Description:  An individual who is a teenager and feels as if they’re in love when they’re really in love with the illusion, and the idea of someone just to fit in with the crowd. Before both male and female role models ask if she truly sees a future with this person. When asked this by the people she cares about she then begins to ask herself this, and changes the way she looks at potential relationships when she realizes that she shouldn’t be in a relationship when she has more growth and learning to do. The song is sung by Jorja Smith.

Smith released the song in 2018 on the album ‘Lost & Found’

 The Distinctive Features within the song are the realization of what it means to be young and enjoying it before getting into a relationship that has a negative outcome:

      Being in love with an illusion and an idea of someone touches base on young people falling in love, and moving through life faster than they should. They fail to realize that they have time, and that life is one big joy ride. The song touches on young people failing to realize this as they spend time with someone temporary with whom they have temporary feelings. An example of this is when Smith starts the song by singing about a boy she thought she knew and is wrong because she was blind young, and not having a clue. As she would bore her friends with their conversations as he would be the topic of her lunchtimes.

“ You weren’t the boy I thought I knew, maybe I was young, I didn’t have a clue, you were the topic of my lunch times, I’d bore the girls about our chats, and get upset when you didn’t text back.”

The imagery I get when listening to the first verse is picturing school girls eating lunch in the schoolyard in between classes and talking about boys. As most teenage girls would do, before she goes on to sing about the warnings about being and doing the previous actions she warns listeners. “When you look into the future do you see this boy who you think you’ve fallen for? This symbolizes deep thinking before making a decision that could change your life for better or worse. In this case, it’s about a boy who is the distraction and the opposite of what a teenage girl should be focused on.

 The girl in the music video in which Smith dances represents one of two things: the first is wanting to fit in, and potentially facing the fear of not being like your peers. When being influenced by peers in your teenage years you could lose sight of many things just by not knowing any better with the excuse of being young.

“ When we are young we all want someone who we think is the one just to fit in”. 

An example of this truth is the second representation of how the girl dances alongside Smith as they both wear banged wigs signifying that they are older. The video is portrayed to be in black and white which represents not knowing what life is going to bring you, and the uncertainty of relationships that could lead to negative outcomes. This effect acts like a blur and a reminder that others’ time is not the same amount of time as yours since everyone is on different paths in life. 

“We all want a teenage fantasy. Want it when we can’t have it and we got it we don’t seem to want it.’‘ These lyrics symbolize that in the end, we all want someone to be with and the questions we have for our lives to be answered.

Smith ends the song with a silly tone of voice where she does not sing. This gives the illusion of a teenager making fun of and at the thought of being in love only to realize that both love and life are something we shouldn’t take seriously when we are young.

I like to think of this lyric as a dream turned into a nightmare that we don’t want, and when things are too good we tend to question it as well as tell ourselves it’s too good to be true. It’s almost like realizing what goes into relationships when you realize that it’s not all just rainbows and butterflies and that we don’t want to compromise anything to which in the end we don’t want it.

The one part that mostly stayed with me when I first came across this song was the part where Smith sings “I need to grow and find myself before I let somebody love me cause at the moment I don’t know me.’’ this is one of the biggest lessons I have learned within the song time and time again. I am reminded that I have to love myself before I get into any relationship as I am the only one that I have on this journey called life. Simply because it is mine. The majority of my time spent is with me and I.