Living, Growing & Singing Along with Beautiful Lies

In honor of Beautiful Lies' first anniversary, here's a full summary and review on Birdy's latest masterpiece.

Confession: I don't listen to music often, but I've grown listening to hers since high school, since the beginning of her career in 2011. Coincidentally, our age is just a month apart, meaning it may be we're going through similar phases in our young years.

In my early discovery of Birdy, I thought that everything about her just harmonizes: her beautiful face, charming personality, amazing piano skills, captivating lyrics, and surfacing all that, her powerful ethereal voice. She began her career by covering songs, or should I say, transforming songs into her own version, and then started writing her own music on her second album, which was mostly an experimentation of styles and sides where she was still in the process of figuring out who she is both in music and life, and three years later, Beautiful Lies seems like where she finally had herself figured out.

ABOUT

This album consists of 18 songs, and unlike the two previous ones, this was where she gets to confidentially involve herself a lot in the entire process. Birdy explains Beautiful Lies is about wishing a moment could last forever and telling “beautiful lies” to yourself even though change is inevitable. Finding light in the dark is what makes of the theme of this album.

Sadly, this physical copy is not available in Indonesia. My cousin from Australia got this for me as a gift, lucky me!

MUSIC 

Her music style is more consistent now. It's still in her signature classical-contemporary style, now featuring more of electric elements, operatic melody, and a touch of oriental vibe (on Growing Pains). Her voice is stronger yet it didn't loose its delicacy, her croons more exciting and haunting. I'm glad she has learnt to stretch her voice for it truly helped her reach further and deeper onto her stories. Despite the improvements, I find the most honest and intimate moments are on those when the music is centered on her voice and piano play.

LYRICS

Her writing style remains the same, which I don't think needs changing; still in a simple, understandable, honest yet poetic way. Actually, it syncs perfectly with her new music style, now that she adds more imagery here and there.

VISUALS

The image of her album cover completely struck me when I saw it for the first time. The colors, the atmosphere, and Birdy standing bold and beautiful in a stunning red kimono. It truly captures the world of this album. Like her oriental vibes on Growing Pains and the kimono, the inside of the album and CD itself is illustrated with Japanese-style drawings of peacocks and cranes. While her album book are pictures of her alongside verses of her songs, still in her dark-dreamy world, sitting on top of a tree in solitude with her hair as loose as her long silk white dress, glowing, as if what's inside of her is her only source of light here.

THE STORY

In the way I see it, this album is a journey, a series of experiences regarding change, mostly changes on a relationship, preserved as a precious memory, a documentation of recovery and evidences of resilience.

Like in the beginning of every relationship, Lifted (favorite!), Shadow and Hear You Calling celebrates the joy of finding and being with someone that you come to love.

Then, of course, heartbreaks tend to happen. Despite how she has been lied, hurt, and betrayed, in Words, she still admits "All the things you hide from me, I accept them. I just need you next to me". As this is her forgiving side, Take My Heart (favorite!) is the morose side of this "so take my heart for your love, I'll let you break it, part every piece of me, so take my heart, it's all that's left" also in the mid of Lost it All, out of being a victim of a non-reciprocal love, she sings melancholically, "if this is what dreams are made of, then I think that I've seen enough, I've given you all of my love, but it's still not enough" "oh it hurts (lost control), oh it hurts (lost it all) oh it hurts, sometimes". 

Between the happy beginnings and when it leads to its doom, she couldn't bear the changes that is happening, so she calms herself by telling herself "beautiful lies" to make it seem that everything is still alright and wish it would forever remain that way, as she does in Deep End ("... don't want to find I've lost it all, too scared to have no one to call, so can we just pretend that we're not falling into the deep end?") and Give Up ("I know you you'll never give up on me, give up on me, if always I'll let you give up on me, give up on me) and specifically on Beautiful Lies, which is both the title and the heart of the album, "tell me beautiful lies, cover my eyes with your hands, let's pretend that we're better" but changes, are indeed inevitable, no matter what you choose to believe in. We are constantly growing up and growing apart, as she mentions on Growing Pains as the opening. 

Then, it comes to the point where it all definitely needs to end. A relationship that's too broken has made two people become "empty hearts that spare no one" as mentioned on Save Yourself, which then, with intense piano ballads, proceeds to say, "after all is said and done, still this war cannot be won, save yourself my darling, just be gone by morning, save yourself my darling, kill the love that's dying." In Winter, starting as a whispered confession, first she admits winter crept in through the night; a metaphor of a painful realization, she stills wants to hold him tight so she tries to hold on, but as the music escalates, almost like an anger, she starts to accept the truth, bids farewell to him and let him go, because she can see that her lover is not showing any dedication in the relationship, as she the way she repeats "none of your dreams take me with you" until the end of the song. But this is where resilience starts to show.

Silhouette (favorite!) takes the toll, and is my ultimate favorite, it's like the voice of the inner battle to regain strength, it's vividly portrayed in the powerful melancholic piano play, and the way the music and her voice escalates as it gets closer to the chorus. She's now brave enough to say "I will survive and be the one who's stronger, I will not beg you to stay." in Wild Horses, and she too ends Lost it All with "at bitter heart, you let me down, but you'll never lose what you're found."

What if it's the other way around, now? This time, being in the side where she leaves the lover, which in turn puts him in despair, thinking he has nowhere to go now, or that he needs to change in order to have her return, but in Beating Heart (favorite!), with operatic croons, she tries to calm her lover by letting him "place his head on her knee", so "he may confide in her", and reminds him "you'll find someone who'll love you just as much as me". Another comforting, motivational song is Keeping Your Head Up (an exciting, upbeat song) and Unbroken (a heart-warming lullaby and favorite).

Start Again makes the perfect closure. With a smooth atmosphere, her voice and piano, this is her conclusion to all the spectrums of relationship situations she has faced:

"I'm tired pretending, keep my believes suspending, cause underneath, 

I'm starting to wake from silence sleep

I'm starting to break and I can grieve

I'm starting to see that I know how

to love, to lose, to work it out

I'm starting to heal and find some faith

I'm starting to feel what's out of place

Don't need you to save me, I can't wait

To fall, to fail and start again"

LIVING WITH BEAUTIFUL LIES

This is the album I keep in the pocket of my solitary hours, be it when I'm in my room or on the backseat of my car watching the city night life by the car window. I love all its songs (I might of picked out too much favorites on the above) with every single one of them resonating differently in me since it's so real and raw. Every song is different, not just by the story it tells, but by the way it portrays the different sides of it. I might not be able to relate much on her relationship struggles stories, but it's the spirit of moving on, doing what's best for oneself and the other and to venture on searching the meaning of living for one's own instead of falling into endless despair of a broken relationship and on wanting someone who will never come back. Change is indeed hard to go through, but one thing's for certain, the 'beautiful truth' is that there's always a light waiting to be found in the dark, and how often do we need that reminder to sing within us.

Beautiful Lies is a spectacular beginning of her new phase.