Bittersweet Stardom

A cycle of poems «Everything Hurts and I Am Almost Famous»

I signed my soul on a dotted line,
Traded my youth for a flashing light.
Now the crowd screams my name like a prayer,
But the silence backstage is too loud to bear.

Gold records hang like ghosts on the wall,
Each one a memory I can't recall.
The autographs fade but the loneliness stays,
A price that they never put on the stage.

Oh, this bittersweet stardom, it's killing me slow,
A diamond facade with a heartbreak below.
I'm the king of the world 'til the curtains come down,
Then it's just me and the echoes of sound.
Oh-oh-oh, I'm a legend they made,
Oh-oh-oh, but I'm lost in the fame.

The afterparties bleed into dawn,
Laughing too loud just to feel like I'm not gone.
They love me in pixels, in magazines,
But nobody knows me behind the screen.

I chase the high of a thousand hands,
But it slips like the sand, slips like the sand.
The spotlight's bright but it burns like the sun,
And I'm Icarus now - look what I've done.

Oh, this bittersweet stardom, it's killing me slow,
A diamond facade with a heartbreak below.
I'm the king of the world 'til the curtains come down,
Then it's just me and the echoes of sound.
Oh-oh-oh, I'm a legend they made,
Oh-oh-oh, but I'm lost in the fame.

Maybe I'll wake up one day and see,
The boy in the mirror's still part of me.
But the records keep spinning, the train won't stop,
And I'm terrified one day I'll forget what I've lost.

So play me one more, let the guitars scream,
Let me pretend that I'm still seventeen.
With a mic in my hand and dreams in my eyes,
Before the stardom, before the goodbyes...