38) Ghost

Hello and welcome to Learning English with Lyrics, I am your host Jake, and today we are exploring the song "Ghost" by Justin Bieber. While a lot of people like to make fun of Justin Bieber, I think he's pretty fun, and enjoy his music, generally speaking. He's not normally the type of music I listen to, but I do enjoy him from time to time.

Alright, let's jump into it!

If you haven't listened to the song yet, as always, stop listening here and go listen to it! Alright, did you do it? What did you think?

What we're going to focus on today is a line from the chorus. "If I can't be close to you, I'll settle for the ghost of you." You'll notice it contains the title of our song. Spooky!

So what does it all mean?

Well it starts out with a conditional statement that starts with "if'. We've talked about this in a previous episode, but as a quick review, a conditional statement gives us two phrases. In our song, the phrase that starts with "if" is our condition. When the condition is met, that is to say, when the thing being talked about happens, then the second part happens as well. We could say "when the condition is met, the second part triggers". If the first part isn't "met", the second part doesn't happen.

In this case, the condition, "If I can't be close to you" seems to have already been met. The lyrics before the chorus seem to imply that this person he's singing about has already left him in some way. If they've left him, that naturally means that he "can't be close" to them. He talks about a bridge that they've taken that he is unable to cross. Perhaps he is speaking about someone who has died.

So what will he do, since he is unable to be close to this person? He'll "settle for the ghost of you". "Settle" can mean a lot of things, and we aren't going to talk about all of them here. In general, it means that something comes to rest, it stops. For example, if you shake up a liquid in a bottle, everything starts moving around inside the bottle. If you wait for it to "settle", you're waiting for it to calm down and stop moving. We often tell children to "settle down!" which means the same as "calm down". Stop being so crazy!

Our song uses the verbal phrase "settle for", which has quite a different meaning. To settle "for" something means that you accept it, even if it's not your preferred option. For example, if I can't find a donut to eat, I might "settle for" a croissant. A croissant isn't nearly as good as a donut, but it satisfies my hunger, so I can settle for it. In our song, using the phrase "settle for" implies that he prefers the first option. He prefers to be close to this other person, but since that isn't possible, he'll settle for "the next best thing", which is "the ghost of" them.

So...what is "the ghost of you" referring to? A ghost is a phantom, a spirit of some kind, usually dead. In this case, even if he's talking someone who has died, he's probably not really talking about their dead spirit. Instead, he's probably referring to his memory of them. Their memory in his head is like a ghost: it's not the real them, and it's not all of them, but it is something like them.

Well, that's all we have today. If you have any questions for us, or just want to say hi, please do! You can reach us on instagram at lelpodcast, and by email at [email protected]. If you'd like to help us out, tell a friend about us! That would be a huge help to us! And let me know if you do! Alright, well I hope you have a great week, and don't have to "settle for" an okay one. I'll talk to you soon!