“Better If You Don’t” is the tenth and final song on CHVRCHES‘ fourth album, Screen Violence.
Unlike most of CHVRCHES songs, it is guitar-driven.
Lyrically, it contemplates times, places, and friends gone by, as bandmember Martin Doherty put it “our lineage as musicians.”
[Verse 1]
Drinking to the things I can't take back
Thinking of the friends and faith I lack
And no one broke my heart quite like that man
[Refrain]
It's better if you don't
Care, but if you do
I won't follow you again
[Verse 2]
TV's on, but facing at the wall
Can they tell I don't like me at all?
I'm never as alone as I am back home
[Refrain]
Pulling every thread
Seemed like a thing to do
Now I can't give it back
My favourite kind of blue
It's better if I don't
Dwell, but if I do
I won't call on you again
[Verse 3]
Tinseltown was always in the rain
I've been gone and notice every change
And some of them arе not our friends
And some of them arе still our friends, but dead
[Refrain]
It's better if I don't
Think too much of you
I've been on my own
So I should see it through
I mumble when I speak
But I mean it when I do
I carry what I keep
I don't miss a lot of you
I drink and I think too much
I should quit one of the two
But I won't wish for luck
And I won't bother you
It's better if you don't
Care, but if you do
I won't follow you again
Better If You Don’t was written by Iain Cook & Lauren Mayberry & Martin Doherty.
Better If You Don’t was produced by CHVRCHES.
CHVRCHES released Better If You Don’t on Fri Aug 27 2021.
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When you can’t go home to a place or a time, there’s a grief to that. This song looks like a night out in rainy Glasgow when I was 22. I can’t go back to any of that—it literally doesn’t exist. I googled “sad about the passing of time” and all these people said, “[That happens] to everyone. Get over...