Carolina: the Melancholic Tension of Love and Life
By: Luke Powers
In the final week before the fall semester, James, my producer, and I sat down in his cramped home studio in Nashville, Tennessee. We only had five days to record the bones of my upcoming album; time was of the essence. Nevertheless, it was important to me that we talked about the meaning and intent behind each song. As we got to discussing “Carolina,” a track I’m especially fond of, he remarked that it seemed to have a deeply personal meaning to me but wasn’t quite sure what it was. Amidst an album where over half of the songs are about heartbreak, I was surprised “Carolina” stood out as the deeply personal one, but he was not wrong. In the song I take on the persona of a songwriter who travels for work and must regrettably leave behind his wife, Carolina, to pay the bills and put food on the table. Although I am a songwriter, anyone who knows me even decently well knows I am nowhere close to being married or having someone in my life like Carolina. Why, then, would this song be so deeply personal?
Throughout college, I’ve learned that I have two very intrinsic hopes for the future. I want to make a living as a singer-songwriter, and I hope to get married and raise a family with my wife. Yet, I often feel that my career and family goals are directly at odds with each other. A singer-songwriter career—with its fluctuating income and necessity to travel—often appears to misalign with a life centered on family. As an exercise in grappling with these seemingly contradictory aspirations, I decided to write “Carolina:” a story wherein God meets both of these hopes, and I question, can life really be all I dreamed it could be?
As I sat under a tree in UVA’s gardens behind Pavilion I, I mulled over a song I began to write the night before. It was early March and the sun was shining. I hoped that crisp, bright day might be as invigorating for my creativity as it had been for the buds blooming across Grounds. After a couple of strums, I started to sing the first verse. Carolina, I miss your smile, love… As I neared the chorus, my singing turned to broken phrases and loosely related words (as it often does when I’m writing a new song). Suddenly, I was singing about an “old bricken garden,” and I realized I had written UVA and the scenery of the garden into the song.
This is where I’ll have the songwriter recall meeting his wife for the first time. It’s too perfect. They’ll meet in college and fall in love. He’ll pursue his dream career of songwriting and everything will work out the way he thinks it should.
But “Carolina” is not only a song of joy. There is a melancholic tension between family, career, and the need to provide. Carolina feels so bittersweet because it is a song that recognizes that even if God meets my desires in life, with them come new challenges I will need His grace to face. The verses center around the narrator’s yearning for Carolina and his eagerness to return to the simple love at the start of their relationship where the realities of life did not pull them from each others’ arms. These are tensions that I may one day have to face and am in fact striving toward, but there is a raw beauty in recognizing the complexities of desires and the ways they will strain on each other on this side of heaven.
Nevertheless “Carolina” is by no means a discouragement to me. It is a realization of what may be and an affirmation of my persistent pursuit of two seemingly contradictory goals. Stories in songs often help us process the past or wrestle with the present, but “Carolina” shows how stories can help us think critically about our futures. I did not intend “Carolina” to mean that to anyone else, and I imagine it will have its own meaning for all who listen. But to me, “Carolina” is forward looking. It is processing and acknowledging the complexities of what could be, and then letting the future rest in God’s hands.
Luke Powers graduated from the College of Arts and Sciences in December 2023 with a double major in Music and Economics. You can listen to “Carolina” as well as his other music on both Spotify and Apple Music.
