Change Edition – Home Video: Change, Growing Up, and Childhood

Lucy Dacus’s third studio album touches on looking back on her adolescence and seeing how people in her life, as well as herself, have grown up and changed over time. She writes about old friendships, and what could have or could not have been. She also touches on her experience questioning her sexuality and religious beliefs. Each song on Home Video focuses on a particular moment in her youth, making it the perfect album title. It almost seems as though Lucy is looking back on her childhood and uses the idea of a “Home Video” to depict the act of revisiting your past. Home Video has 11 magnificent songs revolving around looking back on herself or people involved in her adolescent years and seeing how she and the others have changed and grown-up. It’s all about looking back and accepting the past for what it was. It addresses faith, young love, and above all else nostalgia and change.

The first song on the record, “Hot and Heavy,” starts off the album with a nostalgic lyric, “Being back here makes me hot in the face.” The listener can presume that Lucy is back home in the place where she grew up. Being in this place she once knew so well makes her hot in the face as she is overwhelmed by “heavy memories weighing on my brain,” which sets the scene for the rest of the album. This song seems to not just be about the painful nostalgia about coming back to your old hometown but also about a particular person.  The lyric, “You used to be so sweet / Now you’re a firecracker on a crowded street,” represents an innocent kid filled with a shyness that Lucy may have known, coming back and seeing how this person has changed and grown into a full person that is much more explosive than before. There is a bittersweet emotion that is embedded into this song. The song title, “Hot & Heavy” is referred to and different places throughout the song, “hot in the face” or “heavy memories. These aspects of the song are relevant throughout the entirety of the album, which is why it was such an amazing choice to be the first song of the album and the first single to come out. Lucy is very clearly filled with the heavy past emotions of her childhood that she as an adult is revisiting. This heavy feeling causes Lucy to be overwhelmed with deep nostalgia. It is about Lucy outgrowing her past self, looking back on how she has changed and developed throughout time. Learning that young naive girl has long passed. Change and saying goodbye to the past is hard and Lucy depicts that emotion of letting go and moving forward. 

Home Video, intelligently speaks on Lucy’s religious background and experience she had throughout that time in her life. The third song on the album, “First Time,” is when she first references her Christian childhood. Dacus has talked about before how religious she was in high school. The line, “you can’t feel it for the first time a second time,” seems to refer to the Christian mindset when it comes to sex, as it is seen as losing your innocence and purity. This lyric touches on the mindset of many Christians regarding sex and the idea of “losing your innocence.” This mindset causes a lot of religious people anxiety and often results in shame once they do lose their virginity. “I can’t undo what I have done / and I wouldn’t want to” seems to be referring to Lucy’s mindset once she did lose her virginity. Although Lucy’s anxiety about having sex is quelled into this line, the listener can see that she accepts that she has done something new. She doesn’t necessarily regret it and overall changes her mindset on it. People often make sex out to be a big deal, something that changes a person and how they are seen, especially for women. “Has my face changed baby?” people often wonder if they will be seen differently, it may be especially hard for people that had such a religious background as it is seen as a sinful thing. 

Throughout the album, there are consistent coming of age themes referenced as well as presenting how Lucy has changed from her adolescence. Take, for example in “Going Going Gone” which compares childlike tantrums that adults are unable to have in the same way. As an adult, you still feel that anger, but it is unacceptable to have tantrums as you once would when you were a child. Where does that anger go? “The sunset threw a tantrum / it wasn’t ready to go just yet,” touching on these breakdowns that would occur when you didn’t get what you wanted. The line, “Like pulling teeth out of a cloud,” also represents a childhood experience of pulling baby teeth out when your adult teeth are coming in. In this particular verse, the sunset may be representing Lucy’s childhood and how it has come to an end, similar to how the sunset concludes the day. In “Going Going Gone,” Lucy gives a flash-forward moment, when she talks about someone she once knew and how he has changed. “Daniel in ten years / grabbing asses, spilling bears,” this person was referenced at the beginning of the song where they seemed to have an innocent childhood relationship, it did not last similar to how Daniel’s innocence did not last either. He has changed so much from this young boy watching the sunset and holding hands with his crush to now being a seemingly alcoholic, who “grabs asses” and “spills beers.” This song adds to the purpose of the album which is changing and looking back on one’s childhood and seeing how people have grown as they go into adulthood. By using Daniel as an example, Lucy shows this drastic change between one’s innocence as a child and how one can change into a disrespectful and lost adult. 

Home Video by Lucy Dacus is an amazing representation of how people change their minds and change their ways throughout life, especially compared to one’s beliefs as a child compared to adulthood. She shows this by comparing your religious beliefs and ideals as a child and how they have since changed and developed. She also describes how people in her life have developed and lost their past innocence of being a child. She starts the album, talking about being back in her hometown, filled with old memories, past moments, and feelings that made her the person she is today. In the second to last song on the album, “Please Stay,” Lucy sings, “Change your name / change your mind / change your ways,” and this lyric encapsulates this album as a whole. Lucy explains that one can change as much as possible and should if that means they will continue to live. Lucy seems to have dealt with depression as well as seeing people she loves go through depressive episodes, because of this she believes that it doesn’t matter how much people change throughout life, as long as they keep living. Overall, I think Lucy sees change as a good thing in most cases, as for some it is sad and disappointing, but most of all change is bittersweet, as for most of life is.