A close reading of the lyrics to D:Ream’s ‘Things Can Only Get Better’

This will almost certainly be the last day I can ever justify doing this.

I have, at a conservative estimate, played D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better roughly once a day since last year’s Labour conference, the moment when it first really sank in that the Tories were probably going to lose the next election. It is, in many ways, not a good song. 

But there’s an optimism to it, and the way it builds from a single voice to a wall of sound is energising when you’re trying to get ready for something. And even if it wasn’t bound up in my head with the entire notion of the Tories being kicked out of office, I would probably still like it because it reminds me of the ‘90s, and I am unfortunately approaching the age at which things that remind me of the decade when I was a teenager make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. (This is odd, in some ways, because my experience of actually being a teenager was intensely bloody miserable.) 

Anyway, I’ve heard this song a lot. And when you have a song on rotation for this many months then, after a while, you start to listen to the lyrics, even if you suspect that they were never, in fact, really meant to be listened to. 

Let us attempt a close reading.

You can walk my path, you can wear my shoes

Learn to talk like me and be an angel too

But maybe you ain’t never gonna feel this way

You ain’t never gonna know me, but I know you

This actually works rather nicely as an evocation of the cynicism of the voters, responding to the overtures of shiny new Labour wunderkind Tony Blair – “Yeah, you say you get where I’m coming from, but come on, what do you know about the real world, posh boy”. It fits nicely as the voice of the swing voter who is waiting to be convinced.

There are just two slight issues with that reading. One is that, although we associate Things Can Only Get Better with 1 May 1997, D:Ream actually released it in January 1993. It must have been written in the autumn of 1992 at the latest. The song was chosen as a Labour anthem later because it fitted the vibe - but it must actually be about something completely different.

The other problem is that there is no way in hell a cynical voter is going to pause in the middle of their sniffy rant about how you can’t trust the Labour party to describe Tony Blair as “an angel”. 

So what if instead it’s some kind of love story? Perhaps the first verse is the voice a person resisting a suitor (“walk my path” etc), to whom they’re attracted (“be an angel too”), but about whom they remain deeply cynical (“but I know you” - oh yeah, sweetie, I’ve got your number).

That works, right? That seems to fit. But then what the hell is going on here?

I’m singing it now, things can only get better

Only get better

If we see it through

That means me and I mean you too

Is this meant to be the same person as the verse? If so, WTF? In literally the previous line, you were all “You ain’t ever gonna know me”, now it’s “things can only get better if we see it through”? What’s going on here? Is D:Ream negging me? 

Thanks for the overly verbose definition of the word “we” there, by the way, would have definitely struggled without that.

So teach me now that things can only get better

Only get, they only get, take it on from here

You know, I know that things can only get better

Unless, of course, it isn’t the same person at all. Perhaps, despite being the same voice singing – with no obvious pause for breath, by the way - this is actually the interlocutor’s response. Don’t be cynical, it’s saying. Come on, we can do this! 

That would actually fit with the more political reading in which this is the New Labour response, an exhortation to the nervous voters of Middle England to forget their doubts and just believe. Perhaps we are meant to imagine the chorus in the voice of Tony Blair?

I sometimes lose myself in me

I lose track of time

And I can’t see the woods for the trees

You set ‘em alight

Burn the bridges as you’ve gone, I’m too weak to fight ya

I’ve got my personal hell to deal with

Or perhaps something else is going on because, regardless of who’s speaking, the stream of cliché that makes up the next verse seems to have bugger all to do with anything. “Lose myself”? “Lose track of the time”? And is it the trees or the bridges that the person you’re singing to is setting alight? A few lines ago you were all “you’re an angel” and “things can only get better”, now you’re singing to an arsonist while dealing with your personal hell? What? 

It doesn’t really matter whether this is meant to be the voice of suitor or intended, politician or voter. I can’t make head nor tail of it. 

And then you say

“Walk my path, wear my shoes

Talk like that, I’ll be an angel”

Okay, is it only one person singing, and the person they are singing to is now asking for empathy in response? Or are there two, in which case… no, I can’t unpick it at all. Seriously, what the hell is supposed to be going on here. Who is talking? What are you trying to say?

And things can only get better

Can only get better now I found you

(Things can only get, can only get)

Things can only get better

Can only get better now I found you and you and you

And again with the contradictions! So you’re saying that, even though this person keeps burning all their bridges, their presence is now the catalyst that means that things can only get better? How does that follow even slightly? I don’t care if we’re talking about electoral behaviour or sex, “I’m too weak to fight ya” is an enormous red flag.

You have shown me prejudice and greed

And you’ve shown me how

I must learn to deal with this disease

I look at things now

In a different light than I did before

And I’ve found the cause and I think that you can be my cure

So teach me to walk your path, wear your shoes

Talk like that, I’ll be an angel

Okay, this fits a bit more comfortably with the New Labour message. “Deal with this disease” – that’s clearly about fixing the NHS, by addressing 18 years of Tory under-investment. “You have shown me prejudice and greed” – not, you notice, addressed them in any way or even said that they’re bad, just kind of noted that they’re there. (We are intensely relaxed about prejudice and greed.) Then there’s the repeated demands that someone “teach me” – that’s both education, education, education and the voice of an electorate desperate to bask in the light of St Tony. 

You can, by this point, really see how this became the anthem of Tony Blair’s New Labour party.

And things can only get better

Can only get better now I found you

(Things can only get, can only get)

Things can only get better

Can only get better now I found you

Things can only get

Things can only get better

Can only get better now I found you

(Things can only get, can only get)

And you and you and you baby

Things can only get better

They can only get better now I found you

For nine months, I’ve been listening to this song, and every time I have it has felt as if the meaning of those lyrics was just out of reach. Maybe this is that really useful English degree I did speaking, but – I genuinely sort of thought that, by writing this, maybe I would finally understand what this song was really, actually about. 

But no, I still haven’t a clue. It doesn’t really work as a love song. There’s no clarity as to who is convincing who. There’s no story to it.

What there is, though, is a vibe. It’s extremely evocative of a very particular experience which I was too young to have in 1993: that of being in a club, chatting to someone you’ve only just met, convinced through chemical assistance that you are having the most profound meeting of minds that anyone has ever had in the entire history of the world. The slight confusion, the slipping pronouns, the stuff about losing yourself and looming personal hells. Most of all, the way all that is just swept away on a wall of sound and a tide of optimism, as you realise you don’t care about any of those worries.

It’s not a song about anything as real and solid as love: the experience it describes is too fleeting for that. It’s a song about euphoria.

I noted at the start that the song isn’t really about politics at all. It can’t be. But nonetheless, you can see how it might capture a particular moment – the sort that many of us might just get to experience again at 10pm tonight.

What happens after will likely be disappointing: things cannot only get better. But the song is a reminder that there are, in life, rare and fleeting times when you almost believe that they can. 

Plus, of course, it’s a banger. 

Also if you’re still in any doubt about the importance of dumping this terrible government, please read this (incomplete) list of every terrible policy the Conservatives have inflicted on Britain since 2010 that I wrote for the Guardian. “Broken Britain”, it turns out, was a campaign promise.