Meaning of “It’s Not Fair !” by Del Water Gap
Del Water Gap officially released “It’s Not Fair !” on the 8th of October, 2021. Del Water Gap is a northeastern US native who graduated from NYC, remained based in the Big Apple and more specifically in Brooklyn. This act, to note, started off as a band. But since then the main musician behind the initiative, Samuel Holden Jaffe, continued as a soloist.
He acquired his moniker from an actual location which is known as the Delaware Water Gap, which Jaffe actually became aware of, by the looks of things, via a graffiti tag. And whereas Del Water Gap has yet to experience notable chart success, the history of this act is made more notable by the fact that Maggie Rogers, who has made it onto Billboard a few times, was once a part of it.
“It’s Not Fair !”
Del Water Gap wrote “It’s Not Fair !” with one of his self-admitted homeys, Taylor Janzen, and he produced it alongside Mike Malchicoff.
According to Jaffe, these lyrics reflect a troubling era in his life when he “was struggling a lot with mental illness and some drug problems”. He went on to admit that those emotions were so pronounced at the time that even though he’s “doing much better now”, they well back up whenever he finds himself in the NYC neighborhood he was in back then. And as revealed in the first verse, said locality would be East Manhattan.
And to make a long story short, what’s being implied here is that the vocalist took out the frustration he was experiencing on the addressee, who reads as if it is Del’s ex.
That’s not to say that the lyrics are romantic in nature. But there are clues, such as the addressee being depicted as ‘curled up in Del’s limbs’ and utilization of the phrase “killing me softly”, which is the title of a well-known love song, which point to that idea. Also, as more explicitly put forth in the bridge, Samuel’s mom thinks that he dumbed out by losing such a fine woman.
That said, for whatever unspecified reason the vocalist has also seemingly concluded that the possibility of getting back with his ex is a no-no. The implication is that when he was wild for the night, he offended to an extent that cannot be rectified. So now, it’s as if the singer has relatedly been permanently cast into his feelings which, as noted earlier, are exacerbated whenever he finds himself in East Manhattan.
