Song Spotlight: "If It's Bad News, It Can Wait" by Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate)

The arts of song composition and storytelling have been bedfellows about as long as humans have had spoken language. Just as the words we choose communicate the details of our narrative, so does the musicality of our language allow those details to stick in our minds and hearts. Rhyme, cadence, rhythm, and meter all play their roles in both speech and song, and it is hardly surprising to hear musicians use their instruments to reinforce these devices. Yet few other songs so perfectly intertwine tune and tale than “If It’s Bad News, It Can Wait” by Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate).

For You Will Eventually Be Forgotten, the parent record of this tune, lead singer Keith Latinen decided to “write [his] songs like short stories more than anything else,” and the lyrics of “If It’s Bad News, It Can Wait” completely reflect this. There is a distinct lack of rhyme, meter, repetition, or really anything that could define the piece as poetry. Keith instead focuses on the narrative, doing his utmost to give the listener a true and uncut account.

With “If It’s Bad News, It Can Wait,” Keith tells us of a trip he took with friends during spring break of his senior year, when they were still “untethered and free and grown.” He and his hopeful friends, excited to be out on their own, revel in their new surroundings on Virginia Beach: “The boardwalk was teeming with youth / brashly claiming adulthood like it was the last day on earth.” Yet just as they are beginning to feel free and invincible, the trip is suddenly cut short by a late night phone call “when only bad things are on the other end,” informing Keith’s friend Danny that his brother has died. The group then packs up and heads home, making it back “just in time for the funeral.”

The musical backdrop for this story is just as vibrant and emotional as the text. Keith begins his tale just as the song launches, the whole of Empire! moving through a slow, melancholy groove spaced out over five measures. Jon Steinhoff’s drums stutter right before each gentle guitar chord is plucked, while Keith sets his memories to melody. This A-section is gentle and somber, soaked in a bittersweet nostalgia that is reflected in hopelessly intertwined guitars and booming bass notes.

Yet as the B-section blooms in our ears, so do the story and the emotion. The band picks up the energy and the excitement, bringing the song into a more major key. Keith’s vocals take on the tone of the invincible youth, only looking ahead. There is hope resting between the notes of the song, ringing in the cymbals and in the guitars’ strings, a hope that is suddenly squashed as the song returns to the A-section, louder this time, more insistent, before coming to an abrupt and jarring end just as the news of the death is passed onto us.

To my ears, the lyrics and instrumentation of “If It’s Bad News, It Can Wait” are not just connected, but wholly reliant on each other. Though the music is completely finalized before lyrics are even written, both are combed through by Keith with an extreme attention to detail. Every piece, played or penned, must prove its worth, because “if it’s not serving a purpose it needs to go.” Both the instruments and Keith’s mourning vocal are two inseparable parts of this tale, and a closer listening only accentuates this.

The opening A-section is tentative, expectant, just like the four boys looking forward to their trip. When the B-section arrives, laden with joy and energy, so do the friends reach their destination, delighting in their first foray into adulthood as they “[venture] out into the world.” The hope and enthusiasm of their youth peaks in this part, until the A-section returns, the energy now hectic and quickened, carrying back the weight of the worst news a person can receive. Both elements of the song are so fleeting and fickle, heavy reminders of the Keith’s theme that “anything can be taken away from you at any time.”

Between the emotional performances of the four musicians in Empire! Empire! and Keith’s haunting, dolorous tale of crushed youth, “If It’s Bad News, It Can Wait” is a tune that truly affects me with each listen. There is so much intention written into every facet of the song: not a millisecond has been left to chance, and every syllable is uttered with the weight of sincere truth. Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate) brings the listener along with them on that car ride, imparting the real emotions of that experience without any pomp or frill, and I can only hope that someday my own creative endeavors might attain that level of sincerity.