Grind Me Into Dust

Better Luck Next Time

Alyssum needed to think, she had a new song and was feeling very melancholy about it and hated it. She wasn't where she was a few months ago--or where she was when writing her album--but she was feeling something and she just couldn't put her finger on what exactly the feeling was or where it came from.

She thought that it could be nerves for the concert, but she'd been doing them for years and this time around she didn't have the same excited, nervous undertone that she was used to feeling. She wanted to scream with frustration over not knowing what she was feeling, the only thing she was able to do was put it all down on paper in a song and hope it makes sense.

She went through soundcheck and watched The Delinquents from the back of the stadium do theirs and Alyssum couldn't wait to start this tour, she wanted to get out of Miami and get into the studio again, she loved making music, she wasn't a big fan of performing it even though she was really good at it. Her shows weren't lackluster or boring, she gave it 110% even when she had the flu.

When the time came for her to go on stage, she was calm, the calmest she'd ever been in her life and when she had her dancers and band huddle up for the prayer circle, she emanated that factor and some of them questioned if she were okay. She's great, she's just calmly gearing up for the next hour and a half of non-stop dancing eighteen months after spinal surgery, she's fine.

Walking on stage was something else, the darkness, the quiet crowd, the slow and steady bass drum pounding every five seconds until she was at her mark. This was how she intended on the tour starting, this song, this goodbye to who her fans were expecting, she's not the Silver Linings singer anymore, she's Alyssum Graves and no one could change or take that from her.

"One-sided
Everything about your love was one-sided
Didn't cover it up or disguise it
You used my dream against me to tie me
To you
Two years too many we tried to get it right
Hit like a shot of tequila without the lime
You've got your reasons and yeah I got my rhymes
So this time
This time

"I got myself together
Got a new attitude
Hope that I see you never
I'm so over you
Got myself together
You're out of my mind
Now all that I can say is
Better luck next time
Better luck next time"

It wasn't like Alyssum wrote the song as a farewell to Silver Linings, it wasn't the intent, but when the lyric came to mind in the second verse, Alyssum couldn't help but make it that. It was a break-up song and that's what the band did, and though Alyssum wasn't thinking about anyone in the band while writing it, it's being perceived as though it were. Alyssum never confirmed it, but she wanted to use that interpretation to set the record straight; that she's done with that part of her career.

"We tried it
But when two hearts don't light up you can't fight it
And in every storm there's still silver linin'
And with every day that passes I find it"

It's about her back, about how broken and depressed she got while fighting and maybe people forget that part of her life. Forget that she's been through a massive trauma that could have killed or disfigured her and she somehow made it out unscathed.

"I got myself together
Got a new attitude
Hope that I see you never
I'm so over you
Got myself together
You're out of my mind
Now all that I can say is
Better luck next time

"Blame on mistakes
But we had to roll the dice
Now all that I can say
Is better luck next time
Yeah
Better luck next time"

The rest of the night was amazing and everything Alyssum thought it was going to be. She caught Cassidy on the side of the stage with a smile on his face and maybe that pushed her to do better, to perform better, but she'll never admit that to anyone.