Falling in love with better music this October

Graphic by Amalia Sandine

By Gabriella Collin

“we fell in love in october” is taken out of context. The title song on a three track single was released in 2018 by Marie Ulven Ringheim, lesbian singer-songwriter better known as girl in red, and was a breakout hit for the Norwegian artist. In the five years since its release, the song has racked up nearly 800 million streams on Spotify, easily clearing her 2021 album, if i could make it go quiet, and remaining her most successful work to date. Ringheim’s music was well received by queer, mainly lesbian, listeners, finding the lyrics catchy and relatable, building a secret code around the artist’s stage name. The phrase “Do you listen to girl in red?” was the new hanky code, synonymous with red-checked flannels, Doc Martens, and backwards hats. For lesbians who were in their mid-teens when girl in red was rising in popularity, it made searching for queer artists that much easier. The aesthetics of fall lined up with the pop culture interpretation of lesbian aesthetics, and girl in red was marrying the two with her mezzo-soprano voice. 

The success of “we fell in love in october” came three years after Hayley Kiyoko’s hit, “Girls Like Girls”—a song hailed for its progressive message, but fell short in resonance after its initial virality. girl in red evoked a similar quality as fellow lesbian artist, Clairo, who began releasing music at the same time as Ringheim. Clairo was one of the many artists to pioneer the “bedroom-pop” genre, as the music video for her song “Pretty Girl” was filmed on her MacBook and edited with iMovie. However, girl in red, not only more popular than Clairo, is more often aligned with lesbian identity because of her overtly queer lyrics. Whether she is speaking from a place of love, grief, or jealousy, Ringheim is always referring to a girl. Not an anonymous, genderless person of great significance, but a crush, a girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend. 

That being said, “we fell in love in october” is constantly isolated from the other two songs on the titular single. Tracks two and three, “October Passed Me By” and “forget her” respectively, in title alone allude to a massive tone shift from the first song. Rather than opening with ambiance and crescendoing strumming, “October Passed Me By” opens with Ringheim’s acapella humming. The lyrics in this song have more insight, and listeners are clued into the idea that the girl Ringheim refers to in “we fell in love in october” didn’t stick around. In fact, the refrain refers to this mystery girl as “just a memory,” before confirming in the second verse and the bridge that this fantastical girl-crush is now an ex. Ringheim declares, to an accelerating beat, “I met you at the wrong time, didn't wanna see / I was busy with the stars, you were looking at me.” The outro reiterates this, as Ringheim echoes the iconic “My girl” lines with a sadder air. In the final song, “forget her,” the lyrics are blatantly stating this breakup is difficult and she doesn't know what to do. This song captures the feelings many queer women, especially lesbians, deal with during a breakup: the struggle of trying to move on from someone who understood you at your core. Ringheim opens with “I spend all my days / Trying to forget her face / She’s so hard to erase / I don’t think she can be replaced.” The rest of the song goes as expected, and Rinheim, instead of continuing with the “My girl” motif, refers to herself and the breakup, saying she doesn’t understand. 

As this song resurfaces in trend cycles, there is constant repetition of the same two arguments. On one side are the highly-protective lesbians, claiming that this song is for them and only them, and that straight couples shouldn’t be relating to a song that wasn’t intended for them. On the other side is everyone else, queer, straight, cis, trans, the undefined, who say “it’s just a song” and claim that girl in red herself has since said that anyone can use her songs, across all sexualities. I’m not here to weigh in on that. I stopped listening to girl in red shortly after I found her, because she wasn’t my style. But for a lot of lesbains, especially young ones, girl in red is their first taste of representation. Instead of listening to songs written by straight people and pretending they’re lesbian anthems, girl in red has been there to represent people dealing with complicated, intense feelings for the first time.

Being a young, closeted lesbian is a world of hurt. “Girls Like Girls” was too on the nose, and the pop-heavy style didn’t age well. Although if i could make it go quiet didn’t reach the same level of fame that “we fell in love in october” did, girl in red continues to lean into a more bitter, believable sound. Ringheim’s music, at the time, was doing what other queer artists weren’t able to. Despite the overtly lesbian themes and relationships the songs are built on, she offered honest, brutal depictions of love that became accessible across sexualities. Fall, often the season before great changes, is a season of new beginnings as well—new rent cycles, new semesters, new attitudes, same you. girl in red’s music moves with that; her songs are featured on aesthetic fall playlists for the same reason Taylor Swift and Sixpence None the Richer are, as their songs are about epic romances that ground you in a particular time and place.  

If you’ve moved on from girl in red and are looking for something more moody and acoustic to listen to this fall, check out the EP More Brilliant Is the Hand That Throws the Coin (2019) by Brooklyn-based artist Margaux. The EP is only five songs, but add to that Margaux’s new EP Everlasting Snow/Maple’s Loom (2023), you’ll have about 30 minutes of yearning to get you through the day. If that’s not enough, this playlist should get you a little farther. 

Wherever you are in your queer music journey, it’s impossible to deny how important your “firsts” are. Whether or not you think that girl in red is cringe or tacky, remember that you used to have a girl in red in your life. If you still resonate with the song, more power to you, and I hope your love life doesn’t end like track three.