Avery

Song Meaning

The narrator wakes up stranded in Wisconsin, realizing their car and their friend, Avery, are gone. The immediate feeling is one of betrayal and confusion, left behind in a "stale motel" while Avery apparently drove off in the narrator's car. This sets up a raw, immediate sense of abandonment. The core tension here is Avery's erratic, selfish behavior versus the narrator's lingering questions and hurt. Avery's actions – taking the car, disappearing, selling it without contact – are contrasted with the "miles of memories" and the implied shared plans ("What about Alabama? What about Tennessee?"). The repeated question, "What a friend you turned out to be," drips with bitter irony. The lyrics paint a picture of Avery as someone desperately trying to escape, "trynna break free from the weight of yesterdays," possibly through "drugs and alcohol." The narrator observes this destructive pattern, wondering if Avery is "howling at the moon" or "burnt by the sun," suggesting a restless, unstable existence. The phrase "you never go to stay" captures Avery's transient, unreliable nature. This song hits hard because it grounds a profound sense of betrayal in specific, almost mundane details: a "beat up Chevy," a "stale motel," and the geographical markers of abandoned plans. The narrator's voice is not just angry but also deeply wounded, questioning the very definition of friendship when faced with such reckless disregard. The final plea, "Don't you think it's time you came clean, Avery?" underscores the narrator's desperate need for an explanation that likely will never come.