This post is part of the ongoing blog breakdown series where I dive into the official lyrics, stories and thoughts that inspired the lyrics for the recently released Passing Harsher album. If you haven’t yet, give the record a spin on bandcamp and jump back to the first blog on this record by clicking this handy link.

Today we’re talking about track 2 on the record: Stranded.

Listen to the album in full on bandcamp!

Stream “Stranded” and then read on for the official lyrics and my blog breakdown.

Stranded (Official Lyrics)

From the outset
We both felt it
There was something
Sitting crooked
You were empty
I was fading
Sprawled out in your sisters basement

An air about it
Grey and clouded
Getting thicker by the hour

And I know what you need
But right now I can’t speak
The way you look at me
It leaves me, it leaves me

Stranded on a plane
In some unknown and distant space
Piloting a frame
With an unrecognized face
A mirror image fate
An altered state with higher stakes
From above too high to reach
Your pale and hollowed cheeks
Calling me
I can’t speak
What I see
It leaves me
It leaves me

Stranded on a plane
In some unknown and distant space
Piloting a frame
With an unrecognized face
A mirror image fate
What could’ve been if not for me
I know what you need
But right now I can’t speak

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During “Stranded” we find ourselves in the middle of the aftermath of a house party. It’s the moment after most people have gone home and the few stranglers remaining are well off their game, drunk, high, and immobilized if not passed out entirely.

You know you probably should have gone home hours ago but here you are, feeling a little worse for wear in your friend’s house and something about the scene isn’t looking right – you don’t know for sure what, but you feel like something is wrong.

And then it hits you that the girl you’re looking at isn’t just passed out, there’s something worse happening to them. They’re looking at you with a blank stare and not saying anything but if they were, they’d be begging for your help. But you’re in no shape to know how, so you just stare right back at them, in some twisted empty immobile tango.

In the chorus I bring the experience to light and what we’re talking about in “Stranded” is a bit of a continuation from “Too Late” – we’re talking about about drug addiction and someone is about to overdose and someone else is about to watch it happen.

Our only hero is entirely too out of sorts to be able to be of any use here, too high to call for backup or make any effort to help. In the moments they’re watching this happen, they’re cognizant enough to know that this is dire and that the fate they’re watching unfold could be their own.

We end the track without knowing the outcome.

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Next time on the blog, we’ll get into track 3: All That Remains.