Okay, look, this "Fake Out" song. Like. I keep trying to figure out why this song weirdly makes me want to cry????? hahaha because it's so determinedly happy in the face of the lyrics ("But I didn't take the love when I had the chance, but I swear I'm not sad anymore" is so, so grit-your-teeth-and-smile and fits the song so beautifully) and I feel like that's what makes me want to cry about it, the way that it is, like, forcing happiness when you don't feel like it? when it's the last thing you feel like doing? but you know that you need to in order to move forward? so you do it?
and this makes me sound like I don't love the song when I LOVE THE SONG and I think it's because it feels so much like Patrick picking up Pete's depression and being like, "But I love this, I love everything about you, every crevice, look what I can do with this."
Like, this entire album is in reality a love song to Pete that Patrick wrote, taking all of these bits of Pete that he finds his ugliest and grimmest, his bleakest and gloomiest, and Patrick takes them and says in this album, But they're beautiful, all of them, look what I can do with this, look what we always are together.
And this song in particular is like the song from those John Hughes movies they love so much, the songs of triumph and connection, only for grown-ups who have realized that's not how it works, you get buried alive in your dreams and it's all a fake out, but psst, Patrick says, here's a window to break out, I've got it here.....
The whole album is Patrick over and over, whispering in Pete's ear, Pssst. Over here.