【MLPJ DEPOT｜G:B INTERVIEW 01｜A Conversation on “Chased the Stars” 】

CHASING THE STARS

INTERVIEWER:

Adrian Cole

PARTICIPANTS:

V / G / D / B

LISTEN ON YOUTUBE

[▶ Watch “Chased the Stars” on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAtr9Sj6HwY)

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OPENING

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COLE:

Hi. First time we’ve met, right?

V:

It’s good to meet you.

COLE:

My daughter got me listening to your music.

She asked me to bring back your autographs.

D:

If mine’s good enough for her.

G:

Quit grinning.

COLE:

(wry smile)

She was pretty clear I wasn’t to come home without them.

D:

Whose fan is she?

G:

Not you.

D:

......

COLE:

(laughs)

All right. Let’s get started.

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INTERVIEW

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COLE:

The first time I heard it,

I thought it was pretty sentimental.

It sounds like you’re talking

to one person.

“You don’t have to be strong.”

“I want you to stay.”

It’s a very feminine point of view.

V:

That’s how it started.

COLE:

“Started”?

So something changed along the way?

V:

The song itself didn’t really change.

But once I put a melody to it,

the picture started to open up.

COLE:

How so?

V:

I wanted to bring in

what the person going off to fight

might be feeling too.

COLE:

Right.

The video surprised me, though.

With lyrics like these,

you could easily have focused

on the horror and tragedy of war.

V:

I didn’t want to do that.

COLE:

Why not?

V:

Because I didn’t want to dismiss

the will to fight.

COLE:

So the will to fight itself

isn’t something you’d condemn?

V:

I don’t think there’s one simple answer.

It depends on who the person is,

the situation they’re in,

the time they live in,

and where they are.

What counts as right changes with all of that.

COLE:

Then what about the four of you?

What would you fight for?

D:

For someone I love.

G:

That’s some pussy shit.

D:

What about you?

G:

To be a hero.

V:

(laughs)

For honor.

To protect your country.

There’s never just one reason to fight.

COLE:

And you, B?

B:

Someone picks a fight, I finish it.

D:

That’s the only reason?

B:

You need another one?

COLE:

(laughs)

Four very different answers.

All right. Let’s go back to the song for a moment.

V, let me ask you something.

When you wrote it,

were you writing from the point of view

of the one leaving,

or the one being left behind?

D:

The one being left behind, right?

COLE:

Is he right?

V:

It actually started as a poem

I wrote when I was a kid.

COLE:

How old were you?

V:

Early teens.

COLE:

So even back then,

you were writing from the side

of the person left behind.

I wouldn’t have guessed that.

D:

These days, V always wants

to be the one protecting everyone.

But he was cute when he was a kid.

V:

At least call me a genius.

COLE:

That line—“don’t go.”

Who were you saying it to?

V:

No one real.

I saw an anime when I was a kid

where the hero died at the end.

He saved the world,

everyone praised him,

and that was it.

I hated that ending.

D:

So that’s why you wrote,

“You don’t have to be a hero.”

V:

Yeah. Pretty much.

COLE:

Right.

But something else interests me more.

Why did you keep the poem?

V:

Why did I keep it...?

G:

Watch it.

Screw this up and you’re dead.

V:

......

(thinks for a moment)

B:

It’d been tucked inside a magazine

all that time.

D:

And you found it

when you were stuck for ideas, right?

V:

...(wry smile)

Maybe there’s a contradiction in me.

COLE:

What kind of contradiction?

V:

As I got older,

I started to understand both sides.

The person who leaves,

and the person left behind.

D:

Yeah. I get both too.

G:

Not me.

D:

Yeah, I figured.

COLE:

So when you sing it now,

which side are you speaking from?

V:

Not just one.

I took the original scene

and opened it up.

People can take it however they want.

COLE:

So the song isn’t there

to give people an answer.

V:

No. Of course not.

COLE:

All right.

One last thing.

I’ve still got a promise

to keep to my daughter.

D:

She doesn’t need G’s autograph, right?

COLE:

Actually,

she’s a huge fan of G.

D:

......

G:

Relax.

I’ll let D sign too.

COLE:

(laughs)

I’ll take all four.

When I first heard “Chased the Stars,” I took it for a sentimental song told from the point of view of the person left behind.

The lyrics say, “You don’t have to be strong” and “I want you to stay.” The video, however, shows someone preparing to go off and fight. It neither condemns the act of fighting itself nor turns the person who fights into a hero.

That slightly ambiguous position caught my attention.

Stories about war and sacrifice make it easy to arrive at an answer.

He was brave.

He defended his country.

He fought for someone he loved.

Or perhaps fighting itself was the mistake.

Any one of those statements can stand on its own.

But when people actually have to choose, their reasons rarely fall into place that neatly.

That became clear when I asked the four of them, “What would you fight for?”

D said, for someone he loved.

G said, to be a hero.

B said, if someone picked a fight, he would finish it.

V was the only one who did not choose a single answer.

Who the person is, the situation they are in, the time they live in, and where they are — what counts as right changes with all of that.

That was his answer.

It was probably the answer I spent the most time thinking about after the interview.

To say that what counts as right can change does not mean that anything can be right.

If anything, it means the opposite.

If there is no answer waiting for you in advance, then at that particular time and in that particular place, you have to choose for yourself.

And sometimes, you cannot know whether that choice was right until after you have already made it.

The story of the poem V wrote as a child was interesting for much the same reason.

A hero saves the world, dies at the end, and is praised by everyone. Then the story is over.

V said he hated that ending.

We are used to talking about what a hero accomplished.

But what remains after the hero is gone?

Who has to go on living after that?

“Chased the Stars” began there.

As an adult, V says he now understands the person who leaves as well as the person left behind.

Even so, he never threw away the words he had written as a child: “Don’t go.”

I think the song becomes interesting precisely because he never forced those two sides into a single answer.

It does not reject the will to fight.

It does not reject the wishes of the person left behind.

And all the way to the end, it refuses to tell us which side is right.

At the end of the interview, V said people should be free to take whatever they want from the song.

Perhaps that is enough.

When we talk about heroes, we tend to ask what they fought for.

But sometimes, it may be worth starting with a different question:

What did they leave behind after they were gone?