grateful that she put “Northern Lad” out there so I would have it when I needed it.