On Christmas Day 2006, I got Billy Talent II as a gift after including it in the yearly list to my cousin. She came through. I’d officially become a Billy Talent fan in the autumn of 2005 just through watching the ‘Try Honesty’ video on the band’s website and being reacquainted with ‘River Below’, which I had seen in 2004 but forgotten who it was by immediately after. The band only had one album to their name. But it was around that time that the band uploaded the demo for ‘Red Flag’ on their MySpace page. (So much better than how it ended up on the album by the way, which is why you don’t see it on this blog.) The second album hype was officially on. 2006 went on. ‘Devil in a Midnight Mass’ was released as the first single. The band’s website changed in design. And on June 26th (27th in US and Canada), the album was officially released for all to hear. Though it had also been available to listen for three days up to then, as the band had put it on their MySpace too.

So I got that album, and I’m sure I wore it out. By the time it was in my hands, ‘…Midnight Mass’, ‘Red Flag’ and ‘Fallen Leaves’ had already been released as singles, so those were ingrained in the back of my mind anyway. And I think I even had a listen through that MySpace upload and liked what I heard already. But now I owned it and the first Billy Talent album too. Couldn’t get much better. ‘Surrender’ is the ninth song on Billy Talent II, one about unrequited love, from the point of a narrator who’s deeply infatuated with a girl they get along with, but can’t muscle up the courage to say how they really feel in fear of rejection. I’ve had the experience. Years ago. It’s not great being on the introverted side of life. Not to say it doesn’t have its perks, though. I tell you, this song is one of the few in this whole series that I relate to a little too well. I listen to this song sometimes thinking, “Just talk to her, you sap,” which is advice that I should have taken. The whole ‘surrender yourself to me’ bit is a little far-fetched, I wouldn’t go that far. But that’s where the song’s narrator viewpoint is in that moment. That’s where I can differentiate.

I’m sure I liked ‘Surrender’ as a track when I initially played the album through. I can recall rewinding to the “I think I found a flower in a field of weeds” section many times, just because of the emphatic change it marks in the song’s progression. But I don’t think the song was one that I ever thought would end up being a single. So it came as a mild surprise to me when it was announced to be the fourth one from the album. Got its own music video too, as you can see above, which got its regular rotation on MTV2 around the time of its release. It was the censored version, though. Understandably so. The blink-and-you’ll-miss-it scene of singer Ben Kowalewicz being shot in the head was replaced by a scene of him falling backwards out of shot. I never liked the video all that much, to be honest. But seeing it on a daily basis made me gain a larger appreciation for it. I think the big highlight is the vocal harmonies and interplay between Kowalewicz and guitarist Ian D’Sa. Especially the way the latter sings ‘Surrender’ during the choruses with the former completing the phrases before they both sing ‘Yourself to me’ in unison. That’s some good songwriting there.