Forever is a Feeling
Lucy Dacus
2025 / Geffen
Written by: Elizabeth Lintonen | April 7th, 2025
I am a longtime enthusiast of devastating music.
As a writer, I think lyrics are the most important part of a song. As a 22-year-old woman who feels very deeply, I see myself as a platinum member of the Lucy Dacus Target Audience. I was crying to her well-known best breakup song ‘Night Shift’ long before I had ever experienced a relationship or breakup, and I am not a stranger to the melancholy, sticky brain syndrome that she artciculates so aptly in her words. In my professional opinion, Dacus is the writer of our time. I have never encountered a poet who can articulate things the way she can.
This album is different than her other works, and you can tell she’s happier. While I have a few mixed emotions about this new album, ‘Forever is a Feeling,’ I feel immensely qualified to be reviewing it. I’m also bored to tears in a lecture right now.
Put simply, new version of Liz? New Lucy Dacus album. Such is the way of the world.
Ranking the tracks on Lucy Dacus’ newest album, ‘Forever is a Feeling,’ based on how viscerally emotional they made me in any direction
Track 1: Calliope Prelude (4/10)
I’m giving this a 4/10 on the emotional scale because it doesn’t really make me react viscerally, but it’s a killer opening. Dacus introduces a transition from her stripped back, acoustic sound, to something more theatrical, orchestral. I love the art gallery energy from this album, it feels like every song is a painting of a feeling in a moment.
Track 2: Big Deal (5/10)
This is another one where the backing music stands out to me more than the lyrics.
It’s hopeful, and the swirling melody in the back sort of sounds like swirling embers and sparks from a bonfire to me. It’s bright. It’s not a melancholy crush, it’s a hopeful one. I love the guitar she’s been using. Pretty sure this about Miss Julien Baker. And I find their relationship to be so sweet.
Once, when I was in Chicago, I went to a coffee shop downtown, and the baristas told me that they were only playing boygenius because Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker had been in that same coffee shop holding hands like, a couple days before. It was cosmic!
Track 3: Ankles (6/10)
Again, it’s not a sad track, but it’s a bop. I don’t feel like Dacus has many head bopping songs but it’s so domestic, and I like the harmonization. Although it doesn’t quite give me a stabbed in the gut feeling quite yet.
Track 4: Limerence (10/10)
Why would she write this? Goodbye. The piano at the beginning had me knowing I was done for.
I will never recover ever from the line I want what we have/ This beautiful life/ but the stillness/ the stillness/ the stillness/ might eat me alive.
Please Lucy. Spare my heart. She uses the names of specific people in my life in this song. I literally feel like she wrote it for me, but also, it’s another level of vulnerable for her. It’s a hard thing to put out into the world. I can’t believe someone caught it in the moment. This is probably the best track on the album. I have been in the living room that this song was written in, the video games, down to the popcorn. It’s so vivid.
Track 5: Modigliani (5/10)
I hate to say it but I think that the ones about Julien Baker aren’t really the ones I’m vibing with as much as the ones that aren’t. They’re so sweet, and one day I am going to be a in place to revisit them, but it’s not the killing me emotionally.
It does heal me that the girl who wrote ‘Night Shift’ and “Triple Dog Dare’ found love, though. I hope it’s permanent.
Track 6: Talk (8/10)
Solid emotional blow. Like very solid. I like that she’s in her lower reigster for this. Something about the backing vocals and the repeating lets me know exactly what kind of crash out she was experiencing. I love how she inflects when she’s meant to be screaming. This song also stays in a major key with the occasional out of key note, like there’s little jaunts where she could be veering minor, and I think it’s a fascinating way to illustrate the relationship.
Two lines that got me:
Do I make you nervous/ or bored?/ or did I drink you to the last drop?
Just like the say/ that you can never go home/ I could not love you the same way/ two days in a row.
Like ow!
Track 7: For Keeps (10/10)
It’s a short song. So I’ll say this.
But you wanted it/ and I wanted it/ and that’s the only thing that mattered in the end
And
But I still miss you/ when I’m with you/ because I know we’re not playing for keeps.
Thanks so much Lucy! Awesome!
Track 8: Forever is a Feeling (5/10)
It sounds like an opening overture to a musical. It’s whimsical. It combines so many elements of music. It’s lively. Not that much emotional blow but I am so glad she’s feeling forever.
Track 9: Come Out (5/10)
This is beautiful. Like truly just beautiful. The harp. The light guitar. The vivid descriptions of people. The repetition.
I wanna scream my throat raw/ And if that means I never sing again /At least I’ll know I went out with a bang/ Screaming my favorite things about you /Screaming your name, your name, your name.
Track 10: Best Guess (6/10)
This is another guitar bop and I can’t wait to listen to this in summer, or whenever I’m in love again. I feel like me and Dacus are living the same life, and she’s just living it first, and I hope this is premonition.
Track 11: Bullseye (with Hozier) (10/10)
F*ck these guys. Who ever introduced them should be paying my therapy bill because I told Katheryn about this one. Every one of these songs comes with a doodle. I want this one tattooed.
My greatest gift to anyone reading this far is the live version of this song recorded in the National Gallery of Ireland. Here.
Track 12: Most Wanted Man (9/10)
Where did this 70’s rock n’ roll guitar motif came in? This could be in ‘Almost Famous.’ It’s killer. The bridge is so satisfying. And Julien Baker singing on it? Something about this one hit harder than it needed to for some reason. I never claimed that these were logical rankings. “Time to write the book on you,” baby!
Track 13: Lost Time (7/10)
Such a solid end. Still sort of sad. But I love it. I love how much it says.
I’m not sorry/ not certain/not perfect/ not good/ but I love you
I feel like that’s how I’ve been talking to myself. Overall, good take Lucy.