It’s a regular daily occurrence for songwriters to channel their heartbreak into four rhythmic verses gearing up to a chorus full of zany one-liners, either set to a production that’s acting as the soundtrack to their fans egging their forlorn lovers’ house or when they have to make that emergency trip to the grocery store to buy another tissue box. What’s not exactly an ordinary act, though, is they have to have surgery before whipping out their phone’s notepad. Yep, you read that right, and Julia Michaels is a prime example of it! After going through a breakup last year, Julia had surgery to mend her broken heart in a phenomenon called broken heart syndrome.
Dean Lewis was a bit taken back by it too. Though thankfully Julia is now okay, she got something else from the experience: a new song. Dean and Julia put their heads together to experience an alternate reality, ‘In A Perfect World,’ if you will, where they stayed with their respective muses.
No matter where you are in your romantic journey, we’ve all had the what-ifs around our trauma not being connected to us. Everything would surely be easier! But we also wouldn’t have these lyrics… therefore, we’re thankfully (we think that’s the uh right word?) in this world where we do, so consequently, we’re pulling our top five lyrics from the song.
Over guitar chords, our first framable lyric is the third line of the song altogether and therefore found nestled into the first verse! It’s sung by Dean Lewis, with his vocals powering the first chunk of ‘In A Perfect World.’ Before he delivers it, he takes his first audible breath, almost representing that though the lines before came from a sense of vulnerability, this one aches even more. It also uses a naughty word while the other two don’t! At face value, though, there’s this transition period that we go through from being independent to seeing how our future could line up with someone else’s that puts us at unease. It’s not through a lack of the other person being anything less than awesome, but because they are so dreamlike, we’re afraid that if we put our hopes up and cave entirely, it may blow up.
Now, Dean’s drawn focus to this particular lyric on his TikTok as he explains that vulnerability can be terrifying. Sometimes we get used to people who suck that when someone nice comes along, it can put us into fight or flight, wondering if there’s some red flag we have yet to see hidden beneath the surface or, you know, on some social media platform these days. This line is also super poetic because while Dean’s explanation is one analysis of it, another is that often, our first sighting of a person is through them smiling at us, welcoming us in. When they leave, if they do, that expression can change so quickly.
If we were to go further along in the song, then we would stop at this lyric during the chorus that, though it is a mesh between both Dean’s and Julia’s vocals, is sung by the prior over the bass dropping. Unless you’re pulling out your tarot deck or taking a course in your person’s facial expressions, often there is so much underneath the surface that people have a hard time bringing up, even if they’re of a positive nature. Someone can show you that they love you through actions, but it is another thing entirely to say it vocally.
We promise Julia’s name isn’t just thrown into the mix because why not? But despite choosing three lyrics already that focus on Dean, she shows up on this one, etched into the second verse, where she shows the other side of the story. Julia’s vocals on this track are so breathy and perfectly synched to Dean’s, acting as the voice of reason to his scarce mentality, and in this case, there’s a sense of his fears being irrational.
It was only Dean Lewis in the first pre-chorus of ‘In A Perfect World.’ However, Julia joins in on the second one, and they’ve done this wonderful thing of creating a harmony where they both portray their sides of the story at the same time. With Julia singing “You” and Dean with “I,” they’ve reached the point where the screen is romcom split-style and the height of their argument. Dean knows that it’s his self-sabotage getting in the way, but Julia simultaneously understands that she can’t tightly squeeze his hand for him to stay. He must do so on his own accord. It’s over the pattering of drums as it was almost acoustic guitar seconds before.
Is there a specific lyric from ‘In A Perfect World’ that has grabbed you by the chains and pulled you into angst hell? Maybe it’s one of the above, or perhaps it’s entirely different and therefore is all the more reason to tweet us which one it is @thehoneypop!
Earlier this year, we had the chance to interview Dean himself about his previous album, The Hardest Love. As we enter into preparation mode for his upcoming, it’s another piece to add to the study board. For other articles, you can check out our Instagram and Facebook pages!