If anyone understands how to reach out and touch what’s left of your soul, it is MARINA. Only becoming more brutally honest with each new song and album, her latest single, “Happy Loner,” provides an even more unapologetic truth than what we’ve heard already from the transcendent Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land. This track, in fact, will appear on a forthcoming deluxe edition of the record, along with “Pink Convertible,” “Free Woman” (move over, Lady Gaga) and two “home writing demos” (specifically, demo versions of “Venus Fly Trap” and “Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land”).
In promoting the release of the song, MARINA herself gave a shout-out to all those personality types who simply don’t “do well” around people, regardless of how large or small the group may be. Whether it’s because they’re highly sensitive people (or “highly emotional people,” to use a MARINA song title) or they’re too easily drained of energy when forced to “commune” with others a.k.a. listen to all their usual bullshit about the horrors of being human. Thus, she stated, “Dedicated to the introverts, empaths, socially anxious + those who feel overwhelmed with life most of the damn time.” Ironically (and just like Miley with her own commentary about changing the second she puts out a song), MARINA also added, “The weird thing is… I wrote ‘Happy Loner’ in Jan 2020. And now I can’t relate to it anymore but that’s the great thing about music. It can have a transformative quality. I’ve changed many aspects of my life just by writing or listening to a song and acknowledging a problem. Anyway… not a lot of music out there on this topic so I hope the song serves as a little support for people who are going through a tough spot.”
And it’s true, there really aren’t any ballads or bops that acknowledge how some people genuinely do prefer their own company to intermixing with the proverbial crowd. It doesn’t make them miserable or “weird,” it just makes them that rare breed of person Aristotle was talking about when he said, “He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.” Of course, society loves to make this ilk feel like the former. All part of the capitalistic agenda and con to get a person to spend more money and therefore help grind the wheels of the neoliberal machine by “having friends.” Even though, in order to have them, the unspoken rule is that you must be willing to spend some amount of money to engage with them, even if it’s just going over to their house and “sharing a bottle of wine” (or four).
Giving us a similar “mmmm-mmm” hum to the one at the end of Love + Fear’s “To Be Human,” the earnest and emotional delivery of the song is in keeping with the sonic motif of other tracks on Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land, including, “Highly Emotional People,” “Pandora’s Box,” “Flowers” and “Goodbye.” Since it seems so unfathomable for normies and extroverts to comprehend this “lifestyle,” MARINA commences the song right away with a brief yet all-encompassing statement on one aspect (for there are many) of the appeal of lonerism: “When I’m alone, things are under control/When I’m alone, I can turn off the world.” For empaths, HSPs and introverts, this is particularly important for restoring and sustaining emotional energy. MARINA is a self-confessed introvert despite her ostensible sociability (as showcased now and again on Instagram), declaring as much during a virtual “after-party,” of sorts, for her online concert Ancient Dreams: Live from the Desert. During the Q&A, MARINA explained, “I am an introvert which means that the way that I restore my energy is by, like, being on my own.” And yes, she said this even after the pandemic “lockdown” in America, when everyone was at their threshold for being alone, what with there being no escape from inside the mind without the distraction provided by “going out.”
The musical minimalism of the song allows the hypnotism of MARINA’s voice to take full effect as she announces, without shame, “‘Cause I’m happy being a loner/Happy being a loner/I’m sick of it all, I wanna give it up.” As in: give up on trying to feign being sociable in a public setting. And honestly, it has only served as bad news the entire past year for introverts being threatened constantly with a “return to normal”–a.k.a. having to interface constantly “onsite.” Why, god, why must so many people be obsessed with returning to this antiquated form of existence?
Elsewhere, MARINA hits the nail on the head for the misanthropes incessantly being made to feel “strange” when she laments, “They don’t understand, why I like being alone/I don’t wanna be so accessible/Emotionally I’m on the edge of a knife/That’s how I learn, that’s how I learn to survive.” Other types of loners prefer to exist solo because it’s the only time they feel they can truly let their hair down and be themselves, ergo, “If I’m alone then you’ll never find/The truth about me that I’m losing my mind/And it’s too hard to pretend/So I stay away from my friends.”
The gut-wrenching bridge (one to rival Olivia Rodrigo’s “drivers license”) further amplifies the difficulty of being constantly misunderstood as an introvert/HSP as MARINA croons, “I pick up on everybody’s energy/Always used to feel like there was something wrong with me/When the world is overwhelming, I need to breathe.” And the best way to do that is chillin’ in bed without worrying about the nonstop pressures required by social mores even in a post-pandemic climate. But surely things have changed in some way if a pop star (albeit a sardonic one) like MARINA is willing to address the magical wonders of being alone. It’s a far cry from Britney Spears once shouting, “My loneliness is killing me” in 1998’s “…Baby One More Time.” But no, it’s more like that updated post-corona meme of Brit saying, “My loneliness is saving me.” Such has it always been for the sort of person MARINA is referring to in “Happy Loner.”
