Shunning Conformity, Movements’ Nineteen

The Band

Movements is a band from Southern California. They were signed to Fearless Records in 2015, the very same year of their inception. They have since collaborated on the fantastic project Songs That Saved My Life, released an EP, a handful of singles, and a wonderful album. They are finished with their sophomore effort and plan to release it sometime soon. The Song which this post refers to comes from the aforementioned EP: Outgrown Things. The principle songwriter of the band is Patrick Miranda, this review will focus on him.

The Song

Nineteen is my favorite song by Movements. It takes that place with pride and ease. Its painful and brutally honest tale of a father and son’s disconnect tells a story far too common. Through its powerful musings on tradition and its stifling of Miranda’s personal creativity to its catchy and ear-worming main riff, the song keeps the listener willingly locked in their own personal haven of music and imagination. It fosters deep thought and possibly life-changing introspection. The tension-suspending introduction to the simple yet so very module and eventually comforting main guitar riff sets the stage for a stomach-churning but earnest look into the heart of a deeply pained man. Its resolution allows for the introduction of infallible lyricism. The introductory verse introduces the main theme: the unearthly expectations that Miranda’s father has for him. The tense verse ends with a painful lament:

“I’m rusting”

Miranda sees the lack of communication between his father and himself as a deeply corroding issue which eats away at him until naught but his most raw and vulnerable self is revealed. Before the listener even has a chance to process the complex metaphor, the drums and bass usher in a throttling transition much like the berating Miranda faces at the hands of his father to the second verse. Miranda muses of his early life with his father, a relatively peaceful one, and what it has evolved to become as his age has progressed: a tormenting and deeply combative feud which has little hope of resolution. The chorus sweeps the listener off their feet with a small gap of silence before Miranda issues the words he wishes he could tell his father to his face:

“I am not who you were at nineteen
I am not the man you want me to be
I’m not a warrior, I am fragile, I am weak
I’m not a warrior, I am not you, I’m barely me”

Miranda hopes to tread his own path, not one laid out for him long before he was born. Why should he care who his father was at Miranda’s age, how should that affect who he is today, why has he been prescribed a future when he can make his own? Why should he lay with the lions when he doesn’t wish to? Why fight in the coliseum where he finds no home? Why be forced into a mold of a person when he hasn’t been afforded the chance to create his own? As far as Miranda is concerned, it doesn’t matter. He is breaking the mold, protesting the conditions he’s been subjected to, becoming the person he’s never been permitted to know. The chorus jumps right into the bridge, a spoken word piece of potent emotion and audible catharsis:

“Someday, I hope to make it clear to you that success is not determined by leather-bound books and ink on paper, but rather the passion that I have found out of heartbreak and anger. I know that happiness is stability, but stability is not a desk job. And I refuse to sacrifice my aspirations for an income and security. What the hell is security?”

There may be a serious distance between Miranda and the man who raised him, but he wishes it could be different. He wants to convince his father that his rebellion comes from a deeply ingrained sense of individuality central to the character Miranda has developed in his limited ability to be his own person, not a place of abomination towards the former. He sees the meaning of life as to succeed, but not in the traditional sense. He sees success as expressing the truest feelings one holds in their heart. In an ultimate act of defiance, Miranda achieves his goal through this song whilst also conveying a serious plea to his father: listen to my voice, see who I am, and take pride in the man who I’ve become in direct opposition to your will. The bridge takes a more upbeat tone as Miranda continues the discussion:

“See, I’d rather die at my fullest. Poor, but free to roam, than let an office drain me slowly for the sake of a home. ‘Cause I watched your endless intermission, an actor trapped in mediocrity. Gave up on your ambitions, and your convictions compared to mine. Oh what a rigid dichotomy.”

Miranda knew when he wrote this song that there was a large chance nobody would hear his voice. That didn’t stop him. He walked the trapeze without a safety net, and he was met with thunderous applause. His father took the easier way out, an existence that secured survival, but which stifled his creativity to the point that he became a cog in the machine he wanted to break out of. The chorus kicks back in for a passionate finale in which Miranda screams his lungs out, sending the song off with the true emotion which it was intended to inspire.

This song reminds me of a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Self-Reliance”. In the essay, he writes: “My life is not an apology, it is a life”. In refuting the claim that he owes society or any authority a single moment of his time, Emerson inspires self-reflection and individuality. Nineteen encapsulates this individuality without fault. It asks an uncaring authority “why should I bow down?”and in receiving no answer it decides not to. With this cathartic and inspiring rebuttal to the constant expectations that any given person is subjected to, Movements creates a song that not only pleases the listener, but leaves them better than they were before they began it.