The music video was directed by Andy Hines and centres around ayoung man who struggles with feeling accepted due to his sexuality. It features appearances from Coy Stewart, Nolan Gould, Don Cheadle, Luis Guzmán and Matthew Modine. The song's accompanying music video was released on Logic's Vevo channel on the social media platform Youtube.
Narrative:
The music video follows the life of a young African American male as he grows up and becomes a high school athlete. After realising he has a crush on a boy at his school, he returns home to an unaccepting father.
The teenager stops coming home after his father rejects him and begins sleeping at school and eating meals provided by his coach. The video reaches an emotional peak as the young boy finds a gun in his home and contemplates suicide. However, after deciding to phone someone instead (the suicide helpline 1-800-273-8255), we see a flash forward to the young boy now as a grown up man marrying another man, finding peace with his father, and later raising a child.
The video ultimately features a circular narrative with the beginning of the story showing the boy as a baby being raised by his father and concludes with the now grown up character raising his own child. Additionally, the opening and closing shots of the video depict the boy running.
Structure:
The first chorus of the song is in the voice of the individual as he discusses what is going on through his head and why he wants to kill himself. The second chorus is from the point of view of the lifeline specialist on the other end of the phone call. Later in the song, the specialist tells the person all the reason why they should not take their own life and all the reasons why they should be alive. The third chorus is the person saying "I finally want to be alive. I don't want to die today". This is again from the point of view of the caller saying how he feels now that he has called the lifeline and knows that people care about him and that he isn't alone.
Cultural Impact:
According to the NSPL, in the three weeks following the single's release, calls directed to the NSPL rose by 27%, while visits to their website increased from 300,000 to 400,000 over the following months. According to the Billboard, the helpline received the second-highest daily call volume ever with 4573 calls on the day that the song was released.
The song was performed during the 60th Annual Grammy Awards by Logic alongside Alessia Cara and Khalid, as a tribute to Soundgarden lead vocalist Chris Cornell and Linkin park lead vocalist Chester Bennington, who both died by suicde in 2017.
Language:
In this song, the writer uses many examples of figurative language such as personification and other forms of language in order to inform the viewer how drastic the character is feeling. For example, the lyric "I feel like I'm out of my mind", this is an example of a hyperbole.
Syntax:
The singer uses a handful of short sentences throughout the song, this draws attention to the most important parts of the song.
