Iowa singer/songwriter Elizabeth Moen injects an intimate pain into her delicate folk song “It’ll Get Tired Too” as she confronts and processes difficult emotions head on, accepting life’s pendulum swing and fighting to find balance amongst the turmoil.
Stream: “It’ll Get Tired Too” – Elizabeth Moen
At another time and in another place, Elizabeth Moen’s new single would arrive to the ears as a lullaby: A sad one, of course, but nevertheless a soothing tune whose sheer beauty overshadowed its lyrical intent. Yet in the middle of a pandemic that has taken a million lives, shuttered businesses, and challenged many of us to adapt quickly and accept harsh new facts of life as the “norm” for the foreseeable extended future, one cannot overlook Moen’s musical melancholy and heartache, or simply write them off as par for the course. The Iowa singer/songwriter injects an intimate pain into her delicate folk song “It’ll Get Tired Too” as she confronts and processes difficult emotions head on, accepting life’s pendulum swing and fighting to find balance amongst the turmoil.
This feeling is natural of course
it comes oh it sure does in all of us
I know it’s hard when it
comes twice as fast as the
answer when you’re thinking
bout the meaning of life
Atwood Magazine is proud to be premiering “It’ll Get Tired Too,” the breathtaking third single taken off Elizabeth Moen’s forthcoming EP, Creature of Habit. Following this fall’s earlier releases “Creature of Habit” and “Eating Chips,” “It’ll Get Tired Too” presents a stripped down Elizabeth Moen singing softly and from a deep, dark, intimate place. The indie pop artist has steadily established herself over the past four years through a series of dynamic records full of indie pop and soul; her 2018 LP A Million Miles Away explodes into the ears with the hearty outpouring “Red,” and her 2019 standalone single “Headgear” washes over the soul with groovy licks, dynamic rhythm changes, and a massive, dramatic vocal performance.
“It’ll Get Tired Too” is nothing like these songs, but for the fact that it retains Moen’s vocal leadership and lyrical poeticism. The Iowa City artist shakes off the additional instruments and all excess sounds, leaving scant vocal harmonies and a somber, emotional acoustic guitar at her side as she soars through a striking array of familiar emotions. Her chorus is a plaintive, raw reckoning of learning to live with one’s darkness:
Fear is here it always is, showed up soon as we were kids
Shake it’s hand and let it play, it’ll get tired too and go away
If ever there were a year to accept fear and pain as a natural part of life, it would be 2020: A year that has been all-too defined by these emotions on a terrifying global scale. But “It’ll Get Tired Too” isn’t terrifying; it’s tender and in point of fact, quite beautiful.
“This last year has brought up a lot of feelings for all of us,” Moen tells Atwood Magazine. “It’s easier to accept and process the “good” ones but when fear or pain come in it feels like they’re just going to stay and completely take over. Learning to work through my emotions and let things come and go has helped me be a little gentler to my own brain. There’s so much going on in the world and we need to be better to ourselves and advocate our needs and feelings.”
This feeling is natural of course
it shows oh sure we know it would
I know it hurts when it shows up when things
were great or you were letting go of something good
Pain is here it always is, showed up soon as life did
Let it pick a song to play, it’ll get tired too and go away
This is Elizabeth Moen’s mantra; an unencumbered, soul-stirring recognition that life is hard, and it’s not getting any easier. Those who discovered Moen through her earlier works – 2016’s self-titled debut album and 2017’s That’s All I Wanted – may find comfort in the artist’s full-throttle return to folk, which she long danced with on songs like “Easier Said Than Done” and “Songbird,” “Mars” and “Trouble,” and so forth.
Yet while many of those songs always had a little something extra going for them, this song does not; it sinks into itself like a head does a pillow. Moen’s performance is soft and slow – a tempered reaction to the storm of emotions she’s going through, and steadily making sense of. Her final lines offer some of her most direct and stirring lyricism: “I am terrified of dying, I am terrified of pain, but without thought or feeling, how would I know the joy of the rain on my face?“
It isn’t easy to accept fear and pain, death and loss into one’s life, and one song does not do away with the stabbing ache or looming dread of these feelings. Then again, that was never the point of this song. “It’ll Get Tired Too” is a means of learning to take the bad with the good; to acknowledge that life’s ups only exist because there are downs, and that because of those downs, the ups are that much more beautiful. A song that stings as it soothes, “It’ll Get Tired Too” is unexpected and altogether beautiful. Stream Elizabeth Moen’s new single exclusively on Atwood Magazine, and stay tuned for her upcoming EP Creature of Habit, out TBD.
I am terrified of dying, I am terrified of pain
But without thought or feeling,
how would I know the joy of the rain on my face?
Life is here at least for now, showed as soon as stars came out
Let us dance to the song it plays, until it’s time for us to go away
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Stream: “It’ll Get Tired Too” – Elizabeth Moen
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