that foreign music blog🌎

Happy new year! It’s been too cold in Japan and I’m sure everyone has been especially busy this season! So I thought we could make a summer escape through this song I discovered by American Idol contestant, Fritz Hager.

The song “Caroline” has an alternative rock vibe that reminds me of the band, Weezer, or the indie pop band, Phoenix. The way Hager’s voice and the guitar are layered, sounding on top of one another instead of in opposition, gives it a fun, bouncy rhythm that calls on images of playing on the beach or driving against the city night lights. Even more summer-reminiscent is the accidental love story that this song tells, which resulted from what sounds to have been a simple one-night stand.

What I appreciated most about this song was just how darn sweet it is. While the premise is a one-night stand, the lyrics describe it as two people waking up after having too much fun last night and just going with the flow. The protagonist starts the song as someone confused, not really knowing how they got there and maybe even feeling a bit of regret. However, the scene changes to the protagonist admiring the person they’d slept with; while they’re still sleeping, there’s something in the protagonist that starts to grow. A sweet curiosity that leads them to ultimately take the person of interest out on a casual date. At the end of the song, they end up saying “We should do this again sometime”.

I also thought it was clever how the progression is depicted in just a few short verses. It’s similar to how Pixar manages to show whole love stories and get your feelings crushed in a five-minute montage. Instead of trying to overexplain, Hager begins with ‘What was your name?’, then goes to, ‘Oh, this was your name??’, and ends with ‘OH I KNEW THAT WAS YOUR NAME’. The way he uses remembering a name to express the development of a relationship was very well done.

Overall, I found it to be such a cute story. Perhaps a bit unconventional for the traditional romantic, but it feels very true to what most people experience these days. For that reason, it does feel a bit refreshing; we all know of songs that describe one-night stands that went wrong—that resulted in one-sided love. However, Hager offers a more optimistic narrative that turns a casual encounter into something sweet.