The Paradoxical Promises of Loving Yourself
Singer-songwriter Grace Lee’s debut album locates the flaws in the modern search for fulfillment through self-love.
Review by John Kainer
Love Crusadin’ is a story album. The title track is reminiscent of Taylor Swift’s early discography infused with a healthy dose of ‘90s country, but the album is not just a collection of upbeat anthems about high hopes for romance; rather, it is about the very real internal struggles of a woman who longs for someone to accompany her through life. Love Crusadin’ tells a story that proceeds in a series of peaks and valleys. The upbeat pop country of “Love Crusadin’” gives way to the more skeptical “Give Me Desire,” a song that puts Lee in conversation with St. Joseph. She cleverly uses St. Joseph’s titles—Pillar of Families, Light of Patriarchs—to illustrate his authority in the domains she struggles with. This skeptical searching transitions to the playful “Hey Romeo,” where Lee makes a list of things that she is seeking in her potential man, and is immediately followed by the dark and introspective “Desperado.” The pattern ends with the self-effacing, “Your Promised Land,” in which Lee describes her heart: “‘Cause it’s not pretty, it’s not grand. Trust me you could never stand a chance. It’s not ready, it’s not planned, I can’t give you your promised land.” The order of the songs produces a poignant story and makes listening to Love Crusadin’ all the way through rewarding.
The best song on the album is “Desperado,” a haunting ballad about how Lee has chosen to play God in her own life and found, much to her chagrin, that she cannot rise to meet the standards she has set for herself:
The moon is shining so bright tonight
And my insomnia’s a bittersweet affliction.
Don’t need anyone to love tonight.
When did my melancholia start feeling like a drug addiction?
I guess I’m feeling alone tonight.
Yeah, I know I tend to be so full of contradictions.
Can’t look myself in the eyes,
I never did live up to any of my convictions.
The lyrics cut through the comforting platitudes about self-love that have become cliché in pop music over the past decade. Miley Cyrus’s song “Flowers” is the best illustration of the genre: “I can take myself dancing and I can hold my own hand, yeah, I can love me better than you can.” Instead of orienting us towards better relations with others, these kinds of songs urge us to seek comfort in our own company. They ignore that we are made for relationship and, more than that, we are made for relationship with a loving God—not to be gods ourselves.
In “Desperado,” Lee is confronted by her inability to meet the standards that she has created for herself. It is not society’s standards that she cannot measure up to, but the standards of her own heart. She craves the high produced by feeling sorry for herself, but playing the victim keeps her trapped in a loop of self-sabotage and self-abasement.
She laments:
I’m paralyzed in my self-sabotaging sorrow.
Oh my, oh my, Desperado.
In referring to herself as a “Desperado”—desperate, reckless, criminal—Lee offers us food for thought: can we really be upset about the sorrow in our life if our own self-sabotage is the root cause? Of course we can! The problem is we have no justification for being upset if we are the self-sufficient masters of our faith that we claim to be. This is the practical consequence of elevating ourselves to the level of a god. Anything upsetting or wrong falls on our own shoulders.
True love of self is a paradox, both a kind of self-forgetfulness and an affirmation of one’s goodness.
Yet Lee sees a path out of the darkness and reappraises her situation:
He built me castles from the bridges that I burned.
My Lord, have mercy on my soul,
‘Cause I’m acting now like it was something I deserved.
I’m acting now like it was something that I earned.
Reframing her situation from one of powerlessness to one where God has the power, Lee realizes that we all from time to time destroy the escape routes from our problems. The reason for this, Lee suggests, is that we often feel entitled to a life free of suffering because we’ve worked hard. When we are confronted by the reality that suffering is a normal part of the human condition, our pride leads us to rebel.
Lee is left pondering:
Is my pride a pill too big to swallow?
Let it go, let it go, Desperado.
This leads her to the edge of the proverbial cliff:
I’m thinking about taking one last step,
I’m humiliated, I’m so complicated,
I’m thinking about this stupid love that I’m parading.
I’m hanging by a thread, I’m standing at the edge,
I’m thinking about taking one last breath,
I’m so masquerading, relentlessly self-hating,
I’m thinking about this stupid love that I’m betraying.
So when will I stop wasting all my sorrow?
I’m paralyzed in my Desperado.
Lee finds contradictions within herself and thinks that she should be otherwise, as if contradictions were not part of the human condition. Caught up in the embarrassment and shame of her shortcomings, she seeks refuge in her claim that she is complicated. Lee, however, is not unique in her complicated nature; she is just like everyone else who has ever been taken in by the false promises of the world, leaving their lives with little room for God’s grace and love to intervene. Having reached the end of her rope, Lee can see clearly that the “stupid love” she’s betraying is an improper form of self-love that has led her, as it leads everyone, to elevate herself to the place of God. Ironically, it has also produced a relentless self-hatred, as Lee realizes that she is likely to fall short of whatever standards she makes for herself. What could be more self-defeating than being the one making the rules and then failing to follow them?
In “Desperado,” Lee reveals how easily self-love can become harmful self-idolatry, but she also hints that there is another way. Christians are called to a different kind of self-love, one that is an imitation of Christ’s love for us. True love of self is a paradox, both a kind of self-forgetfulness and an affirmation of one’s goodness. It is to treat yourself with the grace that you feel compelled to extend to someone who is going through something difficult. We are commanded to love ourselves, despite our flaws and sinfulness, the same way we are called to love our troubled family and friends. What gets in the way of us doing this? Lee offers an answer in the second chorus: “So when will I just drop this fake bravado? Is my pride a pill too big to swallow?” She also offers the formula for freedom, singing, “Let it go, let it go, Desperado.” If we wish to love ourselves and others in the way Christ commands, we will need to let go of our attachments. We will have to let go of who we think we are and accept who God says we are. These are the sacrifices by which we purge ourselves of our self-idolatry. As Lee makes clear, sacrifice is the mechanism by which we become more like God and, paradoxically, more of our true selves.
John M. Kainer is Associate Professor and Chair of Sociology at University of the Incarnate Word, as well an Affiliated Scholar with Veritas Center for Ethics in Public Life at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio. His work has appeared in a wide variety of scholarly and popular publications. He lives in San Antonio, Texas, with his wife and son.
Love Crusadin’ was released by Novum Records on March 19, 2025. The album was produced by Mason Shirley of Sound Machine Studios. You can stream it here.
