From the album Turn Out the Lights
This is an apology for being broken that doubles as a defense for staying broken. Baker maps the exhaustion of someone so deep in their own failure that lying, to themselves, to the person watching them sink, becomes the only survival mechanism left. The song's gentleness is its cruelest trick: she sounds so reasonable while describing a state of complete collapse.
I know that I'm not what you wanted, am I? / Wanted someone who I used to be like
Baker frames herself as a past-tense version of a person, something that existed and stopped existing. The question mark is performative, she already knows the answer. She's not asking for reassurance; she's preemptively confirming the other person's disappointment to beat them to it.
You don't have to remind me so much / How I disappoint you
The passive construction hides who's doing the reminding. Is the other person actually saying this, or is Baker filling in their silence with her own self-hatred? The ambiguity is the point, by the time you're this deep in failure, other people's voices and your own collapse into the same static.
I think if I ruin this / That I know I can live with it
This is maybe the most honest thing she says. She's not trying to save the relationship or fix herself, she's measuring how much more damage she can absorb. The word 'ruin' assumes the outcome, and 'live with it' means survive, not recover. It's triage, not hope.
I have to believe that it is / (Probably not, but I have to believe that it is)
The parenthetical is brutal. She says the comforting lie out loud, then immediately names it as a lie, then says it again anyway. It's the sound of someone trying to convince themselves in real time and failing but continuing because stopping would mean total collapse.
And when I tell you that it is / Oh, it's more for my benefit
Baker admits the reassurance is selfish, a tool to keep herself functional, not a belief she actually holds. She's not lying to protect the other person's feelings, she's lying because the alternative is acknowledging that nothing will get better, and that acknowledgment would end her. The song refuses to pretend otherwise.
What makes this unbearable is how calm it sounds. Baker doesn't scream or plead; she just methodically describes the mechanics of falling apart while someone watches. The song ends with her still lying to herself, still saying it will be okay, and the listener knows, because she's told us explicitly, that she doesn't believe it. That's the trap: she has to keep saying it anyway.
Julien Baker's "Appointments" presents an apology for being broken that simultaneously defends staying that way, mapping the exhaustion of someone trapped in failure who resorts to lying as their last survival mechanism. In Scalpel's line-by-line reading, the song's deceptive gentleness becomes its cruelest element, as Baker sounds entirely reasonable while describing complete collapse.
"Appointments" by Julien Baker explores lying to yourself out loud, disappointing someone who's already given up, appointments as the last measure of function, and emptiness as something you learn to live in. The central thread is lying to yourself out loud: The song is built around the gap between what Baker knows (it's not going to be okay) and what she forces herself to say (it will be), with the bridge and chorus making that gap unbearably visible. These themes come from Scalpel's line-by-line analysis of the lyrics.
"Appointments" by Julien Baker was released on October 27, 2017 on the album "Turn Out the Lights". Scalpel's analysis covers the full lyrics of the 2017 release.
Scalpel's line-by-line analysis of "Appointments" by Julien Baker lands here: What makes this unbearable is how calm it sounds. Baker doesn't scream or plead; she just methodically describes the mechanics of falling apart while someone watches.