By Maeve Fitzgerald

Bridge jumping, salt kissed skin and my first love– the nostalgia of summer and loss that is Lizzy McAlpine’s “Spring Into Summer”. 

The ballad is a heartbreaking emblem of the ache of relinquished lovers and the urge to hold on to their return. Released as a bonus track to her “Older (and Wiser)” album on Oct. 4, 2024, the song’s theme of leaving winter to enter summer mimics the need to enter a new season of life after a breakup.  

McAlpine is older (and wiser) in this album, but “Spring Into Summer” confirms that no matter how much time passes, breakups leave us longing and reminiscing.  

The first verse begins with McAlpine’s candid confession of trying to hold on to winter, or an ex-lover, “Spring into summer, and the winter’s gone/ I try to hold on to it, but the current’s too strong.” McAlpine introduces a body of water, endlessly flowing, as a conceit for time. The “current” of time is pulling her from her ex without her control.  

McAlpine confesses that she “love[s] you like [she] mean[s] it just because [she] can,” a callback to McAlpine’s signature theme in her music of her incapability to love her significant other correctly. 

No matter how many times your friends say you’re better off, nobody really knows your relationship like you do. The second verse argues that “nobody knows what it’s like to be us” in her relationship. When “somebody finds [her] in the shallow end,” she is trying to avoid the current of time, attracted to shore where she has control.  

As the chorus revs, McAlpine reveals that she will never be over this ex lover. She sings, “Bridge over water, I am jumpin’ off/ Head below the surface, almost never certain of the truth/ I’m always, forever, runnin’ back to you.” She takes the risk of jumping into water, knowing that at some point she will have to get out. Her head is below the surface, submerged in time and past. Her mind is consumed. 

The drums and harmonies begin to expose her regret, as strings whine and drums clash louder and faster toward the bridge. 

The bridge reveals the longevity of McAlpine’s previous relationship and her regret about letting them go. She sings, “You’re always gonna be someone that I want/ We have too many years between us/ If I could jump into the past, I’d only change one thing/ I’d never hurt you first, I’d never let you leave/ And now I’m here forever, runnin’ back to you/ Always.” She wishes to jump into the past and fight the current, to contort time.  

Following the bridge, McAlpine admits that “summer is falling, it’s a distant dream/ If I turn around, you’re runnin’ back to me.” McAlpine’s double entendre admits that summer is falling, or ending, while simultaneously changing into fall. The relationship is now a distant dream. But, if she looks back in this haze, they are running back to her.  

The song’s outro is a minute of instrumentals and repetitive “da-da-da’s,” immersing listeners into this trance of nostalgia. As the song slowly fades out and sounds further away, listeners relinquish this love and admit that it has faded away. 

When I heard this song, I sat on my bathroom floor numbly for an hour. It was the day after I found out my long-term ex-boyfriend had a new girlfriend. The ballad was an entrapment of the grief and longing I felt for us to be sixteen again, jumping off Humarock bridge into time and splashing it around with our closest friends. Little did we know, the current was tugging at us all along.