What is love? Nearly every writer in history has attempted to put love into words—to capture the indescribable beauty, power, and resonance of the intangible thing that is so many people’s beginning and almost as often their end. One group of people that has tried to capture the meaning of love many times over is a band called The Avett Brothers. Made up of two brothers, Scott and Seth Avett, and their bassist, Bob Crawford, The Avett Brothers began in the year 2000. Before ever signing to a record label, the band produced five albums and two singles. Their soulful lyrics plus their skillful and enchanting melodies allowed them finally to reach their dream of signing with Rick Ruban and spreading their music across the globe. Each of their songs tells a different story of love, growing up, and making decisions while inevitably teaching a lesson on how to handle these and many more twists and turns of life. Chosen as the title of their debut label-album, the song “I and Love and You” is a work of lyrical genius that takes the listener on a journey through love, life, and emotional imperfection and inevitably causes the listener to question his or her own opinion on the words “I love you.”
As the young lover’s journey begins, the brothers paint a picture of the fear that love instills in young men and the brash decisions it causes all fools for love to make. This story tells of a young man caught between his days of innocence and youth and the adulthood that follows. The Avett Brothers sing, “Load the car and write the note/ Grab your bag and grab your coat/ tell the ones that need to know/ We are headed north,” describing the young man’s decision to run from the love he has discovered rather than facing it. Why would he run? The brothers continue to say, “One foot in and one foot back/ But it don’t pay to live like that/ So I cut the ties and I jumped the tracks/ For never to return.” It seems that the young man in the story has felt the fear that engulfs so many people in love, but for what reason is this young man scared? Is he afraid of opening up, being vulnerable? So many times relationships crumble at the feet of pride, selfishness, and insecurity. Though on the other end of the spectrum, The Avett Brothers bring up the fallacy in so many people’s “love” in their album explanation note: “To say “I love you” with a dramatic measure of synthetic emotion; a snare set by those who prey upon fellow humanity.” Maybe this young man proclaimed his love for selfish reasons, seeking only to gain from his lover—whether that be of money, body, or power. For whatever reason, the false acclamation or the insecurity holding one back, The Avett Brothers make it clear that the journey of love is difficult to maneuver.
Throughout the song, there is one stanza The Avett Brothers repeat, also known as the chorus, that coincides with the young man’s repetitive feeling of defeat that love so often brings: “Ah Brooklyn Brooklyn take me in/ Are you aware the shape I’m in/ My hands they shake my head it spins/ Ah Brooklyn Brooklyn take me in.” As he repeats the name “Brooklyn, Brooklyn,” he implores his love to give him some sort of shelter from the immense power and inevitable pain of their love. With love, comes the incomprehensible mix of pain and relation that one cannot begin to put into words. In their album explanation, The Avett Brothers note, “We are powerful yet weak, capable yet temporary…products of love surrounded by struggle.” These words are so simple yet so extraordinarily accurate. Our downfalls make us strong, and yet those who bring them about make us weak. Try as we may, we ultimately fail to reach goals but always seem to get back up and try again. The heart makes no exception to this rule. The Avett Brothers characterize this resounding love, this ultimate truth, as a struggle—a struggle that is inevitably worth the pain.
In the end, the young man realizes not only the immensity of the phrase “I love you,” but also the mistakes, the lies, the truths, the pains, and the joys throughout the journey that is love. The final and heaviest words of this song truly strike to the core of the listener, “Three words that became hard to say/ I and love and you.” The brothers succeed in concluding the young man’s journey with an idea that scares, hurts, and strengthens the listener—that man has made these words that everyone longs to hear hard to say. The Avett Brothers burst open the seams of insecurity and poke at the fragile heart beneath the shell. But maybe that’s the point? In their album explanation, they reveal their allusions to “insecurity, indecision, jaded indifference, and the general plague of former and current weakness.” Maybe the reason it strikes the listener to the core is that it strikes at the shell in which humans have created to shield themselves from their own ruse of infatuation, lust, and deceit. After the realization of mistakes, the fear of losing love, the adolescent pride, the wisdom that comes with age, and many more life lessons, the young man and the listener come to the realization that “I love you” has become hard to admit to not only the one they love but also to themselves.
Countless writers have attempted to capture the meaning of love throughout history. Although love may mean something different to each person, The Avett Brothers seem to grasp the general idea. In the song “I and Love and You,” the listener is without a doubt taken on the heartache-filled, dishonest at times, misguided journey without a map that is the human being’s capability to love. No human can ever fully understand or put into words this emotion that is so much a part of us, but The Avett Brothers have certainly made a valiant attempt that we can all agree with to some extent in their album explanation: “In any case, and by whatever inspiration, these words are woven deeply into the fibers of our existence. Our longing to hear them from the right place is maddeningly and simultaneously our finest strength and our most gentle weakness.”
