What Does Remembering Sunday Mean

8 November 2012
“Remembering Sunday”
Every song tells a story, in all genres and with all different meanings, writers use many different elements to piece together works of art creating ballads to please anyone who listens. A ballad is a song or songlike poem that tells a story in a rhythmic way. “Remembering Sunday” by All Time Low is a heart breaking song that expresses the torment that someone feels when they lose someone they love. This ballad tells the story of a man’s suffering within its tragic story line using the characteristics of refrain, a question-and-answer format and filling the stanzas with omitted details.
The refrain that is repeated throughout the song is, “Forgive me, I'm trying to find my calling, I'm calling at night. I don't mean to be a bother, but have you seen this girl? She's been running through my dreams and it's driving me crazy, it seems. I'm going to ask her to marry me.” At the beginning of this song these line are used to show how the man of the story has fallen head-over-heels for a girl. The song goes on to say that she, on the other hand, does not believe in love but he refuses to let go of the
feelings he has. As the song goes on you start to notice that the words go deeper in context when you look at the line, “I don't mean to be a bother, but have you seen this girl?” She seems to have left without a trace leaving the listener thinking, where is she? When the man asks the people who live around, they turn away from him. Why won’t anyone tell him where she has gone?
The writer leaves unanswered questions as you take note of all the things this man has to endure for this girl he’s so crazy about. The man pleads the neighbors to tell him where his love has gone; they finally answer the question telling him that she has moved away. The line “funny how it rained all day” is a conventional phrase used to symbolize the sorrow he felt with her loss. The clouds that are following him around as he looks for his sweetheart also represent his distress. Only partially answering the question of what has happened to her, you still wonder why she left. Later on in the melody turns sour as she starts to explain that she has done something terrible and now she’s not able to come back home.
Now the listener’s head is filled with ideas of the omitted details about what has happened to this girl.
While never exactly stating what has happened to her you start to foreshadow using the details the composer leaves. The song states that she is now “Keeping an eye on the world, from so many thousands of feet off the ground, ... I'm at home in the clouds, and towering over your head.” The interpretation I made of this statement, along with the previous one when she declares that she can’t come back is that she has gotten into trouble and the end result was with her death. The song begins with the man being distraught and upset over an unknown event, which leads me to believe it was him mourning over his beloved. The song ends with him stating that he will “Go home now” meaning he will leave and accept the fact that she is
gone.
Greif and mourning are heart wrenching processes we all face at some point in our lives. It’s the agony you feel when you lose a loved one and think back to the wonderful memories you have with them and all the plans you make for the future. You never expect for them to leave you and all these ideas behind but when it happens, it feels like the world has ended and you start a long journey to acceptance. The ballad “Remembering Sunday” by All Time Low takes the listener through this process that uses omitted details, refrains and a question-and-answer format to tell a story. This story starts with a man meeting someone who he sees he can have a future with and expresses the love he felt for her even with her uncertainty, as well as all the events leading you to realize that he has lost her so he finally needs to move on.