In My Fairytale, Jeremy Ryan composes a poignantly powerful and poetic song that explores the complexities of human emotion, specifically those of loss, confusion, and seeking meaning. The lyrics present a raw portrait of a split mind hanging between hope and despair, fantasy and reality, and finally, between the individual he has been and the individual he wants to be.

The opening lines create the mood in an instant, setting the scene for a figure looking out into the night. Not so much just looking at the sky — it’s a metaphor for looking in, for being lost in thought but looking out, trying to work out what’s happening within. Jeremy Ryan looks at his own emotions, and there’s a sense of internal conflict. He doesn’t try to have them all sorted out, and it’s this absence of pretension that makes the lyrics work. There’s something hauntingly familiar about not knowing what you feel, about trying to decode the signs life gives you, only to be more confused.

He offers a touch of cosmic imagery with the thought of the shooting star, suggesting making a wish to think that there’s still magic or miracles. That wish is even clouded with doubt, though, as he asks if wishing still does anything. This is a moment that captures a bitter truth: that it’s hard to want to believe in more and still believe that hope is a lost cause. It’s not even necessarily about sadness — it’s an emotional exhaustion that happens after dreams are frustratingly within reach.

Jeremy uses comparisons in the song that are whimsical but substantial. He talks of sunshine but sunshine without the sun, or a rainbow that is not colored. The imagery works because it takes the familiar and makes it the impossible, showing the emotional emptiness behind the things that are meant to make us happy. When he compares it to loving something that cannot be loved, he is actually talking of the pain of unrequited or unrealized love quite explicitly, but not necessarily romantic, and perhaps an even deeper hunger for connection or comprehension.

One of the most groundbreaking sections of the song is the one regarding popular fairy tales. Jeremy walks down one “yellow brick road” — one direct reference to The Wizard of Oz — and remarks that it doesn’t go anywhere. He speaks of old standbys such as the three blind mice and Little Red Riding Hood, and how frequently we hear tales of overcoming the darkness, finding purpose, or defying the odds. But instead of reassurance, these tales now sound cynical, distant, or even duplicitous. By saying “you choose what to believe,” Jeremy is giving the listener a moment of freedom, but also suggesting that belief is a burden. In a world where even the fairy tales bring no solutions, what do we hold on to?

The chorus returns as a mantra, becoming more emotionally charged with each return. The lyrics aren’t really changed, but that repetition is used to drive home the numbness and resignation that Jeremy is experiencing. The offer to enter his fairytale is both an offer and a warning. It’s the suggestion that this tale — his tale — isn’t the one we’ve been taught. It’s darker, more alone, and full of promises unfulfilled. But despite all of that, there exists still something beautiful in the way he invites you in to that place. Even if it’s shattered, it’s authentic. And maybe, in the authenticity of it, there’s still a kind of hope.

The use of the phrase spinning around in every direction is repeated more than once, offering a sense of dizziness or disorientation, emotional and mental. That repetition, coupled with the sight of wind blowing over the sky, is a description of how untethered Jeremy is. He’s searching for sense in the midst of the turmoil, hoping every time he spins around to see something new. But the same questions and feelings keep coming back. The shooting star wish is repeated too, almost in a silent prayer. It’s more tortured every time, as if he’s fighting to maintain hope even though he no longer believes in it.

But one of the strongest things in the lyrics is how Jeremy Ryan is able to utilize familiar symbols without becoming trite. Fairy tales, rainbows, sunshine — we know what all these represent. But he saps them of their typical beauty and turns them into symbols of what’s lacking. The rainbow isn’t multicolored. The bright day of sunshine isn’t bright. It’s a subtle way of saying that things can be fine on the exterior and empty on the interior — very much like people can be just fine but in pain on the inside.

In spite of the sadness and desolation of the lyrics, healing exists between the lines. Jeremy doesn’t try to be healed or have it all sorted out. But in speaking the truth, in speaking what his world is like, he’s already begun the healing process. Bravery in that. The process of writing and singing these feelings brings them to life, and by doing that, brings others the feeling of being seen, too. Jeremy Ryan has made something true and raw. My Fairytale is no happily ever after song — it’s a song about accepting that sometimes life just doesn’t turn out that way. And by writing his song with so much honesty and craftsmanship, he makes his grief beautiful. The song itself is a fairytale — not a fairytale of magic or instant fixes, but a fairytale of truth, of emotion, and of the inner strength of a person trying to make it through.