Song Review: "Anna Sun"

I can't get this song, "Anna Sun" by Walk the Moon, out of my head. I can't get enough of it. There is something so attractive about it. It is filled with longing, with a sense that these kids may not be on top but will never give up, that somehow life is more vibrant and worth living because it's all they've got, that they're also striving for something better.

Then there's the refrain, of "Oh, Anna Sun". Who is she? Well, there is a professor at Kenyon College named Anna Sun; it appears the band members went to Kenyon, so that's how they heard about her. But in a remark made by Professor Anna Sun of Kenyon College, Sun said that the song was not about her and that the band asked permission to use her name because they thought her name sounded cool. So, if not about Professor Sun, then about whom?

Or rather, what? It seems hard to argue otherwise that Anna Sun is a symbol, as evidenced by the door at the end of the video that has "Anna Sun" inscribed on it. Like the corn god in Willa Cather's O Pioneers!, Anna Sun is something to be wished for but never actually obtained, and I'm not sure as the symbol even comes in the form of a woman. During the course of the song, they say, "Live my life without station wagon rides," "Coming up for air," and "Wait for summertime". These snatches of lyrics are reminiscent of childhood--riding in the jumpseat of an old Volvo station wagon, spending all day at the pool, living a different life in summer than during the other times of the year. It's about childhood, the expectation of summertime, and the adult longing for warmth and sunlight that one has after cold, dark winters.

And indeed we see the inner child of the lead singer as they play in the field. Childhood is evoked in the finger-face painting and the girls-vs-boys dynamic, and so is play.

The song itself has a few problems, and the video is even more problematic. (I miss college, which is why I just used that word.) It's about as racially diverse as a small town in Nebraska -- there was one woman of Asian descent at 1:04. However, I should not be too harsh, because Kenyon is in a small Ohio town. They do reinforce some gender norms, like the man kissing an ecstatic woman around 1:00, and when they gather the men against the women in the fields towards the end of the video. Also, using face paint and dressing up as "Indian" is somewhat culturally insensitive; however, with face paint and feathers in our hair is often how we are first taught as children to conceptualize "Indian".

Despite these flaws, though, I still like the video. I love the dance session in the underground cave. I love that the lead singer lipsyncs badly, that the video until 2:40 is all shot in one continuous scene, that you can go back and watch the video again and pick up on new things (the two guys slapping each other to the right of the fireplace at 1:08, the guy dancing with a leaf blower at 1:20, how cheesy and wonderful the windmill-arms are in the dance session, the guy with the Lakers shirt and the glittery eyelashes).

This song, for me, is about nostalgia but not letting nostalgia overwhelm us, of living in the present and loving it, of looking to the future with as much joy as we remember the best of our past.

Thanks, Walk the Moon, for "Anna Sun".

Note: Lead singer's name is Nicholas Petricca, and Walk the Moon's Wikipedia page confirms what I've said -- but I had to discover what the song meant to me by myself.