"Never Ever" is a 1997 hit song by the girl group All Saints, with a sort of R'n'B-overlaid-with-Gospel rumination on the fairly pedestrian song theme of a relationship having gone bad. On the surface, that is. But there's something deeper.

To listen to the song, you get the feeling that you're supposed to be rooting for the singer, this poor girl bewildered by her event of a broken heart. Why, she laments to her departed lover, why have you forsaken me?

The problem is, the first few lines of the song lay out all the whys one might ever require:

Was it that I never paid enough attention
Or did I not give enough affection?
....
Did I never treat you right?
Did I always start the fight?
So the question becomes, what did this inattentive, unaffectionate, mistreating, fight-starting girl do wrong that she is not being met with endless and unconditional love in return? But then she concludes for herself, "I'm sure I ain't done nothing wrong, no."

A further tell is in the chorus:
Never ever have I ever felt so low
When you gonna take me out of this black hole?
Never ever have I ever felt so sad
The way I'm feeling, yeah, you got me feeling really bad
Never ever have I had to find
I've had to dig away to find my own peace of mind
I've never ever had my conscience to fight
The way I'm feeling, yeah, it just don't feel right.
The first four lines repeat the grand thesis, that this girl feels bad, really really bad, and ought to be felt bad for; and that it is the fault and responsibility of her lover to remedy this malaise by returning to whatever the state of things was before. But the latter lines reveal that, prior to this occurrence, the singer had never needed to engage in introspection before whatsoever. Never had to wrestle with their conscience. Never had to dig. Which just seems to fit with the obliviousness of not knowing how the laundry list of wrongs written out was causative of the current conundrum.

"Never Ever" might be better as a satiric cautionary tale, a reflection of human nature's tendency to overlook the small detail called personal accountability whilst in the throes of heartache, a paradox which could paint a vivid portrayal of the complexity of human emotion -- if only it were not delivered with such over-the-top earnestness.

"Never Ever" is a 1997 hit song by the girl group All Saints. The song can be read as a woman who is in an abusive relationship where she is told that she is not paying enough attention, that she isn't giving enough affection, that she starts all the fights, that she never treats him right. That's a pretty standard abuse tear down, "you aren't doing it right" over and over, until the person lives in fear and is trying to meet impossible expectations. And she feels isolated, afraid, sad, in a black hole. She is not writing it off as an abusive shit who left me. Here's hoping that she does.

I don't see where in the song that it says she has never done any introspection. Where does that come from? She says she is digging deeper, trying to understand. That doesn't mean she's never looked inwards at all. And isn't it normal to examine one's own behavior when someone abandons a relationship? It is normal to wonder what our responsibility is and how we can change. What part do we have in it? None of us want to repeat the same pattern. Part of healing is realizing that the person who left stopped loving and abandoned ship. Sometimes what they love is their own projection, and if a woman or man doesn't match the exact projection, the lover leaves. If the lover is only about control, that is not love at all. That is control and abuse. Isn't true love where the person withdraw their projection of the perfect mate and loves the actual partner, flaws and all?

I also think it's normal to wish the person explained. And if they explained, to wish that they had not explained. Is it better to walk away silent or to say something? The real wish is that it did not happen, that the person did not walk away, that the singer is still loved. Do we all want to be loved?

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.