I flew too high, left fear on the ground / I touched the sky and never looked down / you were the light I couldn’t resist / I asked for love, I asked amiss… I loved you as Icarus loved the sun (too close, too much) / now look at the state of us, what have we done? (we’re far too gone).”
Aaron Taylor, “Icarus” (2020)
In one of the most well-known tales of Greek mythology, a boy receives a pair of beautiful wax wings handcrafted by his father so that he may fly away to escape certain doom. The boy, Icarus, is warned by his father to not fly too close to the sun, as the heat will cause the wax to melt and the wings to falter, but also to not to fly so low that he might collide with the earth. He must learn to balance himself and navigate the between-space in order to fly safely. Unconcerned by his father’s advice, Icarus takes off into the limitless skies and never looks back, ascending higher and higher until he treads into dangerous territory. He soon flies so close to the sun that the wings do, indeed, melt away, leading to his tragic fall from thousands of feet in the air. Desperately flapping his naked arms, he plummets into the sea and drowns instantly, leaving his father to grieve the loss of his beloved son.
The story of Icarus is generally regarded as a classical tragedy, a cautionary tale revealing the dangers of hubris and vanity. Icarus, overcome with a lust for danger and desire to test the limits of his humanity, is the composer of his own undoing. The sun is his irresistible tempter, the proverbial apple of Icarus’s eye that he simply cannot deny nor avoid as he sets his sights on ascending higher in the sky. His fate is sealed from a single, fragile moment in which he either forgets or actively ignores the fact that the merciless heat of the sun will ultimately doom him, and that, once his wax wings inevitably melt and he begins to fall, there will be no one able to save him.
With his most recent album Icarus, London-based singer-songwriter Aaron Taylor reimagines the tale of the titular figure, allegorizing the story through the lens of love and loss. On the album, listeners get 36 minutes of self-reflective lyrics, neo-soul-inspired harmonies and arrangements, and a rollercoaster saga of a man coming to terms with love as both a kind of redemption and tragedy. Taylor, a vocalist specializing in lush and memorable arrangements, draws his listener into his soundscape by being unafraid to show just how complicated true love can be, constantly weaving together narratives in which his own human limitations get in the way of experiencing love at its most ideal. On “Flowers,” he sheepishly extends a bouquet of flowers to his lover as atonement for his romantic shortcomings. On “Wanna Be Close,” he expresses frustration over the state of a long-distance relationship, yearning to be nearer to his loved one and for the intimacy of physical touch.
Icarus is bound together by the majesty of the title track, which also serves as the album’s closer. At nearly 5 minutes long, “Icarus” is the song that sees Taylor truly embody the central character, taking the well-known narrative and styling it into a personal memoir. The song opens with a graceful piano progression followed by the whirling of orchestral strings. Singing in an uncharacteristically somber tone, Taylors launches into a verse that inserts himself into the midst of romantic drama. His first verse resonates with a faint sense of distress: “I flew too high, left fear on the ground / I touched the sky and never looked down / you were the light I couldn’t resist / I asked for love, I asked amiss.” The instrumental then soars with another riff of crestfallen strings, and Taylor’s performance strikes up a new energy for the chorus, as he proclaims, “I loved you as Icarus loved the sun (too close, too much) / now look at the state of us, what have we done? (we’re far too gone).” There is a silent triumph within these lyrics. Even as he compares himself to a flawed character, there is no subtext of regret, no sense of self-pity. This is the song of a man trying to string together a narrative of hope amid the ruins that he finds himself in, trying to justify his tragic fall by reminding himself—and the listener—of the power of love.
There are many ways to interpret the word hubris. One common interpretation: dangerous overconfidence, a foolish pride that transcends beyond the bounds of human possibility. But another, less-used interpretation defines hubris as a form of self-liberating passion, one that could result in disaster if it is left unbridled. In Aaron Taylor’s reimagining of the story of Icarus, he brazenly displays a kind of hubris that is far less condemnable and much more relatable. He plays the role of a lover who gives too much of himself to make a romance work, becoming obsessively enamored to the point of near self-destruction. This is the hubris that consequently brings him down, despite having only pure intentions in his heart. “I flew too high / such is desire.”
I’m interested in how this song chooses to be in conversation with the original tale, bringing out a new side of it. Perhaps the true tragedy is not Icarus’s pride, but that he was willing to accept fatal consequences in return for feeling truly free and fulfilled for a brief moment in time. The crucial question here is, what must we sacrifice in order to declare ourselves free? Certainly, to sacrifice one’s life seems too extreme, and that’s why we mourn for the naïve Icarus. But we may also be happy that he was able to experience true bliss, or even envy his high-flying spectacular. Instead of characterizing Icarus as a disobedient, wayward child, we can see the humanity in his actions and understand what sparked his ascension. Whatever the case, there’s a wide range of things we can feel when we view the tale in this light.
For one, I think this revision of the story would suggest that Icarus is not merely a cautionary figure, but one that we are supposed to relate to and empathize with. As Taylor expresses through his closing track, we may all very well become reflections of Icarus, flying carelessly through the skies of our greatest passions, thousands of feet off the ground and neglecting to look down. We may make the error of becoming caught up in the rapture of longing—which, although it feels right, could ultimately lead to the bitter heartbreak. This is the risk we play with as finite beings navigating the emotional space between love and loss. But, if the pursuit of our passions means danger, why do we continue to pursue, even in the wake of tragedy? Why do we continue to love, even when it could bring suffering, and so often does? These are questions about the human condition that have stayed with us for the entirety of our existence. This is also the primary interest of Taylor as he explores the concept of love through music: “Icarus” is a romantic’s fugue that both celebrates freedom and mourns the aftermath, confronting that very distinct form of sadness that fills us in the wake of an overpowering love. The message here is that as we move through life, we must not forget that we are all only human, and so we must devote ourselves to the task of finding emotional balance. But at the same time, we must be gracious and allow ourselves to truly experience that same giddiness that Icarus felt, as that, too, is a part of the course of life. We must find a way to be human and be wondrously free and still able to return from our flights of passion, refreshed and unscathed.