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14
SUTTON
PRESENT DAY
I love performing live. Love the thrill that spirals across my skin and skitters down my spine. The rush of nerves and the euphoria and the adrenaline. There’s nothing like standing in front of tens of thousands of people who paid money and took time out of their busy lives just to hear you sing.
I know other performers who find the pressure of performing staggering. Uncomfortable. Constrictive. The intensity to always be on, to always hit every note and not miss a cue, is immense.
Iliveon it. Feed off it. It’s what drives me through the long hours of rehearsals and the utter lack of privacy.
Stage fright never became an issue for me, even as the size of the crowds in front of me grew to shocking amounts. Up here is where I feel unstoppable. I’m the center of attention. The star of the show. Everyone here is here because ofme.
Call it abandonment issues, but I thrive on the importance. It’s the biggest boost of self-esteem. A high I never want to come down from.
Being up here, being on display, is a hard sensation to share or explain. You can describe it, but it’s very different to experience it.
For the first time—ever—the screaming, dancing crowd isn’t my full focus. The wave of energy and excitement isn’t fully pulling me under. I keep bobbing to the top like a buoy. And each time I do, I have to resist the strong urge to glance behind me. To look at Teddy and try to tell what he’s thinking.
Right now, the urge is especially strong.
I hear it start as a slow rumble, almost a premonition. I know it’s coming, so I’m practically manifesting it.
Kyle leaves the stage after a final few waves. We just performed the duet that we released last year. His “official” reason for showing up here, which feels a lot more like the label squeezing every ounce of positive publicity out of us.
It was meant to be the grand finale for tonight’s show.
More voices join in the chant, like the swell of a wave. More and more, growing and growing, until it feels like the walls themselves are shouting.
“‘Heartbreak for Two’! ‘Heartbreak for Two’! ‘Heartbreak for Two’!”
I knew there was a good chance this would happen, and I’m cursing myself for not thinking it through more. At the end of Cologne’s show, I basically ran off the stage to avoid it.
For Amsterdam, I figured I’d decide in the moment, up onstage, where I feel powerful. Not curled in bed last night, slipping under the spell of alcohol and the comfort of Teddy’s proximity. Now, that choice to not think this through feels like one of the stupidest decisions I’ve ever made.
The crowd keeps chanting, filling what would otherwise be silence. I’m not singing. The band isn’t playing. They’re waiting for my cue to start the intro to the song I’ve closed almost every show with since I was nineteen. The song that was my first single. The song that hit number one in a dozen countries. The song that launched my career.
The song I wrote about Teddy Owens.
I love and hate it in equal measure. It’s littered with bittersweet memories. Music is special because of the significance we assign to it. We take someone’s art and make it mean something to us. A song that immediately reminds you of some place or someone. Intimate and individual. “Heartbreak for Two” resonates with a lot of people. But it was written with words that hold the same meaning for only one other person.
I didn’t think I’d ever even know if he’d heard it. I mean, I figured he would have. Brookfield is tiny, but it has working internet and receives radio stations that play mainstream music.
But I never—ever—thought I’d be performing this song in front of him. At this moment, the thirty thousand other people here are mostly an afterthought.
None of them read the chicken scratch version of the lyrics.
None of theminspiredthose lyrics.
Worse than the worry about singing this is the anticipation. Without uttering a single note, I know this will be my best performance of this song to date.
Singing is an escape for me, an experience. I transform into whoever I want to be, whoever the song conjures. And “Heartbreak for Two” isn’t just about Teddy. It’s aboutus. Stolen glances and Yankees caps and a cereal aisle and a tiny town in Wisconsin. It’s a portal to my past, to a year I both liked and loathed. Filled with moments I can’t forget and can’t stop clinging on to.
I give the cue, and the opening chords start up. I know the guitar part doesn’t come in until after I start singing, and I’m grateful for that. I’m already more focused on what’s behind me than a rearview mirror.
My music has become less personal over the years. I’ve drawn on the things IthinkI should feel rather than what I’ve experienced firsthand. Relationships have become a string of predictability. Paparazzi swarming overpriced restaurants. Subpar sex. Big gestures that mean next to nothing.
It’s been a long time since I’ve experienced a moment visceral enough that words automatically form. For the first time since I’ve sung this song in front of an audience, I have new memories.
