The Truth About "Low" by Flo Rida and T-Pain
Written by Caroline Macon Fleischer
This essay was first published by March Xness, an annual basketball-style tournament of essays--an exchange of music and memories. "Low" by Flo Rida and T-Pain got eliminated in the tournament's "Sweet 16."
You should only continue reading if you are willing to accept the truth.
Because once you become aware of the truth, you will be different. You will withdraw like a shadow into a weaker, surrendered corner of yourself.
If you dare to know at this cost, here goes:
Low is a song about doomed love. Everything is a song about doomed love. Once it happens to you.
After it happens, for the rest of your whole life, you'll hear songs differently from most people. When the DJ puts Low on and everyone on the dance floor pushes chest-to-chest, lap-to-lap, you'll shy away in your feelings. you'll cross your arms and reconsider the lyrics, fixating on the thousands of freckly disco lights chasing each other across the wall. Some chase one another playfully like Duck, Duck, Goose. Others stay back, more reserved.
You'll know which of the dots you are, which ones share your personality. you'll remember you used to like dancing, before love was revealed and you watched it get fractured.
You'll press your fingers into the space above your abs and between your ribs. you'll be thankful for your diaphragm, a muscle which seems to give you the release you need dependably, helping you let go.
Because before you knew the truth, you had a good, long standing relationship with "Low." You got low for the first time in eighth grade, you purchased baggy sweatpants in its honor, you smoked countless joints listening to it, your Reeboks on the gas of that beat up Saab, that beat up Honda, that beat up Beemer, the Jetta. Swiping lip gloss in the makeup mirror. Before you knew.
Each time the song found you, you recited the lyrics by heart. You knew them at 21, pressed up against the wall by a stranger at the club and at 17, saving room for Jesus between your body and that of a guy you liked from church, despite his being so obviously gay. You knew them when you wandered the halls in the morning of this apartment and that, unsure of what to wear, and when you dressed to the nines, ready to tear it up.
But what you understand now is that "Low" is a crooning ballad, not the catchy, campy dance hit you were sold.
you'll understand, with grand aching, it's not about apple bottom jeans but about agonizing over someone, something, that doesn't want to be, can't be, in no way would possibly ever be, yours.
Now, when you get home from the club, you'll read the lyrics like a storybook, searching for comfort that others, too, have fallen lovesick, crazed. you'll feel for him.
The dude's cleaning his pockets, all in hopes that she'll simply notice him. He digs cash and she dances. But he loves her—that's the twist. It's what hasn't been shown how it is in the music video, a dusty stream of light projecting Step Up 2 on the wall.
By the end of the song, he's out three grand. But you'll know three grand will be the least of it, that his suffering is just at the start. The real cost is his identity, his perception of the world. The secret is that doomed love causes, without fail, a worsening poison—a psychological transposition.
Because before you fell into love like this, trees seemed to grow upward, reaching toward the sky. After you fell, you saw the truth—sure, branches and leaves appeared to grow up. But the reality was that trees grew down—a steadfast dissension of roots, hellbent on cracking the Earth's core.
You won't be able to shake this feeling that growth is inherently detrimental. you'll worry that all growth is like this, breaking something along the way.
Even as you find courage to turn away from your doomed person and walk toward the sun, you'll incur a blistering sunburn. you'll have no choice but to turn back and look once more at this person, noticing their face has blended into the horizon.
Their disappearance into the crevice between hill and sky will remind you that one day they will die. And this will cause you great distress, because you know that if they die sooner rather than later—and probably even if they die later—you won't be invited to the church service. Because you are doomed, too, as far as they're all concerned.
But you can't escape it. Because they are right. That first there was love and then there was doom and then there was nothing after. Everything else was just pretend and the truth was hiding in plain sight.
The truth is we are all down bad. We share this. We know this. We will never admit that we know this but we know. Flo Rida knows. T-Pain knows. When this sort of love is mentioned, everyone at the table will giggle in discomfort. you'll giggle with them, but you'll know.
About the Writer
Caroline Macon Fleischer is a writer, teacher, and mom living in Chicago. Her first book The Roommate is a psychological thriller that was published in 2022 and her second book, A Play About a Curse is a horror forthcoming in 2025. Beyond creepy novels, Caroline loves writing plays, films, strange honest essays, and poetry.