I can’t be the only person who wrote dramatic poems recording my confusing feelings as a new teenager trying to figure out the world. I couldn’t have been the only one wondering “Am I insane?” when I hit fourteen. Sometimes I still wonder the same thing, and I’m sure some of you do, too. I don’t know if Welsh singer-songwriter Hannah Grae ever wrote the type of poems that I did when she was younger, but her newest release reminds me of those same emotions.
A quick glance at the lyrics proves that “Screw Loose” is the perfect track to let out all of your inner angst to. Lines like “Nobody here seems to care, don't they see?/Am I the only one? Is it just me?” express loneliness and frustration. These feelings seem to drive Hannah to insanity through the chorus of the song, where she passionately sings, “Well, I think that I'm screw loose.” The content of the lyrics is both hurt and angry, however, a glimmer of hope appears in the second verse: “I'm hopin' I can turn all that hate into art.”
Sometimes it’s necessary to feel negative emotions, even to embrace them for a time. The best thing you can do with a feeling is make something out of it, whether that something is one of my teenage angst-poems or a true work of art like Hannah has created in “Screw Loose.” The singer confirmed in her e-newsletter that the song was written during a difficult time, when she was struggling to reconcile her music career to everything she’d dreamed it to be.
Although emotions can be painful, they aren’t going to go away, and Hannah believes that this is actually a good thing. In her newsletter, she delivers this important message: “No matter what you’re doing in life, there will always be something. There will always be a challenge. Whether that’s heartbreak, grief, loneliness and all that’s in between, achieving something won’t shield you from the bad parts of life. I’m learning that that’s okay. It’s actually incredible.” Hannah’s message is that life will continually try to throw obstacles at us, but it just means that there will always be more opportunities to grow. Sometimes it’s ok to go crazy. We all have a screw loose sometimes, and that’s just another part of life.
On the surface, “Screw Loose” is about losing your mind. Underneath that, it’s a song about hope, about facing the difficulties in life. Musically, it’s exactly what a song with this subject should be. The sound is edgy and intense. The beginning of the chorus sounds both angry and anguished, while in the second half the words roll together more smoothly but with the same frustration behind them. The chorus before the bridge ends on a note that lasts far longer than anyone would expect. Despite the almost grungy sound, “Screw Loose” is also energetic and, in the end, it’s really a fun song to hear.
With “Screw Loose”, Hannah Grae has turned negative emotions into something beautiful. By doing this, she’s given listeners a place of understanding and acceptance as well as hope, and a catchy melody to encompass it all.
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