You lot told me. After I reacted to “For Joe” back in January, the comments were full of the same message: you need to watch Su!cIde, because they connect. I finally sat down with it — and about three quarters of the way through I stopped and said out loud, right, I absolutely see where they connect.
I’m Rachel Walker Mason, an award-winning songwriter and Grammy voting member, and what I wasn’t ready for was how this song is built. I was expecting the saddest piano ballad ever written. It isn’t. It bops along in this quite gentle way, and I think that’s completely deliberate — it catches you off guard, and then you actually hear the lyric.
In this reaction I break down:
🎧 Why Ren slowed his delivery down on this one, and what that lets you hear
✍️ The thing we’re trained as songwriters to do — and why Ren refuses to do it
🎹 Why a song about this subject is upbeat, singable, and gets stuck in your head
💔 The last section, the acoustic drop, and Ren crying in the take
🔗 How it connects to “For Joe” — and why you were right to send me here
🎨 The colour report: warm purple, lifting to a lighter blue, then very dark blue getting darker as he cries
We’re British, and we are not good at hearing real things. We sugarcoat, or we laugh about it, or we change the subject. As a writer you get trained into that too — you’re taught to put a euphemism on it so the song is “about” the thing without ever saying it. Ren just says the word. And it’s a genuinely hard word to say out loud, which is the whole point.
TRIGGER WARNING: Discussions of suicide and mental health.
If you’re struggling, please reach out — you’re not alone.
UK: Samaritans 116 123 | Mind.org.uk
US: 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline
International resources: befrienders.org
📺 If you haven’t seen it, watch my “For Joe” reaction first — this one lands differently when you have:
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CHAPTERS
0:00 Back with Ren, and apparently this is his saddest song
0:17 First listen
1:10 Why he slowed the delivery down, and what the lyric admits
4:37 Second listen
5:29 The word songwriters are trained to avoid
7:33 Third listen
8:35 Why a song about this bops along
11:12 The ending
12:46 He’s crying in the take
14:10 You were right — how it connects to For Joe
15:36 The colour report
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🎵 ORIGINAL VIDEO
Ren – Su!cIde (Official Music Video):
Ren’s channel:
Music video by Louis Mardlin / Creative Deploy
Please go and watch it in full on Ren’s channel — and if you’re able, his RNLI fundraiser is linked in his own description.
👇 Tell me in the comments: I asked on camera and I mean it — if any of you know why Ren wrote it at that tempo, I want to know. I’m genuinely fascinated by the choice.
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👤 About: BBC-recognised songwriting expert | Grammy voting member | Ivors Academy | Songwriters Hall of Fame executive member | Billboard Top 20 | UK Chart Top 10 | Estill-qualified vocal producer | Synesthete 🎨
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Have been enjoying your channel since seeing your Hi Ren reaction (very recently). Just noticed today that you have a bunch of other Ren reactions, and they are all at the top of my watch list. 🙂
Would love to see a reaction to 'The Hunger' as it is quite different from the other ones you've covered. Also, have you listened to his rendition of I Shot the Sherrif under his busking band The Big Push?
Thank you.
I can tell you that if this song is on your playlist. Don’t sing along with the “suicide” part when you are out in public. People look at you strangely.
❤
This was a beautiful react❤
I know he speaks of losing his best friend to suicide when he was like16 ,and spending weeks after losing him searching for his body,you can feel it
This song is one of his that always makes me cry, and Rachel…NO MUSIC makes me cry. Some make me feel things, but that needle dulls with repeat listening as I know what's coming. But even though I know most of Ren's songs word for word, beat for beat, note for note, many of them, like Hi Ren, Chalk Outlines, Violet's Tale, this song, and a few others, ALWAYS make me feel things that I normally can't connect to. I can't even say why, or how, but all I know is that, when I need to feel…feel ANYTHING, I put Ren's music on, or watch another reaction.
I so appreciate your color, both in body and word and spirit. Thank you for putting words to the way so many feel, but feel ashamed to speak out about.
I believe Ren said he recorded this line by line as he wrote it, and kept all the first takes with the rawest emotion. (The last part about Joe).
❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤😢
I will never understand this hypocritical practice of replacing the word “suicide.” A rose is still a rose, no matter what I call it.
I am not preventing suicide by replacing the word. Looking at it and naming it is the first step toward understanding, confronting it, and hopefully also getting help.
another scary thing about thinking about suicide, and knowing people that did it, is that you're both kind of angry at them as well as feeling you're a bigger coward because he/she was at least brave enough to go through with it… well sometimes feels like that, so it's hard to be mad, but then you wonder whether it would've been braver to go on instead, and try to live on… both choices can give you the feeling of cowardness…
This is my personal opinion on this song My take on this song is that when someone is suicidal a lot of the times they are very happy on the outside to hide their true feelings so it is hard to know that is how they are feeling. I think he made it up beat so you have to listen deeply to hear the real meaning just like you have to really pay attention to someone to see they are hurting sometimes. He always does such an amazing job with making a song personify the feelings he is trying to portray and it is one of the biggest things I love about his music.
Ren has helped keep a lot of us going when we cannot.
REN=HOPE
We as a society need to break the cycle of stigmatising asking for help. As well as mental illness and everything around it. Men and boys need to be taught that there is no shame in reaching out, asking for help and getting the help.
To many stay quite living with their demons to afraid of what others will think or say if it got out that they were in therapy. More lives are lost due to silence then are saved.
I live with depression, suffered with it for years. I would find myself in a mood mix of numb and sad then angry and I would have no idea why I was feeling it as I got older it got worse and then one night after an argument something snapped I put my shoes on and left. At the time i lived close to both a railway line and a busy main road, I sat in the park and weighed up my choices. I wondered which would hurt the most, then what my actions would do to the others. If i walked into traffic I could cause an accident. If I chose train then it would be fast and no accident but then it would be how would that affect the people who had to clear up after me.
So i sat, the heavens opened and it rained, and i sat.
I don't know how long i sat for but then i spotted a torch light and two officers walked up to me, asked if I was okay. I shrugged. One staid the other walked off. He sat down and he asked what was wrong, i told him to go away that I was okay. He said in a very calm tone.
"You're not okay, you're freezing and you're thinking." He removed his jacket and dropped it across my shoulders.
For a few minutes we sat in silence my mind running riot telling me yet again i fucked up, I once again asked him to leave and he again refused. Then the other officer came back and nodded at him, he had a blanket over his arm, they exchanged the jacket for the blanket. He asked my name, i gave it and he said "ah so it is you. You know people have been looking for you."
I said i was sorry that I'd go but the officer who staid stopped me and told me to sit, i said i was sorry again. He then rubbed my back and i don't know why but something broke, i broke and that was it i was crying.
I ended up going home with my mum, I was give the contact details of a local therapist as well as the contact details for the officers. Following morning they came back round we sat and talked well I talked they listened.
I was in therapy for around 6 months, it was hard, it got dark but in a way it helped me. It helped me to understand myself, my triggers how to spot a mood coming and know that I couldn't stop it I just had to ride it and learn to deal with it. That the yelling in my head was a lie that i could tune it out.
I still have those moments but I have learnt how to manage them, the one thing i can say to anyone dealing with depression or other negative thoughts or feelings there is zero shame in reaching out someone will always grab your hand and hold you back. Those voices are loud they are non stop but they are lies you are wanted, you are worthy, you are everything they say you are not. The struggle is hard but with help you are strong enough to survive it and learn how to heal and live. Living is hard, it is scary and it hurts so fing much but in the end it is worth it. So keep going, keep fighting don't let it win.
Looking back on that night, i don't know what i would have chosen in that moment I just wanted it to stop
The line that really gets me is when Ren says To Look Down And See Tranquility. It is very sad that when Joe climbed up and looked down and thought it a better choice to jump than deal with what he was going through. I thought I wanted to die so I ate 32 Darvocet. About ten minutes later i came to the conclusion that I didn't want to die. My first wife had left me and I had moved back in with my parents. I woke my mom up and told her that I had taken the pills. I was taken to the hospital and survived. I have been married to my second wife for almost 30 years and been together almost 40 years. We have four adult daughters and eight grandchildren. Im happy i chose life on that day. Great reaction. See you on the next one.
The only thing that was able to give me hope in my darkest hours was not "things will get better" but someone actually getting where I'm at, acknowladging that my thoughts are not the issue but the things that led there and feeling understood. Nothing has ever made me felt less lonely than someone actually understanding me when I am in that terrible place. It makes the place less terrible because now I'm not there alone. "Things will get better" only make me feel like no one is even listening. Ren always shows me that I am not alone in the dark place and he makes me want to be there for others that are there and that gives me a reason to keep going.
“Crutch” might rival this for saddest song. It is beautifully raw, and every bit as vulnerable as this one.
I have to say where REN can perfectly convey a message through his art, you have perfectly understood and eloquently explained this in words. I actually love this song for its honesty. ❤
yeah, over done the thumbnail a bit…..
Thanks for the reaction. This song always gets me.
Hi Rachel! I see that you have reacted to the title track Asylum. I do hope that you are going to react to the entire album. It is such a mixed bag. For me the two fave songs are Down The Road, & Caskets. Caskets is sad but hopeful. "Dr Myers" is the saddest song on the album and is bleak! Have your tissues at the ready. Possibly the most fun song is the End Of The World. Bye!
Recommend Five Finger Death Punch – Wrong Side of Heaven
I feel that this song is aimed at De stigmatising the subject People should feel OK about "Talking about it!"
Thank you so much for all the wonderful reactions to Ren, Chris Webby, Sam Tomkins, etc.
N.C.
listening to this like the 1000th time… still cant do it without crying
RENegade love ❤
Hi, I'm Beatrice. I’d recommend listening to Dimash – The Story of One Sky
I would have never understood this song in the way that Ren expresses it, except for having gone through it myself. Four years ago, my oldest son passed away unexpectedly. I went through stages of shock, wretching, grief, suicidal thoughts to just get away from the pain I was feeling and the insanity was putting me through. I found Ren when I was going through all of the stages of grief that I was going through. He captured the feelings that I was going through so well, and just knowing that others have gone through mental struggles and made it out the other side kept me sane enough to keep taking steps forward.
The one thing I have always appreciated about this song. It's so catchy. Like, it gets stuck in your head, and just lives there… A lot of people who have experienced thoughts of self-harm often report that ideation of the act. That you can't get it out of your head, and it seems very alluring when you're down. I mean, let's be fair, if the lyrics were different, this would be a hell of a bop. Genius. I also wonder if this would have hit so hard without the last part. Talking about the stars aligning. If Ren would have never met Knox Hill, we may never have had that last part on here. Just amazing.
You should do "murderer" next its a fun ren song. He actually did it because suicide got delisted by youtube due to the title. It was because murderer got through no problem.
The first part of this song was initially the full song, but shortly before the album was about to be finished he felt that it was missing something and wrote that last part, if I remember the story correctly one line at the time as he felt them, without going back and edit them. It's truly a heartbreaking song that is hard to listen to.
He then reused those line in "For Joe" (that only exist as that live recording you watched) as a way of describing his feelings about it in a more positive and thoughtful light by combining it with his older Freckled Angels song and with some extra lyrics around it.
I haven't watched the full video yet, but I'm curious why you referred to it as "Classic Ren"? To me that would be something from his first record from 2016 (that included songs from his early days with Sony), or maybe from the EP's he did around 2020, but this song is from his 2023 hip-hop album which I would rather describe as modern day Ren. It is his latest album after all.
Are you using another definition of classic or are we only using different time-frames?
Well, will listen to your full reaction now, maybe it will be explained…
I just realised that it might be a misunderstanding based on someone referring to the song "Freckled Angels", which is also part of "For Joe" and indeed a Classic Ren song.
Isn't it funny; I always see this as a very positive song. Those words "…it never really felt like the right time…" are such a hope filled line. There is so much in the world to value, regardless of how bad it gets, it's not the right time to leave.
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Ed to add, I am not necessarily a cup (bucket) half full person either, yet I still take this song as full of hope.
No, Ren is not being "brutal". He is merely being Blunt. Being brutal has an element of cruelty to the rendering; whereas, being blunt is facing the issue front on and not beating around the bush about it as so many have been want to do for far too long.
One thing you cannot accuse Ren of is being cruel, here. He is just being honest and saying it how it is. Big difference and not recognising that difference may have actually led to the innefictive situation we find ourselves today in society?
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I'm quite a solitary person but Ren, Renegades and the reaction community get me through so much and restore my faith in humanity. 1 year sober last month and I never thought I'd say that ever!! Just to know that lots of troubled people are out there dealing with life with some type of positivity and understanding is a well I keep returning to. Thank you 🙂