You're On Your Own, Kid
- Fifteen / You're On Your Own, Kid (Eras Tour, Singapore)
- You're On Your Own, Kid / Long Live (Eras Tour, Lisbon)
- Fifteen / You're On Your Own, Kid (Eras Tour, Lyon)
- State of Grace / You're On Your Own, Kid (Eras Tour, Dublin)
- The Archer / You're On Your Own, Kid (Eras Tour, London (Aug))
- You're On Your Own, Kid / long story short (Eras Tour, Toronto)
A catalogue observation marking the Redemption theme in this song. The full reading will follow when You're on Your Own, Kid is the discussion's seed song.
Bittersweet business: the artist's solitary journey through the industry, the realisation that no one saves you and nothing is given. The speaker builds everything from scratch alone and arrives at a hard-won self-sufficiency. The industry's indifference as the condition of artistic formation.
“I didn't choose this town I dream of getting out”
The hometown as a place of constraint and limited horizons, something to escape from rather than return to. The speaker frames the town as an unchosen starting condition rather than a source of identity or belonging. Sets up the rest of the song's arc: the solitary journey away from where you were placed toward where you choose to be.
“I search the party of better bodies just to learn that you never cared”
“I hosted parties and starved my body like I'd be saved by a perfect kiss”
“I looked around in a blood-soaked gown and I saw something they can't take away”
“Something different bloomed, writing in my room”
“I touch my phone as if it's your face”
essential-aloneness
“You're on your own, kid, you always have been”
“No one sees when you lose When you're playing solitaire” — Dear Reader
Community readers connect the solitaire image's essential aloneness to You're On Your Own, Kid, whose refrain states the same premise outright. The hosts' observation that we are always essentially alone reads as the through-line between the two songs.