By Sheila Uria | 27 April, 2023
Pain is visceral. You feel it at your core, it seeps into your bones. It’s addictive. Oftentimes, pain is not necessarily physical, but it hurts just as much. What was once an emotional wound ends up pressing up against your ribcage, it claws at your throat, until you can’t breathe anymore. The physical and emotional bleed into each other until they become one.
Thomas Day draws on this narrative in his latest single “MASOCHIST,” establishing the parallel between love and pain right from the first line.
“Hurt me, hold me,” he sings in a pleading tone. Two very different extremes, but for a masochist, they are synonymous. His words signify what it feels like to love someone who hurts you, caught in an endless cycle, knowingly jumping without a parachute because the high and adrenaline on the way down is worth the inevitable crash.
The truth is that the alternative—letting go—hurts much worse. At least that’s the case for Day when he sings lines like “Don’t cut the rope, make it tighter” and “Do anything you want, just don’t let it end.”
“[It’s] about a girl who I met and fell head over heels in love with, so fast and so hard that I didn’t care how badly I could get hurt,” Day told Melodic. “I wrote this song with my two friends Steve Rusch and Quinn Lewis. We were talking about the subtle complexities in relationships, and this song poured out. It’s about not being afraid to be hurt. Actually, it’s about wanting to be hurt.”
At first, the song appears to describe an unhealthy relationship, one with imbalanced power dynamics. That may be the case, but sometimes, it’s not as simple as one person inflicting pain and the other ending up hurt. Sometimes, both individuals hurt each other. Sometimes the one being hurt comes back for more because they like the chase and the thrill of it all. Sometimes it’s not as macabre as I’m making it out to be: there is no pain but rather a willingness to withstand it because the possibility of reciprocated love is worth the pain, no matter how short lived. A love declaration.
Despite its earnest message, “MASOCHIST” is a high-energy pop anthem with a catchy chorus that will have you singing along by the third listen. It's the type of song that you can belt at the top of your lungs with the windows rolled down, pouring every grievance into the punchy delivery of “Break my heart, please, do it again.” Sonically, it reflects the intensity of the relationship being touched upon, and just like Day sings, you don’t want it to end.
