Alex Warren and ROSÉ “On My Mind” Review

You guys. The way I screamed when I first saw the teaser posters for this duo releasing a song together. My vocalist singer-songwriter queen Rosé and the creator of “Ordinary”–The Wedding Song of this Universe–Alex Warren?? Yes, please. I want to give a bear hug to whoever got these two to partner up on this song together, because it did not disappoint…

Concept/Message: 4

This is a post break-up love song. As can be surmised from its title, its message is simply “I still think about you.”

I think that message, albeit simple, really encapsulates the complexity of breaking up. A lot of the time, you still love each other. A lot of the time, you still long to be together. A lot of the time, though, for whatever reason, you can’t be together–and the only way you can spend time with that person is through your thoughts and your memories, by letting them be “on your mind.” It’s kind of a beautiful yet bittersweet way to still respect and love another person.

Visuals: 4

Okay… this was a little confusing to watch at first but I think I got it.

Both of them find a model of each other’s house among the boxes in their attic or basement (attic for Alex and basement for Rose). They’re able to look into those houses and see each other in there.

I think equating each others’ model houses as the storage boxes they have in their basement/attic communicates that for them, their memories of each other are unresolved, unorganized baggage. They haven’t healed or moved on from that break up yet…they’re still trying to figure out how best to treat the memories they still hold.

Later on in the video, a stack of boxes fall in Alex’s attic–yet Rose feels the impact (her floorboards shake). I think that conveys how the two are closer to each other than they realize: they’re both thinking of each other, and their shared memories reverberate around their spaces. This is reiterated when Rose’s sink overflows and it’s Alex who gets his room flooded–they really are still very close to each other. It’s also a nice touch that Rose is specifically living above Alex, which stays consistent with Rose’s description that Alex’s memories are in her basement and Alex’s description that Rose’s memories are in his attic.

The very last scene shows just how close they are–they’re just separated by a wall. And I think that just (again) poetically communicates what break ups that end on good terms feel like. You still love each other, miss each other, think of each other a lot, but you just can’t be together. That reason may be as thin as a wall, but sometimes, that’s all it takes for a relationship to not work. It’s really no one’s fault, and the two will just have to learn post break-up how to cope with the fact that they must be apart.

This video subtly and poetically communicated the complexity of post break-up longing. I just think it was slightly confusing. There’s multiple rooms that the two travel to, and honestly, it was sometimes hard to understand where the two were in relation to each other or whether they were in the same house or not. It felt a little messy at times.

Lyrics: 4

I love the way they describe where the other person is relative to their mind: Alex reflects, “In the attic of my dreams there’s somebody I adore,” and Rosé answers, “In the basement of my dreams there’s somebody I ignore.” Despite the juxtapositions (sorry, the English major in me is coming out now) of “attic”/ “basement” and “adore”/ “ignore”, these two phrases basically mean the same thing: there’s someone special to me that’s still on my mind. It’s a nice bit of wordplay for the two to express the same simple idea in two distinct and poetic ways.

I also love the smattering of imagery in these lyrics. “Maybe it’s the way the clouds are painted / A perfect shade of yellow all across the sky” is quite beautiful…first of all, “painted” makes me think of those dreamy, swirly acrylic clouds in paintings, which is a really beautiful image. Secondly, “a perfect shade of yellow” is quite unique–typically, people don’t describe clouds as yellow. They’ll come in with pink or purple instead. I think you only see yellow clouds at the very beginning of a sunset–I think the choice of “yellow” clouds, therefore, very poetically points to how this song describes the longing people feel at the start of the end, just at the start of a break up.

Am I being too English-majory right now? I feel like I am. Just one last language analysis, if you will: “frozen in a fire”. I like that line, even with its somewhat cheesy juxtaposition. It quite nicely expresses what it feels like to feel stuck, to feel like you can’t move on while everything else is changing around you. Frozen, unable to move while a blazing fire rages around you…that’s exactly what break ups feel like. You can’t move on and you want the world to wait and hold on for you, but it never does and never will and you feel like you can’t keep up.

Okay. End of English major analysis. One last thought: I am slightly disappointed in the “ooh-ooh” post-chorus. I really like songs that try to avoid “noise” lyrics as much as possible, but this song gave me a whole post-chorus of just “ooh”s. 🙁

Music: 4

The angels are serenading my ears–two powerhouse vocalists here to grace me with their voices. Oh, I could not be happier.

The two sounded amazing on their own, there’s no doubt about that. But honestly? When they were singing together, I couldn’t help but think that their voices didn’t match each other’s that well. I think Alex’s voice is just so deep and resonant that when Rose’s more airy voice is overlapped with his, Alex just starts to drown her out. It’s no fault of their own–I think it’s just the tonal quality of their voices.