Julien Baker / Turn Out the Lights / 2017
Appointments
resigned, aching, quietly desperate
A quiet, almost clinical account of a relationship strained by mental illness and treatment, where the narrator tries to hold onto a thin, unconvincing hope. Baker builds the song around a mantra she repeats until it sounds less like belief than a coping mechanism she's forcing herself to perform.
mental illness and treatment self-doubt strained intimacy forced optimism guilt and disappointment
Who's speaking
A first-person narrator addresses a partner directly, confessing inadequacy and disappointment while trying to justify ongoing therapy or recovery efforts; the voice is intimate but unreliable in its optimism, undercutting its own hopeful statements almost as soon as it makes them.
What happens
The song opens in a domestic scene of quiet conflict, where the narrator refuses to stop their partner from leaving and acknowledges they've become someone different, someone disappointing. They reference ongoing therapy or psychiatric appointments as the reason for their current state, suggesting effort toward change that hasn't yet paid off. The second half shifts into a more interior, almost philosophical register, where the narrator rationalizes failure and emptiness as part of a process, before collapsing into the repeated insistence that things will be okay despite admitting they know it isn't true.
How it's built
The song moves from a narrative verse grounded in a specific relational moment into an abstract, repetitive chorus-like section built on a single contradictory refrain. The lack of a traditional hook-driven chorus until late in the song, combined with the wordless vocalizing bridge, mirrors the narrator's difficulty finding language for hope that isn't a lie.
Section by section
Opening verse
“I'm staying in tonight”
The song begins with a small, almost passive domestic detail that immediately signals emotional distance -- the narrator isn't fighting to keep the relationship together, just quietly present while the other person may be leaving.
First verse continued
“wanted someone who I used to be”
The narrator articulates a specific kind of grief: being loved for a former self that illness or circumstance has eroded. This reframes the partner's disappointment not as cruelty but as a reasonable response to loss.
Pre-chorus
The narrator anticipates and preempts criticism, refusing to let the partner even voice complaints. This control of the narrative suggests both self-protection and self-flagellation -- naming the disappointment before anyone else can.
First chorus
The mention of therapy and the title's appointments ground the abstraction in a concrete, almost mundane practice of mental health treatment, contrasting the private intensity of the relationship with the clinical language of 'getting better.'
Wordless bridge
The absence of lyrics here functions as a kind of exhaustion or inarticulacy -- a moment where language fails and only melody remains, appropriate for a song about the limits of self-explanation.
Second verse
“maybe the emptiness is just a lesson”
The narrator tries to convert despair into meaning, framing failure as pedagogical rather than final. The tentative 'maybe' reveals this reframing as aspirational rather than settled belief.
Closing refrain
“probably not, but I have to believe”
The repeated insistence collapses into open admission of its own falseness. The refrain becomes less a statement of hope than an act of willful self-deception sustained because the alternative is unbearable.
Craft
- paradox
- The repeated insistence on believing something while simultaneously admitting it isn't true creates a self-contradicting refrain that captures the mechanics of forced hope rather than genuine conviction.
- direct address
- The narrator speaks straight to a partner throughout, which makes the confession feel uncomfortably intimate and puts the listener in the position of overhearing a private reckoning.
- metaphor
- The comparison of emptiness to a blank canvas reframes failure as potential material rather than pure loss, a fragile attempt at reframing despair as process.
- repetition
- The mantra-like recurrence of the same line of forced belief functions almost liturgically, turning self-persuasion into something closer to compulsive ritual than genuine affirmation.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the song as a study in performed hope -- the narrator doesn't believe things will be fine but repeats the claim because the act of saying it is itself a survival strategy, maybe even a discipline akin to the appointments themselves. An alternative reading positions the refrain as directed outward, a reassurance offered to the partner that the narrator knows is false, making the song as much about protecting someone else from the narrator's despair as about self-soothing. Both readings coexist in the final verses, where the narrator explicitly separates the belief from any audience benefit.
Context
Turn Out the Lights (2017) followed Baker's debut Sprained Ankle and continued her confessional, sparse songwriting style, often drawing on her own experiences with mental illness, sobriety, and faith. I don't have confirmed biographical specifics tying this song to a particular event in her life, so this reading stays with the text itself.
Listen for
- the shift from narrative verse to the repetitive, almost chant-like refrain
- the wordless vocal section functioning as emotional punctuation
- the quiet, unresolved tension between the admission of falseness and the insistence on belief
- how sparse the instrumentation stays, keeping focus on the vocal's fragility
About Julien Baker
Julien Rose Baker is an American indie rock singer-songwriter and guitarist. Her music is noted for its moody quality and confessional lyrical style, as well as frank explorations of topics including Christianity, addiction, mental illness, and human nature.
b. 1995 / United States
Full biography and catalogue