Amanda Palmer’s The Bed Song is heartbreaking in every way, chronicling the flailing relationship of two lovers, beginning with euphoria and ending in crushing quietude.

The song structure is quite simple, but it is how Palmer utilizes this simplicity that is devastating. She meekly sits at her piano and sings her song, but she fearlessly sings her soul with it, uncovering all the flaws and vulnerabilities within us that make us love and make us docile and make us fall apart. It is very beautiful too.

A song as lucid and as genuine as The Bed Song doesn’t even require a filmed accompaniment. The anguish is so tangible and so merciless that it would be
almost cruel to turn the experience into something visual.

Heartache is almost as hard to watch as it is to experience, because it summons memories and aches that most people try so hard to conceal and to tuck away.

But The Bed Song seems intent on echoing those quelled recollections, and Michael McQuilken’s video for Palmer’s most forceful song brings a brittle, theatrical delicacy to the fierce candor of the track.

Watch the video below.