Notes on Tenderness

Thoughts on “Going Through It” by Eliza McLamb and Being Soft

A young photo of me

I cried in an Uber last Monday for a rather pathetic reason, at least on the surface. I had a dentist appointment that morning at a new dentist's office in the city and showed up at the wrong location and had to reschedule for the following week. That same morning, I also said goodbye to my mom and sisters before they flew to the country’s opposite coast after visiting me for a long weekend - I’m not sure when I’ll see them again. I called to confirm the address of the dentist's office and still wound up at the wrong location. I dropped $20 on the Uber because I didn’t want people to see me cry in the subway - the privacy felt worth the price. I’ll pay a premium to have no one pay me any mind when I’m sad, to just go through it in quiet. 

While I felt stupid and sad in the Uber, I wore a jacket I had lent my little sister that weekend because she didn’t pack well enough for a New York January. I also wore a beanie my boyfriend gifted me because I too am ill-prepared for this kind of winter. Tears continued to flow as I realized these details. How stupid could I be to mix up the dentist's offices after calling? I thought. How stupid am I for thinking this is something worth crying over?

While I cried in the car, the song “Crybaby” by Eliza McLamb played in my earbuds (I wish I was kidding). In the song, McLamb describes the sensitivity inherent in childhood. She paints a picture of a younger version of herself nervous to steal the ball in a soccer match, instead longing to high-five the other team’s players and eat cut fruit in the sun after the game concludes. The description elicits a small smile from me - it reminds me of a younger me as well. A girl who unabashedly leaned into her softness because what else was she to do? She was afraid of being guarded in basketball, of her dad picking her up from school five minutes late, and of turning six years old because it meant using two hands to show her age instead of one. “Crybaby / No one cares as much as you for the ordinary,” McLamb sings in my ear. Fearful of friendly competition and screwing up your dentist’s office. I guess it was as true then as it is now.

Cover art for Eliza McLamb’s record Going Through It (2024)

Eliza McLamb’s debut album is titled Going Through It and that name is quite fitting. Her lyrics spin yarns of sorrow that span time and circumstance. We meet a person “going through it” as a wide-eyed child and friend, as a teenager wrestling with her duty and anguish as a daughter, and as a young adult reconciling her strife in private, in relationships, and in tandem with a world that seeks to easily define her. But to call this a “sad” record filled with “sad” songs would be limiting - which McLamb playfully alludes to on one of my favorite tracks, “Modern Woman.” “They’ll love me when I am miserable cuz I’m super marketable / Sad girl sings a simple song and all the others sing along / If you could sell to me, a brand-new way to be, I would buy it but I’d rather be free.”

“Tender” is a word that comes to mind when I think of this record. Upon listening, I feel compelled to lean into my tenderness, to lock it away, and to bathe in the feeling of being a raw nerve. The record opens with “Before” - an ode to the “time before knowing,” the blissful wonder of being a child. A time when one inevitably leans into their tenderness because they haven’t learned any other way of being. A fleeting time that you don’t realize you’ll try to recount the feeling of in the years to come. McLamb’s gentle voice wraps around me like warm water as I mourn and revere my younger, softer self alongside her. A self that didn’t know that pain comes and goes as quickly as joy. After you know something, you can’t unknow it, so you think.

Listeners hear the nuanced nature of the singer’s desires. One can want and embody things that seem to contradict one another - a concept that’s easier to say out loud than it is to understand while experiencing it. “Mythologize Me” and “Punch Drunk” emphasize the complicated nature of seeking young love and attention, of being more obsessed with someone’s fantasy of you - or your fantasy of them - than the far bleaker reality of a situation. The song “16” contains themes that the general public would mistakenly consider far more mature than what the average sixteen-year-old experiences: self-harm, eating disorders, self-medication, and caring for an institutionalized parent. “Modern Woman” points to the contemporary desire to obtain a preset, ready-to-wear identity versus the far more grueling human process of “finding oneself” bit by bit. Delusion and reality, young and old, fresh and weathered, fixed and fluid. All paradoxical, and all parts belonging to the same whole.

Conditioned to believe in binaries alone, it’s hard to make sense of how contradictory humans can be. It’s impossible to not be a hypocrite, at least a little bit. You can want love one second, and then feel completely undeserving of it the next. You can criticize the unsound nature of your best friend’s relationship while ensnaring yourself in a near-identical situation simultaneously. You can seek advice and criticism and sharply reject it once given. When we find these contradictions in ourselves, inflicting punishment can come quite naturally, particularly through isolation and stifling our personalities. Learning to hate yourself is rarely that slow of a burn.

Siloing myself off has always been a preferred form of punishment - or discipline, rather. I’ve excelled at telling myself it’s for the good of humankind. If I lock myself away in this tower - plugging the cracks in the wall so no vulnerability leaks out - perhaps I can keep my virus contained. Keep the reality that I am the absolute worst from spreading to the masses like a bad rash. Only I need to know the extent of my contradictory, exacting, and weepy nature. McLamb provides peaks at her own grapples with self-loathing, particularly her desire to change for the good of someone else, whether they desire that change or not, on “Anything You Want.” The album’s penultimate track, “Strike,” touches on the hesitancy to be vulnerable, particularly in the face of authentic love, care, and support from a good-intentioned person. “I’d soften underneath your blow / But every time I think you’ll strike, you don’t.” McLamb’s vocals are accompanied by a sweeping ensemble of strings, sighing in a way that’s reminiscent of Phoebe Bridgers’ “Scott Street.” It’s a beautiful song.

I’ve gotten upset with myself more times than I can count in my life so far. And I’ve gotten upset about being upset probably just as many times. I’ve been hurt by the people I love most and have hurt them back. I’ve rehearsed and picked apart my mannerisms with a tweezer, like a game of Operation. I’ve tried on radical self-acceptance and tried on radical self-discipline and thought that I’d mastered either one on several occasions, but never really did. I’ve cried out loud on airplanes and quietly in the backseat of Ubers - about things that rightfully knocked the wind out of me, and about missed dentist appointments and missing my little sisters. I’ve felt remorseless and apologetic just sobs apart. I’ve realized the extent of my hypocrisy and struggled to figure out how to interrogate it, if at all. 

But what I am learning is that being alive can be such a gift not despite these contradictions, but because of them. Being a complicated person means living a complicated life, far more interesting and human than leading a sleek one, devoid of any passion. Eliza McLamb’s Going Through It affirms this belief, offering notes on the vast breadth of feelings and complications one human can experience. She writes about being in awe, about hardening your edges, and about earnestly trying to soften under your own thumb. She brings her emotions into sharp relief for listeners in a way that’s honest, enlightening, and that spurs one to reflect.

The last song on Going Through It is titled “To Wake Up.” Over haunting, plucked guitar strings, McLamb softly asks the question “Isn’t it enough to wake up?” Tenderness can look like sitting with your tears and breathing - remembering that you’re alive and that crying over a missed dentist appointment is silly, but the tears likely aren’t just about that. They’re also a reminder that you’re alive, capable of experiencing great love, great pain, and mind-numbing inconveniences. You will live many remarkable and unremarkable days, both are gifts. Radical self-acceptance may be too great a bound to start, but for now, tenderness is enough. To wake up is enough.

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Special thanks to

eliza mclamb

for the early access to her record to write this piece. I’ve shouted Eliza’s name from the rooftops across this newsletter but I can’t stress enough how much you all need to subscribe to her Substack (

words from eliza

) and listen to her podcast with Julia Hava, Binchtopia. Stream Going Through It on Spotify and Apple Music!