Lucy Dacus Offers “Kissing Lessons” Just in Time for February Love
By Julia Norkus
Lucy Dacus (she/her) strikes again with her ode to first loves and queer romance, “Kissing Lessons,” released on February 2, 2022.
The queen of indie rock has been known to perform achingly beautiful pieces of loss and heartbreak, as well as of the intrusive thoughts we avoid sharing with everyone. Before working on musical projects like boygenius with artists Phoebe Bridgers (she/her) and Julien Baker (she/her), Dacus released her first full length album No Burden in 2016, establishing herself as an indie rock icon for the years to come. Coming off of the release of her album Home Video (2021), Dacus is establishing a new era of her music.
“Kissing Lessons” is a new sound for Dacus, with an upbeat tempo and a lighthearted storyline. Dacus tells the story of a first love named Rachel, a relationship that starts for the purpose of education and ends in a longing to love. The story is told quickly as the song is a whopping one minute and 56 seconds, but nevertheless, it mimics the way that feelings and emotions of love pass so quickly through us as children.
The song itself plays on the idea that we are taught to live in a heteronormative society, with Dacus saying, “I asked her how to win my man/And she said, ‘I know just the thing.’” Dacus and Rachel both are in elementary school at the time of this story, showing that they have yet to discover (or have yet to be told) and understand that there is more to our society than straightness and being just male or just female.
The piece proceeds to talk about the kissing lessons that Dacus receives, opening her eyes to a new aspect of her sexuality that she never knew existed. The ideas of romance, love, and Dacus’s own sexuality come more into play in later lyrics: “We’d take turns being seduced/Imagining the day it would come into use.” As children, we are taught how to approach love as if it’s a game, and these are the tactics encouraged to figure out how we win.
Dacus closes the song out with the lines “Rachel’s family moved out of town/I don’t remember when we stopped hanging out/But I still wear a letter R charm on my bracelet/And wonder if she thinks of me as her first kiss.” The suggestion of Rachel as Dacus’s first love gives the audience relatable lyrics and an unforgettable story that we have all experienced in our own lives. We’ve all thought about our childhood friends, the ones we thought were cute or funny, and we cherish those feelings of love and like because they’re so fresh, so new, so exciting, and something we still aim to achieve in our adulthood.
Lucy Dacus once again proves herself as a lyrical genius, telling a story of a simple first kiss and first love with apoise and eloquence that still allows for an edginess reflective of her audience. “Kissing Lessons” is a beautiful testament to sexuality, love, and nostalgia, where Dacus carefully weaves her musical airwaves into a glimpse of a small town love story—into everyone’s small town love story.