“Was our love too strong to die, or were we just too weak to kill it?”

“August & September” on the eve of October. A standout track from The The’s Mind Bomb, I’ve always wondered if the apparent reconciliation in A&S was a figment of a lonely and lustful Matt Johnson’s imagination. The song begins with Johnson heartbroken and yearning for an ex. He “started writing [her] the letter which turned into the book,” but he seemingly never mailed it based on the future-in-the-past lyric construction (“I was gonna reach across the oceans and force you to look”). Why did he not mail it? Fear that he might be robbed of the fantasy of a reunion? And the rapprochement sure seems like a dream full of romantic imagery (“down on one knee...glint in my eyes...rose between my teeth”), especially when compared to Johnson’s spartan surroundings at the start of the song (a bed in a tiny hotel room). Does he choose the fantasy over the risk of rejection? I don’t know, but it’s a song so good and full of emotion that Elbow and Guy Garvey, no strangers to heartfelt lyrics, were compelled to cover it in 2017.