1/18

i'm thankful to revisit "only one," which i haven't listened to in a while and which is even more beautiful than i remembered. i'm thankful for the structural device of the song, which is that kanye is singing in the persona of his dead mother to himself, even though "structural device" and "persona" feel too clinical for such an emotional song ("Kanye West is described in a press release as not being able to remember singing the words to "Only One" when he and McCartney were later reviewing the early 2014 sessions that generated the song. Later, West "realized that perhaps the words had never really come from him … he understood in that moment that his late mother, Dr. Donda West, who was also his mentor, confidante, and best friend, had spoken through him that day ... A message had been passed down through generations."). 

i'm thankful for this formal specialness, which distinguishes it from other more traditional and straightforward songs about love from a parent to a child like "blue," though that is also a beautiful song (the keyboard sound in that song, too, like this one, is so encoded with feeling, the sproing of joy). i'm thankful for what the palimpsest of persona does for the meaning of the song, how so many of the lines feel like, at the same time, kanye's mother singing to him through his voice, her soul animating his voice, and yet also kanye himself singing directly to north. 

i'm thankful for how this blurring (or, to harmonize the chord in a different way, union) becomes literal at the ends of the verses, how at the end of the first verse, the line leading into the chorus is donda singing in the first person to kanye, "You know I never left you / Cause every road that leads to heaven's right inside you / So I can say", but then at the end of the second verse, the pronoun has changed, and now the line is about her listening to him sing the chorus to north, "And though I didn't pick the day to turn the page / I know it's not the end every time I see her face, and I hear you say", the repetition of the refrain (with slight variation between their voices) functioning here as a sacred chain linking generations across heaven and earth, both of them singing hello to their only one. i'm thankful that then in the bridge to the final chorus, the photoshop layers of the two of them are superimposed completely, both feeling and reacting the same way at the same time, indivisible forever:

i'm thankful for the repeated line that seems like the central idea of the song, "you're not perfect but you're not your mistakes," which is beautiful because it's something that has one meaning when you sing it to an actual child, a simple lesson about believing in yourself and forgiving yourself and not giving up, but has another meaning when you think of it as kanye trying to deal with the complexities of his problems and his life and his mind, with actions that he's not proud of and worries his mother wouldn't be proud of, wanting to believe that despite them he still has the capacity to be someone she's proud of, that "the good outweighs the bad even on your worst day." i'm thankful for the rhodes coda played by paul mccartney, which is so delicate. i'm thankful that it lingers longer than you might expect, restating the themes of the song, the push pull between souls embracing, before ending with a modulation to a more major key, a note of hope to hold with you when the song ends.