Ellen on a song that keeps on reappearing

Four chords repeated, no chorus, an awkwardly long intro (“Let’s just pick it up from the choir entry, Paula”). This song loops on itself, and in and out of my life.

I went deep into reddit trying to figure out why this song is universally loved. It has this odd, funky simplicity, pushing the boundaries of its own weirdness to the edge, leaving covers sounding watered down in comparison. I performed a cover at my first ever gig, Basin Music Festival’s Battle of the Bands, 2011. They tagged me in a video on Facebook –“Ellen on stage now, playing an original”. I lost to an R.E.M cover band.

It's a weird, detached riff exploring the grandiosity of love. Maybe Byrne’s vulnerability breeds relatability. The experience he recounts is uncertain, but, I think, brave. Weakness as strength. (Not to discredit @toothoff’s reddit theory that the reference to a weak heart indicates a terminal illness narrative— abstraction allows us to project whatever we need to about ourselves.)

It keeps looping.

A 3RRR on-air dedication of the song, after donating to their April Amnesty drive. A singalong session of Stop Making Sense at the Ritz. A first date in Carlton Gardens when she asked what my favourite song was. The Brighter Café stereo the morning we broke up, eight years later. In a playlist I made last August, ‘Euphoria’. Sung five times in a row at the Little Guy’s backroom karaoke, with Jack, the night he died – “What a joy it is to sing karaoke with you, my Ellen!”. A photo my parents sent of it playing in the car when they drove up hurriedly from Melbourne that weekend to hold me. In a playlist I made last November, ‘Grief’. A friend’s post announcing her brother had died in hospital, surrounding by family, listening to Talking Heads and playing air keyboard. As another friend placed her husband’s ashes under the flame tree he planted on the nature strip.

Looped over in rehearsal. Sung twice tonight.

This song was bigger than Jack to me, but in typical fashion he’s managed to eclipse the rest. He continues to meticulously curate my grief wherever he is.