Before you read our thoughts, we have placed a 2002 live performance of song below for you to listen to. Alternatively, click here to read the lyrics.
The Ploughman’s Poetry Discussion. You Will. You? Will. You? Will. You? Will – Conor Oberst
You Will by Bright Eyes is one of those songs which seems to encapsulate that coming of age era in life so very well. It’s calling to young love and that belief of eternity that you seem to attach to it is spoken alongside Conor’s raspy, aching voice, and this is what makes this song so perfect. Oberst creates these heartbreaking metaphors of his love which in turn work to portray his cruelty. I mean, this is clear within the first image especially:
“You say that I treat you like a book on the shelf,
I don’t take you out that often ‘cause I know that I’ve completed you,
And that’s why you are here,
That’s the reason you stay here
How awful that must feel.”
How awful that must feel. It’s his acknowledgment that makes this poem so powerful for me. His acknowledgment that there is somebody out there who loves him so tenderly that he could do anything, go anywhere and return anytime and she would still be there waiting for him to love her. Wow.
The girl who he loves seems to have this mournful, seldom joyful energy about her similar to who is portrayed in another song from the same album – Laura Laurent. As Conor tells more of her devotion to him, the sadder she seems. She even goes as far to describe herself as his recurring dream. This notion of her as an unworldly, ethereal thing that he will undoubtedly forget time and time again is made to be okay as she will return to him each and every time.
And then what’s more, just as it seems that Conor is able to realise that this woman is his true love, she tells him to test out this love with somebody else first. I mean, I can’t even begin to imagine how you could ache for somebody with such necessity and still have the strength to tell them that they should carry on with their life for a little bit longer, independent from you and able to grow before they choose to return and settle in the end.
Online it says that Conor Oberst was 22 years old when he wrote this song, but I believe that he must have been some years younger. I mean, the lyrics are incredibly profound for a person of any age to come up with, but there is just something within them that seems to be so tied within adolescent love. And if he was not at a younger age when he wrote them, I wholeheartedly believe that he is writing from the perspective of his younger self. The lyrics seem to be too hopeless, too desperately futile to come from somebody with experience of a love fulfilled.
Additionally, what I find so interesting about these lyrics is that just before the end, after we have seen Conor’s self-accepted cruelty of intermittently withholding and proclaiming his love for this ever-waiting woman, she turns around and tells him that it is him who in fact returns to her:
“there’s just one map you’ll need,
You’re a boomerang you’ll see,
You will return to me.”
This is why she has remained, because she believes from the bottom of her heart that he will always return to her. And then, she doubts it. It seems that she has gone through her whole life loving him with the certain knowledge that he will one day come back to her and stay by her side forever. Now, suddenly she seems to panic and think: ‘hold on, you are going to come back to me right!?’
In a tumult of emotional desperation she asks, and pleads again and again:
“You will, you will, you will, you will, you will, you will…”
Her whole life, since their very first kiss in the attic of Conor’s parents home she has loved and waited for him. Where prior to this point in the song she has seemed in control, calm and accepting of his distance to her, she reaches a breaking point and it is clear how crucial their love is. The song ends on this note. On her pleading and praying for him to return, for her belief of their everlasting love to be true because he is vital to her existence.
The Ploughman’s Community Comments
comesailaway118, Reddit User: I LOVE THIS SONG SO MUCH
I always thought the final “you will’s” turned into him singing to her, all confident-like, believing she’ll never ever walk away. But then also questioning himself, wondering if he waited too long and lost the love of his lifetime. Your take is cool too because I like to picture her coming unglued (but then ultimately as she recovers from the heartbreak she realizes the book IS all lies but she lives to tell about it and is a bit wiser). To me, You Will is about how a large portion of our relationships exist in our minds and in ways that don’t get exposed or expressed. Do we play it safe and write letters they’ll never read while ruminating on the future and doubting that we’ve explored enough geography?
tossawaydown, Reddit User: I feel like the woman in the song put a lot of weight on the man being her first love and never feeling as understood as he made her feel. Despite the fact that she knows he sleeps around she relishes in knowing she was his foundational intimate experience that all other experiences spring from. The line about first love/kissing in attics reinforces that he loved her when she was a book he didn’t understand. He desired the mystery she was, but once he solved the mystery it was just another book in his collection. (Or rather first in his collection)
I might be off but the last lines seem to play on their dependence of eachother. He needs her to long for him for he to be a book in his collection, while she needs to hold on the belief that he’ll one day be her’s. They hinge their future on their dependance/delusion so neither of them have to face reality. Will you/ you will is a brilliant way to show their baseless confidence and underlaying uncertainty. Or you could see it as you saying you will so many times it morphs into will you?
Very similar to how you see it with the weight of young love, just not as eloquent 🙂
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