“Look at the stars, look how they shine for you, and everything you do, yea they were all yellow” These opening lines to Coldplay’s ballad, “Yellow” used to make very little sense to me…yet currently they bring me near to tears every time I listen to the song. It has slowly become of the romantic staples on my iPod, and the lyrics, although rather strange, are pretty damn moving to me. So because its 1:32 in the morning and I’m nowhere near tired, lets dissect my favorite parts of the song and why they are so oddly important to me [;

Alright here we go, lemme just pause Lil Wayne and put on “Yellow” Ahh the soothing sounds of Chris Martin’s voice…so the opening line that I referenced, is pretty much what pulled me into the song the first time I heard it, despite that actual date slipping my mind. Rehashing the line one more time, “Look at the stars, look how they shine for you, and everything you do, yea they were all yellow,” is one that on the surface may seem simple enough, but goes a bit deeper for me. The mentioning of stars holds a rather important place in my heart for a few reasons. Even though I live in Chelsea, deep city, the stars never fail to shine brightly over my house. Up until recently when wishing became a rather disappointing activity for me, I would faithfully make a wish upon the first star I saw each and every night. Although I have given up on wishing for the most part, the memories, along with the simple faith and little exhilaration one gets from the hope your wish will come true, will remain with me forever. On a less romantic level, I have always enjoyed looking up at these tiny little natural diamonds, and therefore the song reminds me of how beautiful they look. Additionally, and it may sound a bit silly, but I really like the notion of how the stars “shine for you, and everything you do.” We on earth are incredibly insignificant compared to all of the billions of stars in the sky, and I like the sentiment that these stars, even of it’s only one or two, are shining for me and no one else. My life has had some extremely dark periods in it, yet the stars have never failed to always be in the sky to light up my night, and I have come to accredit this to the few stars that have been commissioned to watch over me so I don’t mess up too badly.

The majority of the verses that follow the opening one can sort of be grouped together in my mind, however this does not lessen their impact on me. “I came along, I wrote a song for you, and all the things you do, and It was called ‘Yellow’” as well as “I swam across, I jumped across for you, oh what a thing to do, cause you were all yellow,” are rather moving lyrics. Although I may only be a teenager, I’ve had my fair share of experiences with guys, and have seen the various ways that I’ve been treated by them. These two verses, as simple as they are, help me to hold to the hope that I will one day be treated like a “princess” if you will, by a guy. I want a man who will write a song for me, who will cross the biggest river just to get to me, no matter how difficult the journey is. Now I don’t mean to say that I’ve been treated terribly by every guy I’ve fallen for, and I’ll admit that many of them have come close to making me feel like I’m in this Coldplay song, but honestly in the long run I’ve been let down on this front. So in hopes that one day that will be me; I will continue to listen to “Yellow,” and wait until the right guy comes by. Going along on this vein of being loved genuinely and unfailingly by a guy, the verse “do you know I love you so, you know I love you so,” makes me heart sick for the guy I don’t have. All of the lyrics in this song completely radiate true love, and they give me hope that it exists, and I will one day experience it.

One of the next verses in the song is a slight alteration from the previous one I mentioned, yet is important to me for a completely different reason. The line, after “ Your skin, oh yea your skin and bones, turn into something beautiful,” (which is also a nice sentiment) says “Do you know, for you I bleed myself dry, for you I bleed myself dry.” I could probably write a six page essay on how much that one line affects me. However, I’ll try to keep it a bit shorter. Where to start…firstly, I can categorize this line as fitting with the previous verses, in that the sentiment of someone figuratively bleeding themselves dry, just for the individual they love, is extremely romantic. It shows the true and powerful love that I look too, and how much faith this song gives me that it still exists. However, the true importance of this line rests with me being the blood donor. Once again although im a teenager (albeit on the older end of that spectrum,) I have fallen in love, more than once to be specific. Of the people who I have fallen in love with…I can say that this line fits only one of them. Im not about to mention the person’s name, but I loved (and deep down still do) love him with my whole heart, to the point of it becoming a problem. Now ideally this wouldn’t be a problem at all, and we would be the couple in this very Coldplay song, madly in love and doing anything for each other. However, this was not the case, as the guy didn’t love me as much as I loved him. (I cling to the last shred of hope that somewhere deep down inside him; he did indeed love me back) But I digress. Although he probably never knew how much he meant to me, I would have gone to hell and back for this boy, which brings me back to the line of “for you I bleed myself dry.” The fact that the depth of my love for this boy was never truly understood by him rips me to shreds. The situation was complicated and layered with problems, but at the center of “us,” (if we ever were anything) stood the stone sold fact that I loved him, and I could never tell him that, despite how close we had grown in our “relationship.” Again I’m going off on tangents and I apologize. But in my love for this boy, I started to empty myself of love for myself and sacrificed it for “love” (attention) from the boy, and this is where I feel I bled myself dry for him. Everything the boy asked for, I gave in and complied to, simply to please him. There is nothing, and I honestly don’t exaggerate, nothing I wouldn’t have done for this boy if he asked me, no matter how dangerous it could have potentially been. I would have given my own life, all the love in my body, including that for myself and probably everyone else I knew, to simply be loved back by this individual who never actually did. The love and devotion I showed to this boy who never returned it, giving me only his artificial love and superficial attention, has left me hollow, empty inside, and devoid of “blood” if you will. As much as it pains me to write this, deep down I know that he will always have a part of my heart and I can never change that. However, “Yellow” has helped me come to grips with all I have sacrificed for the boy, and to believe I am not the only one who has been in that kind of situation.

Now as I wipe away the makeup stained tears that have dripped down my face, I will offer my final thoughts on probably the most curious aspect of the song that I have left for last: Why ‘Yellow?’ To be perfectly honest, Im not really sure why. But overlooking the real meaning behind why the members of Coldplay used the color yellow as a term of endearment , I will once again offer my insight as to why the color, (yes even that has a degree of significance to me) rounds out the song in my top favorites of all time, despite being rather old.

I don’t particularly love the color yellow, but yellow signifies happiness and calm to me. I don’t really have any specific reason why, such as yellow flowers or the sun making me excessively happy or even at peace, because they don’t. Therefore I have to assume that there is something deep within the color that makes me feel that way, whether it be a childhood memory I can no longer remember, or simply an inner attachment to the color that I will never be able to explain. Either way, in this song, when the word ‘yellow’ is used, whether it be the name of the song he wrote for the one he loves, or the color of the stars, it solidifies why there will always be a place in my heart for this innocent love song and all it carries with it.