There are bands that have a story so precise for me that I could drive back to the very spot where I was when I first listened to their music. I could tell you what I was wearing and where I was standing in the crowd when I first saw them live. Somehow, the specifics have disappeared and been lost in translation when it comes to Candy Hearts. I know our paths collided in the summer of 2014, but that's about it.


When Candy Hearts' (and now Best Ex's) frontwoman Mariel Loveland announced the name change, earlier this year, she said : "To me, Best Ex is like a breakup haircut, only I broke up with this part of myself that I no longer want or need. I broke up with a feeling that had no right to be around in the first place. I chopped off the dead, over-bleached ends of my hair my mom is begging me to cut and gave myself a confidence-boosting makeover (with lots of glitter, of course!)." Little did I know that when Candy Hearts stormed into my life, on a day I do not remember when I stumbled upon I Miss You, they'd turn out to be my confidence-boosting makeover, they'd be my breakup haircut, they'd be the start of me chopping off the dead, over-bleached ends of my figurative hair.


Reading an old interview of Mariel's for Substream, I realised Candy Hearts (and now Best Ex) might just be the most "me" band around. She says she wishes she'd written every Paramore album, but also Torn by Natalie Imbruglia. She claims to be inspired by Taylor Swift and Brand New. Find something more "me" than this, I dare you. Candy Hearts are the band I had wanted to have around my entire life, the band I would have loved to find in a battle of the bands episode of my favourite sitcom when I was eight, the band I would have sang along to in my bedroom, probably deafening my neighbours, aged twelve. Had I been in my Freaky Friday phase (is it a phase, really?) when I first listened to All The Ways You Let Me Down and I would have air-guitarred my way through it and scoured my closets in the hope of finding something suitable to channel my inner Mariel in the same way I did with Lindsay Lohan.
One thing I have learnt during my twenty-seven years on this Earth as well as during nine seasons of How I Met Your Mother is that timing is everything. When you meet people is capital. Where you are at a defined point of time is most important. It works the same with music.
I didn't find Candy Hearts when I was an eight year old obsessed with Sabrina the Teenage Witch, nor did I find them when I wished my life was like Freaky Friday, long haired Chad Michael Murray included.
I told you already, I found Candy Hearts in the summer of 2014 - the summer when a boy snaked his way into my heart, only to break it.


The story is older than the world and many people go through it every second of every day. There was this boy, and he lead me on, only to leave my high and dry, with a broken heart and self-confidence at the bottom of an industrial sized bin. When I discovered All The Ways You Let Me Down, back when I welcomed Mariel into my life with open arms and a shattered heart, my feelings were conflicted and intense. There were days when my anger was fiery and red-hot. There were days when the sadness was so heavy I wasn't sure it would ever lift away. I had brief confident spells that lasted just long enough for the boxed pink hairdye to fade away, or for me to be done crossing Portsmouth Harbour by myself on a sunny day. I can now safely say that Candy Hearts were instrumental in getting to the point where I am today - a stage of "over it" when I have fully accepted that it is okay for me to reflect on it and acknowledge every part of it, and when I hope that wherever he is, he's doing okay.


It was a long battle and I started it at the bottom of the industrial sized bin with the remains of my self-confidence and my broken heart. All The Ways You Let Me Down held my hand and refused to let it go. It held my hand and rubbed its thumb on my skin so that I could never forget it was there for better or for worse. It was the hug I needed, the tough love I needed, the comfort I needed. It acted as the best friend I wasn't sure I had, the kind of friend who is okay listening to you moan over and over again about how sad you are and how this is the end of the world, even when you both know it's not. All The Ways You Let Me Down was there, by my side, unconditionnally.


On the exterior, All The Ways You Let Me Down has all the pretty, rosy, sweet and tender parts I love in music. You can hear it in I Miss You, a resolutely positive love song, or in Mariel's delicate voice. You can guess it when you find my baby pink vinyl. You can see it in the album cover, a naked brick wall decorated in shiny bunting reading its title. All The Ways You Let Me Down has all my dreams of loving someone so much I'd miss them even when they are still with me, of road trips with the stereo loud in the car, of diners in America and of coffee dates with my girl friends. All The Ways You Let Me Down is the perfect bubble of everything I grew up on, a sensitive and sweet teenager fed on American TV shows, who tends to romanticise cars and house parties.
One day, another day I don't remember, I stopped for a second and paid attention to the soundtrack of my hopeful morning dance-offs with myself, to the words I was singing along to. This is how All The Ways You Let Me Down went from being just the album I wished I had had when I was a teenager to the album that helped me through heartbreak. The exterior might be sweet and shiny, but the interior is full of hurt, and pain, of sadness and anxiety. That summer, I looked sweet and shiny with my layered necklaces, my frilly socks and my pink hair, but inside, I was hurting, I was broken, and my anxiety was skyrocketing. In retrospect, at least, I wasn't alone.


Sometimes, all it takes is a sentence. You don't need the whole story to apply to your own. You just need a couple of words. In Michigan, Mariel sings "You say that I have your heart, but I'm all alone when they're closing the bar, and I don't know what you're thinking". She probably had a specific bar in mind when she wrote those lyrics, they take me back somewhere completely different, and still, it stings. It wasn't even a bar, it was an empty tent at a festival, a tent where they had the brilliant idea to close the night with Green Day's Good Riddance, a tent where I was standing by myself, drunk on Jägermeister because they weren't offering anything else, a tent where I was looking like an idiot in my plaid skirt, my Kids in Glass Houses t-shirt and my green wellies. I was alone and I didn't know what he was thinking. What are you supposed to make of someone who tells you he thought he liked you and in the end he doesn't, and forty-eight hours later, he comes to your rescue when you're being bothered by a creep.
One day, I stopped looking at my own life and looked at the big picture instead. I realised that Michigan wasn't about about my own, personal broken heart and a tent in Knebworth, England, it was about a boyfriend who ignores you and does not treat you right, and slowly but surely, I saw this was the situation I had been in, too. I had been ignored, lead on and not treated right, and I deserved better.
The issue with being a highly sensitive person who cares a whole lot about what other people think is that a small thing can make you feel an unsufferable amount of guilt. The greatest thing about being a person who counts on music more than she counts on human beings is that a single song can teach you to let go of the guilt that is eating your insides.


In Brooklyn Bridge, Mariel reflects on a past significant other and says "I didn't know what I was doing, you were so beautiful and charming". Sometimes, it doesn't take a lot to fall for someone. They just need to have a nice smile and the right words at the right time, the right way of saying you are lovely, and you fall head first for it. I nursed delusional hopes of him coming back to me and drunkenly swore I was going to get him back, and then I saw behind the beautiful and charming exterior, the beautiful smile and the right words. Moments like those are like scratching the gold from a cheap necklace away, only to see the grey, ordinary metal underneath. Not all that glitters is pure gold. He would never felt the way I did, never had and never will. He had never liked me as much as I had, he never would, and he had never been as hurt as I was. There was nothing to get hung up on, nothing to waste my time on.


And mostly, there was Top of Our Lungs. Top of Our Lungs has my very favourite thing about Candy Hearts' (and now Best Ex's) music : it is the snapshot of a very particular moment. The lyrics are the clear description of a specific moment in time, the caption of a picture. Once again, it is not a song that was written about my personal heart and my personal moments in time. It still found its way to my heart and spoke to it (and me) in ways no other song did. The first verse hit me so desperately, so hard, so violently I still cannot quite believe I did not pen those words myself. "Sometimes I try to find you in the air before it rains, in the hiss of cassette tapes, in the way I pause before I say your name".
I have done it so much, you know. There was a long period of time during which I would see him absolutely everywhere, even where he wasn't. I would go home and think about my day and there had been at least one person who I thought looked like him. They probably did not even look the part, but my brain decided they did. There would be someone named like him. There would be someone who liked one specific thing he did, even though in this day and age and in our society, it's not that complicated to find two people who like the same band, or film, or food, or wear the same clothes. I could not quite explain why I did it, because I know it wasn't unconscious, and I knew it didn't help at all. You're never really getting over someone if you keep looking for them in tiny, little every day things. Then again, maybe you are.
Over the years, my broken heart has never related to a song as much as I relate to Top of Our Lungs. It is one of these songs that takes me back to the best moment I have ever had with him and to the long list of terrible ones I had by myself after that. This song is a rollercoaster, full of ups and downs, so sudden and violent it is an emotional Tower of Terror. This song made me long for him and nursed the delusional thoughts of us getting back together and this song accompanied my journey in getting over him and in stopping to look for him in absolutely everything. This song held my hand through thick and thin, through the good and the bad, through the moments of me kidding myself into believing I was over it and through the moments when I had to face the truth and admit to myself that I wasn't over anything at all.
Today, this song doesn't hurt anymore, and doesn't have the emotional violence of a brick in my chest. This song is a pop-punk masterpiece and a reminder of how far I've come, of how I thought I'd never get better and guess what? I went ahead and I did.


All The Ways You Let Me Down was my breakup haircut, my confidence boosting makeover, but more importantly, a lesson in letting go. I chopped off the over-bleached, dead, split and delusional ends of my hair and grew much stronger.