Tom Boy’s “Sorry for Myself” starts with a rush, flooding your ears with a droning chord before some guitar strumming comes in. It encapsulates you perhaps in an effort to convey the overwhelming emotion that Tom Boy goes on to describe a seemingly depressed moment where he blacked out. Slowly Tom paints more of a picture of what has happened. He has disappointed many people but he also is revered by some. Although, he would rather be alone. He sings “I would ctrl-alt-delete them if I could.”
The song describes this cycle of aiming for repentance for the wrongs that you have done but also recognizes that some things can’t be repaired. Tom Boy moves from repentance and work on making himself better and to an extreme low of , “I can’t help feeling sorry for myself.” However, perhaps my favorite line, Tom Boy details, “when I did it to myself.” He is the cause of his own pain despite the complications later in the song that no matter what he tries he’s knocked down by others only to remember that he is the one that got himself into this cycle.
Overall, “Sorry for Myself” seems to reach for all of us to look into the moments that we have felt the most helpless and hopeless. Echoing with lots of regret Tom Boy sings “Little by little I chipped away at the feeling / Of losing everything over something I never even wanted in the first place.” This ambiguous line makes me think of situations in which people realize they are stuck in something that originally didn’t even matter to them.
This song could be very cathartic for people who are experiencing a lot of regret right now. Please know you are not alone. I would say that it’s extremely important for artists to be vulnerable as that is how they do a service to the world. Finding a song that connects with you during a time of need can be revolutionary. I feel that “Sorry for Myself” does exactly that.
