Music: Mary Lambert’s Anthem “Secrets”

Shamelessly Being Who You Are Looks Like Fun

By Kate Hickey
QuailBellMagazine.com

You might remember Mary Lambert from Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s hit “Same Love” in 2012. She sang the beautiful, haunting chorus that truly pulled that song together. She, along with Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, made a difference in Washington state’s Referendum 74, which legalized same-sex marriage that year. Since then, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis have rocketed into superstardom, but Mary Lambert was a bit left behind.

Not anymore.

Her music video for her single “Secrets” debuted at the end of July and has since gained over two million views on YouTube. Most of Lambert’s other work is slow, serious, and quiet, but this song is an upbeat jam, something anybody would love to play at a party to get people dancing. You could definitely leave the song at that and continue on with your life, but if you look a little deeper, the song becomes so much more.

In this song, Mary Lambert tells us all of her secrets. She tells us the silly, the absurd, the sensitive, and the sad parts of her that anybody would be inclined to hide from the world. She opens the song with the lyrics: “Okay. Game face. Here we go.” In this deep breath before the plunge, you can feel that this song, and Mary Lambert, are going to be one hundred percent honest with the audience.

She delivers. She opens up a fountain of personal information—things that someone might be afraid to admit or acknowledge—and lets everyone know that she isn’t afraid to see these things in herself. She hands us a list of her insecurities and then smiles at us.

While the verses give us details about Lambert’s personal secrets, the chorus goes on to let everybody know exactly how she feels about her secrets seeing the light of day: “So what?” She’s utterly unashamed of herself and her secrets and it’s a beautiful thing to watch. 

As Lambert points out in the video, we’re socially instructed as children to keep our insecurities to ourselves for a variety of reasons. If there’s something about us that others might find strange or unpleasant for any reason, we’re supposed to keep that part of ourselves hidden from the world. And as a result, we have a very prominent culture of shame. We are all ashamed of all sorts of things for all kinds of reasons, but Mary Lambert is here to tell us that she’s over it. She has taken a huge leap, overcome her own fears for us, and with this wonderful video, can help us gain the confidence to admit our own secret insecurities. 

From the gist of the video, one can only assume that letting go of those fears is very freeing. There’s an excess of laughter, dancing, and smiles from start to finish. The happiness in both letting go of and accepting the different, scary parts of yourself becomes something you want to share in while you watch Mary Lambert’s video for “Secrets.” 

Mary Lambert has a new album coming out called “Heart On my Sleeve,” which is hits stores on October 14th. If this song is anything to go by, the album will be a total delight!

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