A Joyful Journey to the Edge of Sanity

Why Baby Queen's "Dover Beach" is a perfectly constructed pop song

Authors note:

I’m trying something new this week, venturing beyond Spikeball, movies, and memes to explore a subject matter I love but am still learning how to write about: music. While I haven’t played music after angrily quitting the violin in 4th grade, it’s long been a key way that I find joy and meaning in the world. I have very eclectic tastes in music and unsurprisingly strong opinions about why my favorite songs are the best. So ever since starting this blog I’ve dreamt of writing a few essays about songs I love and what I think is so good about them. So I’ve decided to create a trilogy of these essays over the next few months. What you’re about to read is the first one. Hopefully unpacking a song via essay goes better than the old saying about explaining a joke: like dissecting a frog, something is learned but the frog dies. In perhaps the most millennial closing thought ever, I’ll also admit that with a bit more planning, time, and equipment this blog post probably could have been a podcast…

Spotify Wrapped doesn’t tell enough of the story in my opinion. The carefully engineered and cleverly marketed technicolor orgy of listening data splashed all over your news feed tells you what, but not why. So when you see that “Dover Beach” by 25 year old South African Singer Arabella Latham, better known as Baby Queen was my most-listened to song of 2022, you don’t get any of the backstory. Why did a 32 year old American man who was unemployed for half of this calendar year listen to this sapphic pop anthem about the obsession, heartbreak, and alienation of young love 164 times?

The truth is out there. So let’s start with a verse-by-verse breakdown no one asked for of this master class in pop song writing.

Before we hear any vocals, we get a sparse sonic landscape, a plucky pizzicato violin line with a shimmering synth swirling in the distance that quickly yanks us into the song. Baby Queen sets the tone with a jaunty, bouncy piano and an upbeat chopped up vocal that would be quite at home at the start of an acapella performance on a college campus. As she delivers the first vocals, we get our bearings via the opening couplets:

On the coastline, in the water
Your mirage is like a stalker
I should push him off the cliffside
'Cause he's coloring my insides ocean blue
And everywhere I look, I look at you
It's true

We meet the protagonist in a scenic setting we’ve all been before, taking in the splendor of the ocean, but very quickly we realize something’s not right. She can’t get a lost lover out of her head and these intrusive thoughts are quickly ruining her day:
Up in my imagination, I rehearse our conversations
And at least I'm never lonely
Even though I know you're only in my mind

Her only comfort appears to be the familiar struggle of reviewing her failed relationship. This is tragic, but relatable. We’ve all compulsively relived conversations in our heads long past this providing any comfort or clarity. Tormenting ourselves is familiar to the point of being comfortable for many of us, even if this self talk is counterproductive in the long run.

Having set the stage and introduced us to her situation, she then immediately surrenders to this overwhelming feeling, admitting defeat in a quick aside:

And there's no point in covering my eyes, even when I try

before backflipping into the effervescent bubbles of the first chorus:

The skittering, bouncy piano is back, grounded by a four-on-the-floor drum kit as she lets us further into the looping mess of her headspace:

I hear your voice over and over
Sitting on the beach of Dover
What is happening? Oh, dear
I keep wishing you were here
And I swear, I'm gonna lose it
If I keep playing your music
But what else is there to do?
Everywhere I look I just see you

In the release of feelings that is the first chorus we get a catchy summation of the songs thesis: Sometimes my mind sabotages my ability to enjoy where I am and what I’m doing. We also can feel the confusion longing, and frustration bordering on panic that comes when feelings like this just won’t go away.

This thematic tension is mirrored in the architecture of the verses and choruses throughout the song. The verses tell us what’s going on and the choruses then lets us feel it. In the verses we hear Baby Queen’s predicament: compulsively thinking about her ex is ruining her afternoon at the beach and making her feel like she’s going to lose it. The explosive choruses that follow capture the actual feeling of losing it as the emotions, like the layers of music, overwhelm us and distort the story. As Insider puts it:

"Dover Beach" is less about the person she's craving and more about the way those thoughts become consuming, warping her own experiences and perception of the world.

With a self-professed unreliable narrator as our guide, we head onwards into verse two:

In my self made isolation,
You're my only inspiration
When the mirror says I'm ugly
And if anybody loves me, it's a lie
And right before I'm swallowed
By my mind and cursing at the sky

Now she lets us in further and we feel sadder but also more empathy and understanding. To take her at face value, she’s cut herself off from the world in her grief, is battling body image and self-esteem issues, and is wondering if her life has any meaning at all. Yet it’s still unclear if this person she’s stuck on is actually a source of genuine comfort and we don’t know if returning to think about him is helping her feel better at all. As this confession builds to another swirling crescendo, her emotions build to a breaking point even faster than the first verse and dives right back into the chorus.

At first, we’re in familiar terrain, hearing the lyrics of the first chorus again. Now the “over and over” part now feels self-referential. A chorus about repeatedly hearing someone else’s voice, now repeated by her makes us feel as stuck in her compulsive thoughts as she is. Just when we think we’re trapped in her “Groundhog Day at the Beach,” she shifts the song to higher gear and take us somewhere else entirely. There’s one subtle sonic detail in the start of the second chorus that cleverly tips us off to where she’s going.

Listen closely. As she runs back “I hear your voice over and over,” there’s a voice in the form of a backing vocal, saying “yeah” after the following words: over, Dover, dear, here, lose it, music, do, you.” What starts off sounding like “yeah,” quickly changes, however. After she says “I swear I’m gonna lose it” this yeah builds in volume, rises in pitch, and by the end of the chorus has fully devolved into a banshee shriek.

This shriek propels us into the next phase of the song, where she plays with pop architecture to add new layers of vocal power and catchiness. While most songs merely return to the same chorus they introduced after the first verse, Dover Beach cleverly improves on this mold. Baby Queen never simply repeats the same chorus as before, each time adding new sonic layers that make the song more compelling to listen to and more effective thematically. So at the arrival of the second chorus we learn that what we thought was the chorus of the song earlier was actually a ramp she’s constructed to launch us into something new.

In this chorus 2.0, the acapella track from the intro returns but now she confidently adds a new melodic layer on top of it.

It's deep red, my broken dream
My last breath, the king and queen
The world ends, it's you and me
In my head if we can be together
Maybe we'll live forever

While the first chorus was all information, this new second chorus is all imagery, and the imagery she chooses is efficient and evocative. The vibrant red of a broken dream nicely captures the feeling of having your hopes brutally dashed onto the sharp rocks of life’s bullshit and setbacks. The hyperbolic line about her last breath gives us a sense that even if she’s not actually dying, right now she feels that way. Similarly, the world isn’t ending, but it might as well be. The only comforting thought left is the foolish and romantic idea that maybe things would be okay if she could just could have made it work with the one that got away, the king to her queen. This hyperbolic, almost cartoonish point of view is so effective because it’s so relatable. This hyper-saturated color palette is how all of our emotions feel in the moment. If you don’t believe me, just look at the cinematography of Euphoria. A constant struggle in life is the disconnect between the petty simplicity of a situation ( like not being able to get an ex out of your head) and the overwhelming emotional intensity that it creates in us. Baby Queen recognizes this disconnect and turns it into a universal, danceable, scream-able pop anthem.

There’s a potent duality between the joy of the music and the raw honesty of the lyrics, the music capturing the reality of the external physical world, and the lyrics capturing and how they feel in her internal, emotional world. Externally, she’s living out a bouncy youthful pop song, but inside she’s feeling lost and stuck. Losing this person feels like the end of the world but ultimately, all of this is in her head. Whether this is meant to be a comfort or not is irrelevant. This feeling of being totally derailed by something or someone that ultimately won’t matter is one of the truly universal experiences out there.

Having built on the first chorus and taken us to colorful, glittering new heights, she then grabs our hand and leads us to the bridge even more assertively than Gandalf running from the Balrog in Moria. The music drops away as she gives us a final aside. In some people’s assessments the bridge is quite possibly the best writing of the song:

Sand between my toes
I've got vertigo
I'm afraid of heights
If I could I'd cry
We've got incompatible star signs
I'm in love with you
What's the point in looking at the view?
'Cause every time I do
I just see you (I just see you)

While much of the song is set on the beach, it seems she’s now climbed to the legendary cliffs of Dover. Perched literally (or figuratively) on the edge of one of the largest cliffs in England, we get the dizzying sense that she’s on the edge of madness or perhaps something even worse. Wanting to let out her emotions but unable to, she’s now at a full breaking point. The emotional dam finally, mercifully bursts in the form of the flood of feelings that is the final chorus.

The deep red visual is back, which we now think is the real chorus, only to have her assertively bring in yet another vocal layer that takes the final chorus to the climactic peak of the song. Over the crashing of symbols and the bouncing piano riff she keeps adding new threads to the story, building to a frantic intensity that’s as infectious as it is evocative. As she empties the emotional clip over the “Deep Red” second chorus she established earlier, Baby Queen directly confronts the person who has been haunting her all this time:

I met your ghost, he followed me
Down to the coast of Dover Beach
I talk to you in poetry
You stole the view of Dover Beach
I met your ghost, he followed me
Down to the coast of Dover Beach
I scream at you in poetry
You stole the view of Dover Beach

It’s an unapologetically loud, full-throated wall of sound, that’s directed at her ex and implicitly us, the listener. The feeling of this last chorus is reminiscent of the precisely constructed and joyfully cacacophonus final chorus of “We Don’t Talk About Bruno.” It’s a richly textured and carefully arranged catharsis. The idea of talking to and then screaming at someone in poetry is such a great turn of phrase that also captures the creative, joyful release that only music can deliver.

What’s most captivating about “Dover Beach” to me is the playful disconnect between the medium and the message. What she’s telling you and how she’s telling it are diametrically opposed. In this way the track is a sort of sonic Trojan Horse. While the facade is a bouncy, ebullient pop song, with whimsical synths, and pounding drums, she uses this effervescent vehicle to deliver lyrics that confess that fundamentally she’s not okay- stuck in a rut and perhaps on the edge of a total break down. It’s a bold song-writing choice that makes the end result more relatable and re-listenable.

“Dover Beach” is an unapologetically catchy and confident anthem about being proud of your messiness and finding a sort of joy in the act of breaking down. In its gleefully shouty 3:38 minute runtime Baby Queen is celebrating her suffering, finger-painting with her own madness, finding joy, meaning, and release in just losing it. This is a feeling we all need sometimes and listening to this song at high volume while driving by yourself really delivers it.

This is where I finally show my hand. This song accompanied me along my own journey along the edge of madness in 2022. During a period of time I can only charitably describe as “resembling or adjacent to depression” in the winter of that year I went on a fateful drive to Half Moon Bay. My therapist had instructed me to get out of my head, get out of the house, and go somewhere I’d never been before. So the next day I decided to finally visit Half Moon Bay, a legendary beach an hour or so from where I grew up that I’d never once visited despite being a self-identified beach lover. Leaving my house, I felt weirdly nervous, unsure if it was really okay for me to just go for a drive by myself like this. Yet these nerves dissolved into giddiness as I found myself whipping our white Jetta across the tightly thrilling switchbacks and verdant vistas of 92-West. I found myself gleefully awaiting my first glimpse of the twinkling sapphire mass of the Pacific as if I’d never seen it before. There was of course one song playing on repeat on the car stereo. With each re-listen I felt simultaneously more certain this short road trip was the best idea ever and also less and less sure about where my life was going. I felt more trapped by my joblessness and exuberant in my freedom. I felt joyfully alone for the first time in months. For a brief, magical afternoon I basked in the feeling of being ecstatically, imperfectly alive.

Now go listen to Dover Beach, ideally on a drive, but if not with the volume as high as your speakers and neighbors will allow.