The Art of Romancing Your Misery in Paper Towns' "Oh Misery"

What happens when you stop thinking of misery as something you need to get away from and start treating it like an old friend? That’s basically the joke behind “Oh Misery.” Paper Towns takes this miserable, depressing thing and talks about it like it’s a relationship. Not necessarily a good one, obviously, but one that you’ve gotten comfortable with.

This song makes that idea work because it doesn’t really sound miserable in its composition. You get warm and clean, folk-ish indie electric and acoustic guitars, soft acoustic drums, and a bass, with that dreamy, lightness and almost weightless tone. It’s the kind of song you can actually tap your foot to, which is kind of silly considering what the lyrics are getting at. The song is about emotional exhaustion and dependence, but it never sounds like it’s begging you to feel sorry for it.

Instead, misery becomes this character that the song keeps coming back to. And the deeper meaning starts to show when you look at the contrast between this relaxing, almost dreamy music and all the despair sitting underneath the lyrics. When you’ve been stuck in a bad period for long enough, eventually the bad period becomes familiar. You know how it works. You know what tomorrow is probably going to look like. You might hate it, but at least you understand it. And that’s what the song is getting at.

Leaving something terrible can be scary when the alternative is something completely unknown. You can get so used to a problem that getting rid of it almost feels like losing something. Not because you actually want to suffer, but because suffering has become part of your routine.

The vocals and vocal harmonies in this song are right at the centre of this. There’s this warm, slightly weathered baritone. By avoiding the tone that sounds like a huge, tortured confession, these vocals are quite intimate or even understated. The language gets almost calm and romantic, which is where the song's humour comes from.

But underneath that humour is a pretty real idea that we have explored before. People don’t always hold onto things because they’re good for them. The familiar can be miserable and still feel safer than whatever comes next. You can understand that something is unhealthy and still not know what your life looks like without it.

That’s what Paper Towns seems to be playing with here. “Oh Misery” is saying that people are weirdly capable of making a home out of things that hurt them. Eventually, the thing you wanted to escape becomes something you know how to live with.

Some problems don’t disappear just because you understand them. Sometimes they just become part of the furniture.

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