#that meme of the guy with the pinboard and all the red lines? that's me

[wren-of-the-woods]

I was singing along to Fair today and I noticed something fascinating: it's possible that there are three characters in the song: "I," "he," and "she."

Most of the first-person material in the song is in the form of quotations (e.g. and he'll say "it's not fair how much I love you"). We certainly have two characters, "he" and "she", who speak to each other throughout the song.

At the beginning and the end, however, something different might be going on. The song opens with a few verses in first person with no reference to "he" or "she" (It's what my heart just yearns to say...the reason I was born). Because Joey Batey is singing, it's easy to assume that this is "he" narrating. That may be the intention. It's interesting, though, that directly after this it switches to third person: Cos outwardly he says I try so hard to make you laugh at me / And she, she does, she laughs...

A similar thing happens at the end, starting with "how unfair they'll sing." This verse is narrated by an outside perspective: something looking in on the couple from outside. Fascinatingly, the chorus that comes after this is the only one that does not begin with a dialogue tag, simply saying "it's not fair." It's almost like that first line is a moment of the narrator's perspective before it switches back to dialogue between the characters.

Is this narrator a different person, perhaps a friend of the couple? Is it the world? Is it destiny? Is it the stars that hum and hear them? Regardless, they seem to be just as in love with the story and the people as the couple are with each other, and I think that's beautiful.

TLDR: The narrator in Fair may be a seperate entity from the characters within the song, but they are just as in love with the story as the characters are with each other.