The first time I heard “Ceilings” by Lizzy McAlpine, I was wondering how she got into my brain and used all of my inner thoughts to write this song.
Before this song, I don’t think I had ever heard someone so perfectly describe how it feels to be such a hopeless romantic that you can fall in love with the random girl at the mall who looked at you for a split second, or the guy that you bumped into while turning a corner too quickly at school. Romanticizing every interaction with the person you like, and planning out your future after knowing each other for a week.
Lizzy really understands how that yearning to be loved feels, and she perfectly encapsulates that feeling in this song.
“Ceilings” was released on April 8, 2022 as part of Lizzy’s second studio album, “Five Seconds Flat.” While it has always been a popular song of hers, it recently became her most played song after it went viral on TikTok. The music video for this song was also recently released on February 14, 2023 (Valentine’s Day!), and it’s just as beautiful as the song itself.
In the beginning of the song, Lizzy is talking about falling in love with someone. It seems like a cute love song. “Lovely to be sitting here with you. You’re kinda cute,” Lizzy and her love interest are going on dates and falling in love with each other. It seems like the perfect beginning to a relationship.
A line that is repeated multiple times in the song is “It feels like the start of a movie I’ve seen before.” This line sounds like Lizzy is talking about her past relationships, and how they all felt at the start. It’s a feeling that is all too familiar to her.
While the song up to here may sound like a lovely, budding relationship, there is a huge plot twist.
“But it’s not real, and you don’t exist. And I can’t recall the last time I was kissed. It hits me, in the car, and it feels like the end of a movie I’ve seen before.”
None of the song up until now was real. Lizzy wasn’t going on all these dates with her love interest. She wasn’t falling in love. All of this was something she just imagined.
The line “It feels like the start of a movie I’ve seen before,” is changed during this plot twist. In the last line of the song, it becomes “It feels like the end of a movie I’ve seen before.” It gives a whole new meaning to the repeated line from the beginning of the song. This isn’t the first time she’s made up a love story in her head, and when she recognizes that it isn’t real, she already knows the feeling of the end.
At the end of the newly released music video for this song, you see that the stranger Lizzy imagined herself falling in love with is someone she saw at a party in the beginning of the music video. Lizzy introduces herself to them, and they hug as the video fades to black. She took the first step in making her daydreams become a reality.
Maybe one day I’ll find myself making my fake romance scenarios a reality, but until then I will continue to over-romanticize the two seconds of eye contact I make with my hallway crushes and blast “Ceilings” by Lizzy McAlpine in my earbuds.
