39) Glimpse of Us

Hello and welcome to Learning English with Lyrics! My name is Jake, and today we are going to discuss some lyrics from the song "Glimpse of Us", by Joji. I don't listen to a lot of Joji, so I don't have much of an opinion on his music,  but I do like his song "Sanctuary" a lot, and this one is pretty good too!  Before we get into that, I'd like to play a short message we received from a fan this week. Check it out.

Thank you Manash for your kind words, and we certainly appreciate all of our listeners from India! We love receiving kind messages, and we're glad you reached out! If anyone else wants to contact us for any reason, whether to ask a question, make a song request, or just to say hello, you can record a message to us on the Anchor website (link in the description) or you can send us a message, either by email at [email protected], or Instagram at lelpodcast. We hope to hear from you soon!

Alright, let's jump into the song. As always, if you haven't listened to it yet, click on one of the links in the description to give it a listen, then come back to the podcast to hear more about the lyrics.

Alright, what did you think of it?

"Glimpse of Us" is a sad song, describing a man who is in a relationship, a relationship that he describes as "perfect". Yet, even though he is in such a "perfect" relationship, he still finds himself thinking about his lost love.

I want to talk about two lines from this song, that are particularly interesting.

The first, is the first line of the song. "She'd take the world off my shoulders, if it was ever hard to move."

This is a play on the idiom, "They carry the world on their shoulders". To carry something, means to hold it, to bring it somewhere. You would carry something on your shoulders, if it was particularly heavy. The world of course, being, quite huge is very heavy. So, to carry the world, would necessarily mean you carry it on your shoulders. Now, obviously this isn't literal, unless it's talking about the god Atlas. What does it mean to say that someone is carrying the world on their shoulders then?

It means that they are sad, that they are burdened, oppressed by something, or even many things. They feel "weighed down", by anxiety even depression. We often look at someone who seems very sad and say "They look like they are carrying the world on their shoulders". It means that they have a lot of things happening to them, usually difficult things, and it is evident just by looking at them.

In this case, the singer is saying that his current romantic partner is able to help him when he is emotionally burdened by things, by taking the world OFF of his shoulders.

The second line I want to talk about is in the chorus, and is the title of the song. "Sometimes I look in her eyes and that's where I find a glimpse of us".

A "glimpse" is a quick look or a vision of something that you can only barely see. We can use it as a verb, for example, I could say "I glimpsed in the bag of donuts to see if there were any chocolate ones left." That means I very quickly looked inside, perhaps because I'm in a hurry, or maybe I'm embarrassed to be looking in the bag. It can also mean that you barely saw something. For example, "I glimpsed a donut shop out of the corner of my eye", means that on the edges of my vision, I saw a donut shop. I can turn my eyes or my head to get a better and fuller look, to verify that my glimpse was correct.

We can also use it as a noun, like in our song. If you "see a glimpse" of something, that means that you see a hint of it, a very small or perhaps faint version of it. In this case, when he looks into his partner's eyes, he sees a faint or faded version of his former partner. He remembers her, and it makes him long for her. It makes him want her back.

Well, that's all we have for today! I hope you enjoyed this glimpse at the song "Glimpse of Us". Next week we'll have a very special episode, and I hope that you join us for it! Until then, have a great week, and I'll talk to you soon.