A Song that Freefalls into Poetry

The song "It's Called: Freefall," on the album How to: Friend, Love, Freefall, by Rainbow Kitten Surprise is not only an amazing song, but an amazing poem. The song describes a person learning to let go of all their hardships and troubles, even if just for a moment, because everybody needs time to themselves no matter what they're going through. The song introduces the concept of "freefalling" as a metaphor for letting go, and uses the Devil throughout the song as an example of how anyone and everyone needs to learn to let go. The two characters, the speaker and the Devil, learn throughout the song to let go of, if only for one moment, the tension in their lives.

The listener learns about the Devil first:

Called to the Devil and the Devil did come
I said to the devil, "Devil do you like drums?
Do you like cigarettes, dominoes, rum?"
He said only "sundown, Sundays, Christmas"

Although the whole stanza contributes to the situation of the speaker asking the Devil a question, the most interesting literary part of the stanza is the last line. This line serves as an introduction to the Devil and his ways because he, the Devil, the literal symbol of all things evil, claims he likes "sundown, Sundays, Christmas," all of which are things of beauty or faith and piety, things that people, especially religious people, value dearly. Thus it is vaguely monstrous that the evil Devil is claiming his own connection to those things.

The Devil, though, as the listener understands him more, actually also needs to let go despite his seeming all powerful position. When the poem is in his perspective, the listener hears:

F*ck this, let gravity win like
You could leave it all behind, even the Devil need time alone sometimes

Because the Devil uses "f*ck," the violent swear word, the listener realizes that the message of the song is pretty serious, even though the idea that no matter who you are, everyone needs time alone is a fairly positive one, overall, the message of the song is more serious: that everyone has really dark times, even the Devil, supposedly the meanest being alive, so everyone needs that alone time for oftentimes a really intense reason.

The speaker is the other character in the poem, and this is a person who has reason in their life to want to give up and let everything go. They introduce the listener to their problems:

Don't get me venting on friends who resent you 'cause all you've
ever done is been a noose to hang on to
They thought was a necklace and reckless they fell into hell where
you both hang with nothing to do

In talking about his so-called friends, the speaker uses a violent metaphor of their friendship being a noose. This metaphor really makes it clear to the listener that these relationships really have been weighing on the speaker to the point where they, in his mind, have gone all the way to hell, thus he begins thinking about his connection and relationship with the Devil, sending the poem back in circles, constantly confusing the listener by discussing both the speaker and the Devil throughout the poem as they experience similar problems. That connection could even go so far as to suggest that the option other than learning to let go of one's problems could lead them directly to the Devil's influence.