Eden Rain embraces the old adage “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it” in her achingly intimate song “Great Nothing,” a candid and heartfelt exhale of sorrow and frustration mourning the rise and fall of a frienduationship.
Stream: “Great Nothing” – Eden Rain
In honour of every friendship that turned sour, for every boy that put me on a pedestal and the almost could-have-been-something-really-special that just turned out to be a great… nothing.
I never loved Taylor Swift trying (successfully) to co-opt the phrase “this is why we can’t have nice things.”
Now when you try to type it into Google, her song and its lyrics very strategically appear first – and yet, I genuinely don’t mind when Eden Rain does arguably the same thing to a much older saying: If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.
Of course, Rain does it far more tactfully. The Yorkshire native’s second song of the year does, in fact, dwell in the wreckage of once-blossoming relationships hoisted by their own petard, brought to an end thanks to (unnecessary) intrusions that complicated a once-simple thing to the point of extinction.
Independently released April 25, “Great Nothing” is a candid, heartfelt, and intimate exhale of sorrow and frustration; of entanglements that should never have been, and whose finer details are overshadowed by a familiar, yet nonetheless gut-wrenching pattern. Rain’s voice is hypnotic and hot on the microphone as she half-sings, half-raps a tragedy as old as time:
Looking half a stranger
In the puddles on the pavement
Run the tightrope, flirt with strangers
No man’s land is where I’m safer
I’ve been in this game for ages
Never noticed you were playing
Making rules up as you go
Why couldn’t you just keep it hidden?
If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it
When you wanted more, I didn’t
Now we won’t ever find
our way back to where we were
The great nothing, great nothing
For Rain, this song really is a non-lovers’ lament.
“I wrote ‘Great Nothing’ about the rise and fall of a frienduationship – which is a word I’ve (maybe?) made up to describe the experience of a friend confess feelings for you and everything gets all weird and messy and tangly,” she tells Atwood Magazine. “I feel like when Conway and I wrote this song it was like putting all my frustrations of every friendship that went off-piste or person I had liked that hadn’t liked me back, or had but at the wrong time, into a meat grinder and out came ‘Great Nothing.’”
“It’s like the opposite of a great love, it’s the mourning of the potential of a relationship and the confusion and the angst to put everything back where it was… and all the sinking feelings that come with it.”
Kicking stones at car doors
Walking home and feeling nauseous
But I didn’t see it coming.
Couldn’t you down from jumping?
Both feet first, I never wanted
All we had to turn so toxic
Twisting words from every promise
Ruined us by being honest
If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it
When you wanted more, I didn’t
Now we won’t ever find
our way back to where we were
The great nothing, great nothing
I remember having crushes on friends in middle and high school; those teenage years were fraught with unwanted, yet undeniable feelings – and I can confidently, sadly say that, in nearly every instance when I confided my feelings, nothing good came out of it; the friendship either fizzled, or got brutally awkward for a long stretch, and in all instances, things were never quite the same. Each one became another “great nothing” in a long list of “great nothings”; we moved on with our lives, and a once special, cherished relationship faded into obscurity.
The old adage really fits perfectly to these frienduationships; if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it. Why did I have to open my big mouth? Why couldn’t I be happy with what we already had – what we already shared? Rain’s words are the exasperated cry of a heart that’s lost too many to this painful pattern. “Great Nothing” is her great melancholic upheaval – an impassioned plea to break the chain and let things take their natural course.
To all the great somethings that could have been but never were, here is your beautiful ballad.
Following March’s confessional “Closer,” the heartrending “Great Nothing” once again sees Eden Rain singing her heart out, unapologetic (ok, a little apologetic) and in her element while holding absolutely nothing back. It’s aching through and through, yet we can’t help but sing along.
If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it
When you wanted more, I didn’t
Now we won’t ever find
our way back to where we were
The great nothing, great nothing
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Stream: “Great Nothing” – Eden Rain
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