Track 6: Used To
A slow burn indie bop about the grief and contemplations that occur at the end of a relationship.
Not long after finally caving and joining TikTok (I stubbornly held out until the tail end of 2023), I stumbled upon one of many thifted outfit compilations that the algorithm fed me. Its creator, Kaylen, struck me. I loved her style, and after watching a few more of her videos, I loved her sense of humor, too. As I dug into her profile, I noticed that she has a band, SHARE, with Nile Marr (yes, the son of Smiths guitarist and co-songwritier Johnny Marr). I did one of those cartoon character double takes and went straight to Spotify to check them out. At that time, they’d only released a cover of The Psychadelic Furs’ “Love My Way” - a classic in its own right, but also an equally groovy take from SHARE.
I don’t know about you, but I have what the kids call “zero chill” when I tuck into something new - be it a book, a band, a tv show, you name it. That sticky little trait set me on my journey to learn more about this duo, which in turn, led me to Kaylen’s previous project, Wilma Laverne Miner. I played her discography on repeat one day, and I found myself happy to hear one specific song often playing back: “Used To.”
The stars aligned so that I could uncover this track. I saved it to my Liked Songs on Spotify a few months back, but find that when it comes on in the car or while I’m working, I always listen through from start to finish (raise your hand if you’re a serial skip-before-the-song’s-over music listener 😬 GUILTY!). The ramp up from its soft start to its sonorous ending, resplendent with booming drums and gritty guitar riffs, is full of heart and soul. Let’s dive in.
FAVORITE LYRICS
“Take me as I am / Or just leave me here alone again / I guess it’s not that different.”
“Some days I still miss you / But most days I just wish we never met.”
THE ARTIST BIO
Hailing from Missoula, Montana, Wilma Laverne Miner is the pseudonym for singer/songwriter Kaylen Krebsbach, currently of the duo SHARE. Joined by a full band lineup consisting of Nick Hawksley, Rob Cave and Tyler Duncan, their first EP, Used To, dropped in February of 2020, with a follow-up single STCY in July of 2021. Though she has a very small discography as Wilma Laverne Miner, her songs are striking. I like this quote from her Last.FM bio, which I think really encapsulates the WLM vibe: “Her pleading but unrepentant voice evokes visions of a bar fight in the glow of a neon sign—rough and tumble but honest and at the mercy of the listener.”
DECONSTRUCTING THE TRACK
At a birdseye view, this song seems to be talking through past feelings after a relationship has fizzled out. Their demise was in sight the whole time, but the authoress stuck it out until the very end, even when all signs pointed to denouement. A completely relatable subject matter, and certainly one that feels discernable to most folks.
To me, the words of this song also apply to the loss of platonic friendship. At least, that is what I think of when I hear it, as opposed to the end of a romantic relationship. I would argue that friendship break-ups are even more emotionally fraught than some romantic partings, especially when the break-up is more of the slow dissolvement that Miner alludes to in this song.
Personally, I’ve realized that I am more of a seasonal friend. By that, I mean I tend to cycle through friends as I pass through different phases of my life. My four most consistent friends are people that I met in sixth grade (one of them being my husband). I don’t know if something was in the water during our time in junior high, but those core friends have been there for me no matter what, through periods of quiet and for the really big moments (shout out to Nikki, Rachael, Ryan and Jacob).
That said, I have experienced a particularly painful friendship break-up within the last decade. What salted the wound is the fact that there never was an official, “this is it, we’re done” moment or conversation. It was a slow falling out, with a few encounters over a handful years that amounted to no rekindling or that same closeness that we had before. This friend and I were incredibly close for years. We survived being in different grades and going to different colleges. At the height of my depression, they inspired me to get help. In many, many ways, they are the reason that I found a better path to travel down. I felt loved by them, until I found that that wasn’t the case anymore. With hindsight, I think the me that I was trying to grow out of at the time contributed to the downfall of the relationship. I was self-destructive, impulsive, and jealous. Was I going through some things that even this incredibly close didn’t know about? Absolutely. Does that excuse my sometimes piss-poor behavior? Never. Over the years, I broke a bulk of those cycles, growing in the way that you do when you move out of your early twenties. I tried reaching out, to show that I’d become someone worth putting effort into, but by then I think the damage was done. They’d moved on, and so I needed to, too.
Listening to “Used To” echoes that experience—the idolization of an important person in your life; the bitterness when they find someone better; the realization that you were either going to stay in a strained friendship where no one thrived, or you were going to be sad, but ultimately decide to move on. To me, this track says: yes, this shit hurts badly, and yes, that pain will resurface sometimes. However, it’s good to recognize an ending, even if its tinged in regret or grief. I know I drone on about relatability in each of my tracks, but I guess that’s the point of this playlist: finding things that speak to pieces of my past, or even parts of my future.
If you’ve lived through or are currently going through a friendship break-up, my heart goes out to you. Speaking from the perspective of someone who has finally crossed that bridge, know that your feelings (happy, sad, relieved, etc.) hold weight. Just don’t let them weigh you down entirely.
Thanks for listening.