Dedicated to Daren, Bella, and Selena: who introduced me to new music that then became integral to who I am. I am grateful to know such effortlessly cool people.

If I could have it back
All the time that we wasted
I’d only waste it again

If I could have it back
You know I would love to waste it again
Waste it again and again and again

Hello! Welcome to a new series here on Ahead by a Millisecond called In Retrospect. I really wanted a space to talk about how I much I love a certain album without having to analyze the lyrics, line for line.

Of course, this is me we’re talking about and I’m always going to analyze. But if you’ve read my other album reviews, you know that I like to read lyrics and string together the themes as I understand it.

Here, I don’t want to do just that alone. I will also talk about what this album has meant to me throughout my life. This will be about an album experience, including informal discussions and touches of personal anecdotes.

For the inaugural post, there is simply no better introduction than Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs (2010). So strap in, you’re in for a ride.

Arcade Fire was introduced to me in high school – the second term of my freshman year. The group had just won the Grammy for Album of the Year, and my school was buzzing with excitement. Well, at the very least, my friend group was stoked.

Before then, I was a bit of a metalhead/emo/scene kid, so I wasn’t quite familiar with Arcade Fire. My friends quickly introduced me, and all of a sudden, I thought it was so cool that a Canadian band made it big at the Grammys.

When I look back on it now, I see very clearly the impact The Suburbs had on me as a teenager. If I’m being honest, I feel a lot of lyrical content went over my head. Simply put, they hit a lot different as an adult with life experience who can actually understand what Win is singing about.

But at the time, I was a teenager growing up in the suburbs. Perhaps, some themes were a bit too close to my reality at the time. Tied to my teen experience, however, were themes of loneliness and longing for a different life.

While I grew up in a stable environment, I was also raised by very strict parents. As a teen, I didn’t have the most thriving social life. I lived my life on Tumblr, where I reblogged my aspirations for the future. I felt like I was waiting to live my life. It would be a long time before that happened but, in the meantime, I had Wasted Hours.

You watch the life you’re living disappear
And now I see
We’re still kids in buses longing to be free

Wasted hours, before we knew
Where to go, and what to do

Wasted hours, that you made new
And turned into
A life that we can live

Upon hearing these lyrics above, it is not surprise that I saw myself in that experience. It reminds me of riding the bus with my friends to the mall, because it was the only place I could go to and one of the few interesting places where teens could go. Spending all that time on Tumblr made me feel like I was boxed in.

Look back on it now, I think the parallels are quite obvious. Even now, I sometimes feel like I am waiting to live my life. But it is not the same as it was back then. I sure as hell am glad I am not a teenager anymore!

The album’s second track Ready to Start harkens back to when I started working my first real Big Girl jobs. I think the expectation that I had versus the reality of what it was is not so starkly different, rather, it was a reminder of my limitations in front bureaucratic red tape.

I felt so ready at the time to spread my wings and get cracking to doing work I felt was important (and I still do think is important!). As a teenager, I had no sense of what this song was or that I would ever relate to this song, because I did not want to work a corporate job in the financial district amongst the plethora of finance guys.

I think about the team building exercises or company wide town halls that I was asked to be apart of, sometimes in the midst of personal strife, it’s hard to pretend to care about those things. I mean, how could I? I may feel passion for the actual work I do, but it was hard not to find those kinds of activities trivial.

As Win sings, “I would rather be alone than pretend I feel alright.” I still get chills when I think of the universality of the desk job experience.

It’s hard to talk about Modern Man and not talk about how it made me feel. I remember hearing, “Maybe when you’re older you will understand, / Why you don’t feel right / Why you can’t sleep at night now” and feeling like I was struck in the chest. In an effort to keep my personal life separate from the blog, I will say this line spoke to very complicated feelings I was having at the time that I only really understood later.

Even now, as an adult, I hear the song and think about my first time working in a corporate job. What it felt like to stand inside Union Station in downtown Toronto in morning rush hour, looking at everyone like they’re ants in a line marching towards the coveted apple on the floor. And there I was, one of them.

The disillusion of feeling like an individual but you contribute to being cog in a machine, “I erase the number of the Modern Man, Want to break the mirror of the modern man.” It felt too real.

I recognize its commentary on the state of the corporate world and what it takes to survive through its capitalist dog-eat-dog philosophy. What can you do when you need to put food on your plate and roof over your head?

In 2010, social media is not what it is now. My life online was still disconnected from my real life. Still, I used to listen to We Used to Wait with some kind of wistful longing for a bygone era.

As I listen to We Used to Wait with 2025 ears, the lines that really sticks with me is when Win sings:

Now our lives are changing fast
Hope that something pure can last

It seems strange
How we used to wait for letters to arrive
But what’s stranger still
Is how something so small can keep you alive

Trend cycles shift faster than ever before, AI coming down on us like an omen, short form content warping our attention spans, and algorithmic instant gratification…the song has become much more resonant now than it was ever before. Much less in ways that I would have ever imagined.

I now find myself wanting to go back to those days when I could so easily disconnect from my phone and from the internet. Discourse around breaking up with your phone and the growth in a need for spaces outside of the internet, I feel a glimmer of hope for the interactions that remind us that we need pure human connection. Maybe we don’t have to wait anymore.

The theme for this post is that as I grew older, the more I understood this album. Rococo feels like an apt one that encapsulates all that made me *Get It*.

At once, I was the kid that Win sang about, and the next thing I knew: I was Win complaining about those dang kids using “great big words that they don’t understand.”

It’s funny, the life cycle of this song. At one point, you are trying to prove all that you are (your maturity, your intelligence, your taste) but the reality is that, at least for me, I was still incredibly naive.

I distinctly remember learning new complicated words from Tumblr, songs, books or my teachers, and trying to use it in sentences after the fact. I would feel so cool using it, regardless of whether or not I was using it correctly. Seeing these adolescent moments as a universal experience makes me feel better, because it’s hard to look back at those times without feeling cringe.

Dressed in the tightest skinny jeans and band shirt to signal my taste, I often looked to other people to see if I could find kin. As a former modern kid, it goes without saying that talking to adults who I thought were cool provided an avenue for discussions that I was not able to have with just anyone. They were who I was trying to emulate in the books I read, music I listened to, and clothes I wore.

Sometimes I can’t believe it
I’m moving past the feeling

Finally, The Suburbs. Both versions of the song, that start and end the album, remind me that the albums serves as a commentary on suburban sprawl and classism (well, that is just some of what the record touches on). In my own city, there are parts that are clearly much more wealthier than others leading to an ostracizing of the people who live less affluent neighbourhoods.

You always seemed so sure
That one day we’d be fighting in a suburban war
Your part of town against mine

Listening to both songs now, I understand the complexity of which Win writes about growing up in suburban Texas. The line it tows between fictitious dystopian world that was created throughout the record and the world it’s commenting on feels razor thin.

The physical landscape of which you grow up changes all the time, it’s the nature of being alive in a capitalist society. Businesses shutter, conflicts rise, people evolve. The greenery leaves to make up for more commercial or residential spaces.

The suburb I grew up does not really feel like a suburb anymore. We boast one of the biggest population sizes in the country, yet there’s no life to be lived here. No one brings their shows here, there’s not a thriving arts scene, or even much of a nightlife scene. We still go to the city for fun, arts and culture. But we’re starting to look the city that we sprawled from.

My friend Alysha said, “The Suburbs was an album I’m not sure I fully understood [at the time] but it just felt right to me.” I felt similarly at the time, too. I like to think it was an album that I was meant to grow up with, the songs becoming more clear to me with time and the kind of wisdom only growing up can give you.

Ultimately, as the staff for Get Alternative writes, The Suburbs is, “an album that isn’t about the angst of living in the suburbs, but instead critiques class culture with beautiful instrumentals and arrangements.” I think, because I am a suburban kid, those sharp and incisive commentary went over my head. I was only able to see what was right in front of me.

However, as an adult that has now worked jobs and become much more awoken to my surroundings: the commentary is quite clear. Not only do I have incredible nostalgia attached to this album but I can also appreciate it for the art that it is, and that it always was, even when I was not able to appreciate that.

What was your experience with The Suburbs? What did you think at the time it was release? Do you have a favourite AF record? I would really love to read your thoughts. Let me know in the comments below!

Have thoughts you want to share but don’t want to comment? Use the contact form to get in touch with me!