On the eleventh of January 2010, English band You Me At Six released their sophomore album, Hold Me Down. Their first major label release, it reached number five on the UK Albums Chart and is certified gold in the country. To celebrate its tenth anniversary, the band embarked on a series of shows across the United Kingdom, where they would play it in its entirety, front to back, and it was an opportunity I simply could not miss.

At the time of release, I was already a You Me At Six fan and had seen them live for the first time, as main support on Paramore's Brand New Eyes tour. A month later, Hold Me Down hit the shelves, and I remember buying it in London, where my older brother took us for a weekend. I left an East London HMV branch with a pile of CDs the height of the Eiffel Tower, glad to finally have access to music that was not available in my rock-deprived country, and it included several copies of Hold Me Down- I had friends who wanted their own too. In June of that same year, You Me At Six played the Nouveau Casino, in Paris, as part of a headline European tour, a show and a day that would mark a permanent change in my life, but I didn't know yet, at the time. How could I? In the meantime were some of the hardest times in my life, only the start of them, it seemed, and Hold Me Down was one of the records I used to play every day in an attempt to stay afloat. It would spin in my little stereo every morning before university and, chances are, it would also play in the shiny blue iPod my friend's then-boyfriend had given me because he didn't have any use for it in the end. It would be my comfort every time I felt down, the music I would turn on loud, the cliché of the teenager slamming the bedroom door because mum and dad just don't understand, though the issues ran much deeper.

I have been a You Me At Six fan for twelve years of my life now, and I don't want to say I have had a love-hate relationship with them because it isn't true. I simply am a human being, and I relate to sort of their art in different, closer ways than others. An album like Hold Me Down will forever be a prominent part of the tapestry of my life, a visible piece of the puzzle. It's a time capsule of the sweetest kind. Listening to it takes me back to the music videos, and all the little things we used to watch on YouTube, the running jokes that only mean something to the old-timers, things about ice cream being too cold, what's butter, something about sheep in a field, the Liquid Confidence behind the scenes footage and the JLS dance moment. (I don't actually know if this bit was ever iconic to the fanbase as a whole, but, just like the kids say, it lives rent-free in my mind. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be on YouTube anymore.)

On the morning of the show, I sat down in St. Pancras Station, in London, in front of the Starbucks no one can ever find when I tell them, and I played Hold Me Down in preparation for the show, something to get me hyped up. Playing The Blame Game came around, and I felt tiny tears, almost invisible, insignificant to anyone but me, during the line "You hold me down by keeping me around," and I realised I had never really understood that line before. There is something magical about finding new meaning in art that has been an ever-present part of your existence, deep in your blood, for the past eleven and a half years of your life.

The show was held at Kingston's Pryzm and was, once again, organised by the still absolutely amazing Banquet Records. I don't think I could praise them anymore- they truly are the best thing since sliced bread (and that's a French person saying that.) A night that, a decade ago, would have started in the daytime, queuing against all sorts of ludicrous weather, was birthed in the Wetherspoons pub across the street this time around, in front of a glass of Kopparberg's Cherry Rum. Nineteen, twenty-year-old me would have loved the barrier. (She even kinda threw a tantrum on Tumblr about it once because she was upset, back in the day, but that's a shameful story for another lifetime.) Thirty-one-year-old me wanted to crowdsurf and reclaim the music she thought had been tainted by someone else's influence.
Never again.
Hold Me Down is mine. This is not a proprietary statement. It's the admittance that nevermind what other people did to me, nevermind the stains they left on my life, music that is pretty much part of my DNA cannot be touched nor removed. It is mine for as long as I choose.

For all those reasons, I knew I would get emotional during You Me At Six's set. It's not even the cliché of me crying for no valid reason, bawling my eyes out because why the hell not, I love this song, or this child on TV at Christmas time is just so stinking cute. It's a mixture of nostalgia, melancholy, pure joy, and appreciation of how far I've come since I was a nineteen-year-old girl with a bad fringe who thought she was so hard when Sean Smith's part came on during The Consequence. Funnily enough, that's the song during which I started crying. The Consequence. The first goddamn song on the album. Even for me, that's a new record. They were about two lines into it when I felt tears welling up in my eyes, and they were not to stop for most of the set. This album is a part of me, it's in my bones. As of last Friday, I have seen You Me At Six live twenty-three times, unless I am awful at math and remembering things, and I have heard Underdog in the flesh a similar amount of times. The nineteenth of November 2021 was the first time it made me cry.

Hold Me Down also takes me back to the questionable art every one of us used to make back in the day, those lyric drawings in several fonts that were plastered all over Tumblr. There are so many fitting one-liners in Hold Me Down, and I know I made several of these drawings. Lyrically, this album will stand the test of my time because of those clever, sometimes sassy one-liners. "I've got real big plans and such bad thoughts" (The Consequence) // "I'm down, down, but definitely not out" (Underdog) // "You hold me down by keeping me around" (Playing The Blame Game) // "And everybody was kissing on fire, and we all got burnt" (Safer To Hate Her) // "You've got nothing to lose, except for me and you" (Liquid Confidence) // "Dearest enemy, you should have never trusted me, you bitch" (Contagious Chemistry) // "I'm a man of my words and my words will never change" (Trophy Eyes) // "Remember when you were my boat and I was your sea, together we'd float so delicately" (Fireworks) Just to quote a few. (The Contagious Chemistry one is admittedly not something we would use in lyrics in 2021, but it was my favourite song back in the day, so I had to include it.)
(Also, can we talk about the fact that Trophy Eyes, as in, the band, named themselves after that specific song?)

I found this on Pinterest, so, unfortunately, I don't know who made this.

During the build-up to the show, out of complete superstition, I did not say anything about it online, as if me being openly excited about something carried the risk of ruining it. On the day of, when I was safely on English land, I made up for lost time, and I think everyone who came across me was sick to the back teeth of hearing me talk about the one song I was most excited to hear: There's No Such Thing As Accidental Infidelity. It received its first-ever live performance on Friday night and, despite frontman Josh Franceschi warning the crowd of potential rustiness, it sounded just as perfect as I always imagined it to be. I paid a tribute to my decade-ago self in today's fashion and crowdsurfed to Aled Phillips' part while wearing a Kids In Glass Houses t-shirt. Some parts of yourself can never die.

After finishing up with the album's closing track, the wonderfully heartbreaking Fireworks, You Me At Six came back for an encore composed of SUCKAPUNCH, Lived A Lie, Take On The World, and Beautiful Way. Did I emotionally need it? No. I would have been content leaving the room after the last notes of Fireworks. Did I mind? Also, no. Despite it not being my favourite song, SUCKAPUNCH shines in a live setting, and its packed energy is mindblowing. Lived A Lie is one of the band's most fun singles. I got someone to carry me on their shoulders during Take On The World, and my love for the track only grows. Beautiful Way is one of You Me At Six's best recent numbers, one of the reasons why I still love them, why I would still go the extra mile for them. Maybe I wouldn't queue at stupid o'clock in the snow anymore, warming my hands up in an Asda bathroom in suburban Edinburgh while wondering if my plane home is going to leave the next morning. Maybe I wouldn't chase the elusive barrier anymore. But I will always want to celebrate the shiny parts of my life and, as far as puzzle pieces go, You Me At Six are pretty golden.

The next step in this lifelong celebration takes place in Paris, in March 2022, and you're all invited. It's followed by another show that will shatter my heartstrings in the loveliest manner, the tenth anniversary of the band's third record, Sinners Never Sleep, in June.