"Never Ever" is a 1997 hit song by the
girl group All Saints, with a sort of
R'n'B-overlaid-with-
Gospel rumination on the fairly pedestrian song theme of a relationship having gone bad. On the surface, that is. But there's something deeper.
To listen to the song, you get the feeling that you're supposed to be rooting for the singer, this poor girl bewildered by her event of a
broken heart. Why, she laments to her departed lover, why have you forsaken me?
The problem is, the first few lines of the song lay out all the whys one might ever require:
Was it that I never paid enough attention
Or did I not give enough affection?
....
Did I never treat you right?
Did I always start the fight?
So the
question becomes, what did this inattentive, unaffectionate, mistreating, fight-starting girl do
wrong that she is not being met with endless and
unconditional love in return? But then she concludes for herself, "I'm sure I ain't done nothing wrong, no."
A further tell is in the chorus:
Never ever have I ever felt so low
When you gonna take me out of this black hole?
Never ever have I ever felt so sad
The way I'm feeling, yeah, you got me feeling really bad
Never ever have I had to find
I've had to dig away to find my own peace of mind
I've never ever had my conscience to fight
The way I'm feeling, yeah, it just don't feel right.
The first four lines repeat the grand
thesis, that this girl feels bad, really really bad, and ought to be felt bad
for; and that it is the fault and responsibility of her lover to
remedy this
malaise by returning to whatever the state of things was before. But the latter lines reveal that, prior to this occurrence, the singer had
never needed to engage in introspection before whatsoever. Never had to wrestle with their conscience. Never had to dig. Which just seems to fit with the obliviousness of not knowing how the
laundry list of wrongs written out was causative of the current
conundrum.
"Never Ever" might be better as a satiric
cautionary tale, a reflection of human nature's tendency to overlook the small detail called
personal accountability whilst in the throes of
heartache, a
paradox which could paint a vivid portrayal of the
complexity of human
emotion -- if only it were not delivered with such over-the-top
earnestness.