A few days ago one of Jeremy's Tumblr Friends, Kristyn (Kristin-The-Cowardly-Dog.tumblr.com) proclaimed her belief that Miranda Lambert wrote Desperation about her current husband Blake Shelton "and that leads to thoughts and images of poor, heartbroken, desperate little Miranda Lambert who was hopelessly in love with a married man who she could never have." As a huge fan of this song myself (the name of my tumblr blog is taken from a line in this song) I agreed to this at first but I think after some listening to the song, I believe I have figured out another angle.
Now, to be fair, I am not sure what Miranda wrote the song about, so this may be a possibility but from my own experience, I believe the song comes from a point of someone who feels lost. Lost in lost love. Lost in life. And they continually turn back to longing for the love of someone they can't have.
I believe the main drive of the song comes from the point of view where Miranda is longing for someone (we will say it is Blake Shelton for this exercise) but she cannot be with who she truly wants, so she will try and turn to someone else. Anyone else, even settle for less than she deserves. Or even worse, nobody's feelings for her match the ones she has for them. But she cannot seem to shake her feelings for Blake. Because she is still so desperate to be with the one that she wants she is doing herself emotional harm over him. It is especially clear in the 2nd verse of the song that she has given up on trying to move on and is stuck on the pain that "Blake" has stuck her with. He has clearly ruined her. Shaken her confidence and shut her down.
“Complicated words slipping off of your tongue but ain’t one of them the truth”
The scariest part of the song and I guess I am saying this as someone who is guilty of it myself in a way, is a desperation to be with or even near someone who has hurt them. That is where the danger lies in frustration. You can’t harm yourself over someone else who harms you. You miss out on life and the other person likely is moving on. Holding out hope is fine, but now when you are stupid enough to believe that you don’t need to move past that.
