How Does it Make You Feel?

My favorite band of the "current age"and perhaps my favorite band of all time (although, to be fair, the earlier music is from the last century) is a French electronic band named Air.  Their sound is enchantingly ethereal, and the lyrics really work with the music to maximize the effect.  The purpose of this post, however, is to focus on the lyrics of a specific song of theirs in an effort to defend it as poetry.  For this I chose the song that first drew me to Air, "How Does It Make You Feel?"  The sound is nothing short of delicious and the song is simply not the same without it.  Nonetheless, the words on their own are very powerful and the lyrical conclusion is what compelled me to explore more of Air's music.

The song is written in first-person and addresses a beloved "you".  The speaker confesses his love/admiration, which is "very hard to say in your presence", and works to assuage the fears or doubts she holds about their future together.  Throughout his heart-spilling, the speaker continually asks for her feedback, devoting the whole chorus to the question "How does it make you feel?"  After many lines of grandiose, figurative praise (not too different to that of romantic sonnets) and 12 iterations of his question, he finally gets her (albeit indirect) response: "Well, I really think you should stop smoking." 

Bam!  I don't think I'll ever stop savoring that line.  The ironic ending really sets off the rest of the poem, which has a sort of strange, eerie tone to it - almost as if the whole time the listener is being asked how it makes them feel and it is disturbing to find that you don't know.  The hyperbole existent in the majority of the poem is juxtaposed with a cavalier, 'hypobolic' response.  The combination of the two speakers goes beyond conveying each of their individual experiences; it gives insight into their relationship that likely not even they understand, gifting the listener with an experience only they can boast. 

Poetically speaking, I think the coolest element of this song is its thematic complexity.  There are so many different interpretations even just among the responses on songmeanings.com, none of which necessarily match up with mine.  The pondering and the resounding "wow" in my thoughts that this song even now imparts to me is something that I generally look for in poems and what I believe strongly categorizes this song as a poem itself.